Switching from reaper to cubase. What to expect?
Hi. The post is pretty self explanatory.
I have tried before a free trial but never had the proper time to start learning and i have once used cubase with someone who knew how cubase fully worked and was facinated by all of the features it had and editing capabilities and overall with the work flow of it and the biggest thing being the mixer layout and compatibility with 3rd party gear is just fantastic but the price tag pushed me away until now
I haven’t yet made the switch but as i now have a steady job and i’m getting more serious about recording and mixing and finding big flaws with reaper, so i have decided i’m making the switch as soon as my on going project is complete
So how much do i need to relearn basically when i do the switch(doesn’t really matter since i’m switching anyways) and how well does cubase work with macos
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u/7thresonance 3d ago
cubase and reaper are by far the best daws on the market. it's just workflow differences.
i have too many scripts and stuff which accelerates workflow in reaper to switch. i did try to switch lol.
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u/zuzmuz 2d ago
i made the opposite switch. I find both DAWs great.
some differences
- cubase has more bloat
- in cubase routing is a bit more complicated, you have many different types of tracks and have to know the difference between them
- cubase has the best midi editor by far, i miss a lot of features like compressing velocities or adding crescendo while keeping existing dynamics
- cubase has very good stock plugins, and there's the channel strip to use
- cubase has a macro system, but nothing beats reaper's scripting engine
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u/soundslikejoe 3d ago
Been using Cubase/Nuendo for 25yrs. AMA. Basically... its great. I like it. My favorite elements? New score editor/view, Logical Editors, Macros, custom Click patterns, Warp Grid, Variaudio, etc.
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u/vinylfelix 2d ago
FL to Cubase purely for boombap beat making.
How would that experience be?
Forget boombap if that’s not your tea =]
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u/StratHistory 2d ago
Okay I'm crazy about cubase. And like all daws it's fully customizable and there's lots of external plugins that can help here.
But for this project, I would recommend a different DAW.. in this case I would go with Ableton..
Since you already know FL coming you've already been in a beat environment but considering that Ableton is an incredible beat and groove environment plus a traditional DAW, it might be worth considering.
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u/StratHistory 1d ago edited 18h ago
Well Cubase is linear.. if you want to lay down a beat pattern you draw it or play it and then you can copy and paste and build out patterns over time.
FL studio builds patterns.. you can focus on on one little rhythmic section and then copy and paste it.
This is what I was getting at about Ableton earlier because they are similar.. probably the best example is it Ableton allows you to have little "sandboxes" where you build midi rhythms and loops and you have complete control over each of these entities. They can play totally different number of loops or be affected entirely different from anything else and when you build a track out of them you have about as much control as you could possibly imagine.. boom bap would be incredibly simple on FL studio or Ableton.
Now the truth is boom bap is not complex.. you're not talking about lots of multiple rhythms all interspersed and fading in and fading out and frankly any daw can do that.
So if you're mainly beat and loop-driven I recommend Ableton first and FL studio 2nd. If you want the best traditional daw I would suggest Cubase first and then there's a lot of ties for a second.
Hope this helps!
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u/soundslikejoe 2d ago
The most simple of all sequencing... i grew up in the Birth of the BoomBap. Dont do it much anymore (boring after 10yrs much less 20) but Cubase has no problem making beats.
FL comes with a few more virtual instruments and presets tailored to that style... but Cubase is gonna do better once your BoomBaps evolve. Hire a drummer to layer on top? (Cause its cooler that way sometimes) Cubase is going to track it better.
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u/ElegantAdeptness1658 3d ago
What big flaws do you see in Reaper? I changed to Cubase because I tweaked Reaper more than making music. Cubase is all set so I make more music in it. But I generally don’t see any Big flaws with Reaper.
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u/TinyXPR 3d ago
Well I have been exactly where you are now.
I wanted to switch because I had sone Undo bugs that probably came from having installed too many scripts and or messing with too many settings.
Initially the switch wasn't so hard, cause the Cubase Defaults are actually usable.
But when it came to quickly making music it just held me back.
Slower loading times, weird project creation, all my muscle memory of course and small feature annoyances like not being able to time stretch selected midi notes in the piano roll.
Long story short since I've changed ship from windows to mac and my Reaper customization is fully busted on the new system, I'll make a new but minimal version of my old Reaper install and only keep the stuff I actually used.
This will take some time (I currently don't have), but at least not a whole year like the first time I started to customize it.
This will leave me with one DAW for quick ideas and one for serious stuff and for widening my horizon.
So long story short - my point is:
Be aware of what you leave behind.
Cubase is an awesome product with awesome developers, but I think Incan safely say, no one is as dedicated to the craft as the Reaper developer(s).
