Speranza wrote
I'm intrigued when people say this. Personally, I ditched Cubase years ago for Studio One. I don't state this in a mad fan boy manner, I decided to do it back in Version 2 as it did everything I needed then. May I ask what has stopped you from doing so? (Not that you should!)
I posted a big thread a while back... can't recall if I posted it here in this forum or somewhere else... but basically, it boils down to specific features that many composers and film/video folks have come to rely upon for composing/film/video/post work in Cubase that are not quite as deep or mature in Studio One yet. It's mainly down to workflow efficiency for me, although there are larger feature differences that can make a real difference... and this is not operator inexperience I'm talking about.
These are simply missing features that are not there yet in Studio One. They may or may not be important to some people, but if someone is already familiar with them and uses them frequently in Cubase, some features will be sorely missed in Studio One for sure. But that's not to say one can't do serious, professional composing/film/etc work in Studio One. It's an amazing DAW, incredibly deep with unique features of its own... but it's just a few features shy of minimally replacing key features many film/video/composer people need in a DAW that Cubase has had for a long time. The list is actually moderately long once you get into more details, but one can nitpick over the value of the some of the differing features, so it's really a personal preference.
If you never used chord tracks in Cubase, for example, you won't miss them in Studio One. I personally never cared for them, but it was nice that they were there to experiment with. It's not a dealbreaker for me that they aren't in Studio One. More obvious missing features are things like articulation management, etc... (and not some add-on script... I'm talking baked into the main app, fully fleshed-out and integrated.) Again, if you never used that feature, then it's not a big deal. But once you rely on things like that in your workflow, it's difficult to NOT have them available. I expect articulation management to be available in Studio One soon, hopefully v4. It's a big deal to some people. The list goes on. Many of these items have been posted and voted upon in the Presonus feature request database, and you'll see quite a good list of things many people seem to want... hopefully some of those made it into S1 v4.
Still, I've been slowly transitioning over to Studio One, trying to push it and see how well it can handle various film/video workflows, and I just mixed another short film with sound design in it in Studio One. But it was definitely not ideal. Knowing very well what I can do in Cubase and honestly Pro Tools too, for example, I wanted to see if it could be done at a reasonable speed in Studio One, and yes, it's possible, and my client was very happy with the results and had no idea it was mixed in Studio One instead of some other DAW they know. But there were still deficiencies and workarounds and a few frustrations.
As for composing though, the gap is definitely larger, as mentioned. Hopefully Studio One v4 will address some of those.
Besides the composing issues (which are many to some people), for me, there are other standout issues that I hope Presonus resolves soon... i.e.: most recently what bugged me on this short film was that the Cubase video engine is just currently superior and easier to navigate, with more codecs (including pro codecs, including Avid, which I use on some projects), more accuracy, easier to navigate, etc... and that all depends on your workflow. If you just need simple H264 playback you'll be fine. But if you need to scrub back and forth for frame-accurate slicing and dicing and frame-accurate hits/cues, then Cubase and Pro Tools have better video engines/features, and are easier to get around. Simple things like a thumbnail track, extra marker tracks, timeline tracks, better granularity/usability of timeline with timecode (just zoom in with S1 and you'll see what I mean) and frankly even the frame accuracy of the video engine on Windows is a problem with Studio One. (There is a known bug in the Windows video engine for certain codec settings that is a real hassle, and I've reported it to Presonus and they have confirmed it... hopefully there will be a fix soon!).
So the little things that make a daily workflow with film/video and composing in general are currently not quite there yet in Studio One, and if the developers just spend ONE update focusing on those kinds of issues, it will go a long way to close the gap and let me put Cubase out to pasture. It's ALMOST there. Certainly Studio One 3.5 is a powerhouse. Just not quite there in some areas for these kinds of workflows.
So now I'm really crossing my fingers for Studio One 4 on May 22 and if they just address 1/2 of the issues I have, then I'll be thrilled. Because Studio One overall has so many other positives that if they close enough of the gap, it will more than make up for the differences.
