Cubase 5 - Variaudio

[Chinagraf]

I was a logic user but jumped ship when they went Mac only. I've used Cubase since then for all my editing and writing. I upgraded to 5 a while back but only just started playing with Variaudio today which is their native pitch correction like Melodyne. I've used Melodyne since it came out and love it, but Variaudio is givin me wood. It has none of the funny artifacts, or the tearing sort of sound you get on S's with MD. No re-wiring or patching plugins, you just double click the clip and you're in. It won't replace MD for, as there are some things I think MD can do that VA can't. It's monophonic, so you can't build harmonies the way you can in MD Studio. I also find some of the pitch modulation/curve editing a lot easier in MD, and I actually like the artifacts from MD as an effect, it almost sounds like a vocoder when you pitch things up beyond the range of a human voice. But, for pitch correction within a tone or 2 either side it is a real winner. It also sounds great. It's not quite as intuitive to use, I had to reach for the manual more often than I did when I first got MD, but if anyone is thinking of upgrading it is worth it for this feature alone.
I have no affiliation with Steinberg or their associates, although I do like cookies..

[Jason]

I was thinking of buying cubase for the first time. I have some clients with half finished projects in this format and no way of converting them across.

Does Cubase 5 run ok? Are there any wierd problems with it? How hard is it to learn the program? I currently use Reaper, Protools 8 & Wavelab 5

Cheers

Jason

[Chinagraf]

Hi, I haven't been able to crash it yet. Having said that I run 3 UAD dsp cards and a lot of outboard, so that takes some of the strain off. I'm on a quad core 6600 with 4 gig ram, xp pro. I'm running 32 bit OS and have no desire to go 64 at this point.
I also work at 48K 24 bit. 32 bit audio causes issues (distortion) when I export an OMF2 to take into one of our Fairlight rooms.

I have seen people saying their's crashes over on cubase.net etc. I still think a lot of issues come from people running cracked or dodgy plugs. I hear all sorts of stories but I have all legally bought plugins and have never had a problem.
Rewire works without a glitch. I rewire Reason, Halion and Melodyne into the same project no worries. It now has a native IR verb called Reverance which sounds nice and imports wavs as impulses. You can get totally wacky by importing actual sounds, like a guitar chord then using that as the impulse instead of reverb. Loop masher is another new thing, a bit like a glitcher. I haven't mastered that one yet.

As far as it being difficult to learn, I don't think it is. Nowdays most of the major DAW's look and function pretty similarly. There is one thing on PT I wish cubase had which is the multi out. ie assign one track out multiple outs at the same time. I get around this with a mult on my patchbay, or sometimes sends off a group channel, but it's the one thing I wish it had.
Version 5 now has playlists, which is cool but they call it something else. If you are coming from Reaper it is pretty different, but I find Reaper slow and cumbersome in the way it works. I truly admire Justin's philanthropism, but from my experience with it it has a long way to go. There's a heap of videos on the Steinberg site and also cubase.net is worth spending a bit of time reading on first. If you have any feature specific questions ask away and I'll try to answer..

[Jason]

Thanks Andy. I will have to give it a go.

Cheers

[heathen]

Cubase is a great program, though so is Reaper, I actually prefer the way reaper runs but the midi capabilities are so far behind cubase.

Cubase just brings everything together so well, for my workflow anyway.

[Chinagraf]

The VST3 sidechaining in CB5 is awesome. Great for ducking vocal fx etc, you can patch anything to it. And they fixed it so you can now patch fx up their own @sses which I like to do.

[heathen]

The VST3 sidechaining in CB5 is awesome. Great for ducking vocal fx etc, you can patch anything to it. And they fixed it so you can now patch fx up their own @sses which I like to do.

Sounds great, about time too because that will be very handy, can't wait to get my system up and running again, will buy v5 for sure now.