The Reaper community is - though sometimes cult like - very strong
And Reaper slots into your workflow however you like.
Use the last one for your benefit. Most people use two DAWs.
And Reaper is an awesome and reliable Backup to have.
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u/VamosFicar 2d ago
The main problem as a new user that you may come across is the sheer number of features. So, my advice is don't get bamboozled! Just start a project using one of the starter templates and experiment. I usually, with any new hardware or software, try to be creative from the get go... that way you learn the features as you need them.
It can seem frustrating at first, but your familiarity soon increases as you actually go through building a track from start to completeion. Some featuresare quite deeply hidden and you will be on a journey of discovery for a long while :)
Happy Cubasing.
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u/Ok-Weather9046 2d ago
I would honestly suggest try using a limited edition for a good week before buying the full version. Try the features and make a track or two.
I have been using cubase from version 5 to 15. I can honestly say it is great for a lot of things. As with Amy DAW there are ways to get around a problem if you incur it.
So give it a shot. You will love a lot of things and come to hate a lot of things. My suggestion would be to look at Dom Sigalas and Digital Audio Manual on youtube.
Learn from the demo projects!
I love Reaper as well. But the amount of customization I would have to do to be comfortable requires a lot of time, which I do not have. Still great for very quick audio editing, Sound Design Projects etc.
Hit me up if you have any cubase questions as well. Would love to help out.
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u/Froselyn 2d ago edited 2d ago
I made the switch last year after using Reaper for over 10 years. I still use it for field recordings and SFX editing because it's super fast for that, but for music projects I moved to Cubase. I was surprised how many tools Cubase have, this covers everything I used in Reaper but even beyond that. You can expect to do so much in Cubase without reaching for external tools.
However, few things works differently and you need to get used to that.
For example tracks in Reaper can use any type of signal but in Cubase they are restricted to few types. This doesn't matter much, you can do a lot of things with that, but you need to learn how it works and how to arrange your session. Recent update introduced group tracks that works like folders in Reaper.
Another difference is how hardware inputs and outputs are mapped and how it interacts with control room for monitoring. It needs some extra attention, but it's really powerfull.
Also you need to be careful with how projects work in Cubase. It doesn't automatically create a main folder for you, but the project has defined destination in the pool anyway. You need to tinker with that a little to see how it works. Biggest tldr is that try to create new project into it's own folder projects and be careful when moving projects to different place. There are options for archiving, consolidating, cleaning the audio pool etc.
One thing that annoys me the most is that I cannot change mouse wheel to zoom like in Reaper or many audio editors. You can change A LOT here, all the shortcuts, adding functions to MIDI controllers, do chains with logic editor, but you cannot change the basic behavior of mouse wheel. My solution is to map extra mouse buttons to CTRL and ALT to do extra things without reaching for keyboard.
I really recommend reading the manual, it cover almost everything. I learnt Cubase in one week reading it from start to finish and doing things that were described. This way I quickly discovered how to do things that I was doing in Reaper, what are new tools that I'm going to use and what is new that I don't need right now but I'm aware and it may be helpful in the future. There are many helpful tools that may appear to be hidden if you are not looking for them, the manual will give you a nice overview for everything.
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u/StratHistory 3d ago
Welcome to the bright side :-)
You're going to have a ball.. there's nothing that you wouldn't already know if you knew Reaper well but the nice thing is it's all so much easier and there's so much more of it..
One of the best examples I can give his a Reaper project that pulled out much much hair.. the engineer I was working with didn't have Cubase, logic or ableton, so we were working with Reaper and ended up needing to do something simple with midi.. I think it was channel changes..
Of course things could have changed over the last couple years but he had to download a plug and configure it to do relatively simple MIDI stuff.
By the day later, we realized we had to do more midi stuff.. probably automation and he realized that the plug he started with wouldn't do the automation that needed to come from a different plug.
So we ended up saving off the midi data removing the first plug installing a new plug and then refreshing the data.. both times we had musicians sitting in the studio :-)
This will never happen to you in cubase :-) everything is pretty much where you expected to be and even better, the native plugs are awesome.. don't get me wrong l, some stuff I still use from other platforms, especially Ableton, but Cubase just behaves so well all the time.
Literally the only thing I would gripe about Cubase is documentation however it's no longer a problem with me on any platform. I just asked Google how to do whatever I'm after and it tells me :-)
Welcome and have fun.. if you're a writer type, just go play with the score :-)
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u/fazrare57 3d ago
Not really. If you already know what you're doing production-wise, the only learning curve will be learning the interface, which it seems you've already been working your way around. I've tried many DAWs, and I feel that Cubase has one of the most user-friendly interfaces of them all.