Head to Head: Cubase SX vs Digi 001

[Cold Truth]

ok.... my mpc has sold and i will be recieving my money this weekend and my pc soon after. i am still selling a tr rack and proteus 2000, and as soon as these to pieces sell, i will be purchasing the major software for it, and after a lot of websurfing on the two, i am still caught between cubase sx and pro tools on the digi 001.

on ebay i can get the digi 001 for around $600, which is the cost of cubase sx. occasionally i have found cubase sx for about $450, but i am not completely trusting of that. (no,it isnt the academic/senior version)

the digi 001 gives me the sound card and 8 inputs to record guitars, live bass, vocals, hardware gear, whatever, along with the protools software. after buying cubase sx, i will still need to purchase a soundcard which wouldnt have the input abilites for future hardware that the digi 001 has......

but cubase seems to be more midi friendly, because the RTAS plugin format doesnt seem to have a whole lot of support, instrument wise. it does support sampletank, which i will purchase regardless of which software i buy, but cubase seems to just have more options.

now, the other thing i have been thinking about is getting the cubase Studio Box, which gives you the "lite" versions of cubase sx and the virtual guitar, grand piano, halion, d'cota and virtual drummer olug ins for $300. this looks pretty good to familiarize myself with before buying a bunch of stuff. stienberg is offering discounts for the full upgrades to each of the included plugins as well as to the full Cubase Sx, so that would be relatively cheap to do.

so, the logical thing to me seems to be to purchase both the digi 001 and the cubase Studio Box, and then have the best of both worlds, but i do not know wether the digi 001 box will work with cubase as the soundcard/audio/midi interface.

would these two work well together? couldnt i transport data from one to the other, or at least sync the two? i would appriciate some feedback n this. i know i have similar threads up, and if you guys would like to merge them with one of the other ones thats fine....

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

I think that the 001 will work with Cubase, but only as a 2 in/2 out interface, the other 6 ins and outs can only be addressed by PT. And you'll be stuck with the crappy MME drivers with 500ms latency, your softsynths will be basically useless.

If you can get ASIO drivers for the 001, please correct me.

Why exactly are you so keen on the digi001? Do you REALLY REALLY need all the ins and outs? Are you recording bands? Recording stuff from multiple synths? Have you listened to the converters and compared them to those of other cards? Is it still supported by Digidesign?

And why the HELL would you want to sync stuff between two programs (PT and SX) when you could get the job done with one program (SX)?

It sounds like you're going to be going down the softsynth/MIDI route, if this is the case then Cubase is by far the winner...what does the PT software offer that Cubase doesn't?

As for the Studio Box, it seems like a great way to get started, it offers a little bit of everything in one package to get you started with upgrade paths if you feel the need.

Take care,

Nick

 

[Cold Truth]

hey, calm down mister......! lol, just messing around. yeah, i am pretty keen on the ins and outs, because do i plan on recording a lot of live instruments, .... but i could alwayd get an aardvark q10 for that.... the reason why i was caonsidering the both of them was because i can get the q10 for about the same price as pro tools, so it made more sense ON THE SURFACE to go with the one that had pro tools! well, i wouldnt REALLY want to sync up to applications when i could do it with one...

i guess i am just convinced of the Pro Tools hype.... and the box is pretty attractive! anyhow i will likely get the studio case and a sampletank/sonic synth bundle from IK, and gp from there.

 

[vitaminman]

Truth,

I'm sorry about coming on so strongly like that, please believe me when I say that it wasn't intentional

The Q10 is a very nice card, all those preamps right on the front of the interface...

It's true that a Q10/Cubase combo is more expensive than the digi001 setup, but look at what you're getting:

1. An awesome audio sequencer and editor that supports a buttload of effects and softsynths.
2. A super powerful MIDI sequencer.
3. A great card with all those preamps...I would argue that the sonic quality of the Q10 is better than that of the 001 based on the specs and reviews. The 001 however comes with an ADAT port which the Q10 doesn't have.
4. You can use the Q10 to its full capacity with just about any software out there, the 001 will only work with PTLE at its full capacity (unless I'm mistaken).

It's my opinion that Pro Tools is a 'religion', I've heard some of the CRAZIEST things from people who support it:

1. "Audio run through PT has that 'Digidesign sound'".

What?!? It's just 0's and 1's...I don't see how making a splice edit in PT can sound any better than a splice edit in any other program. Their higher end cards I'm sure sound amazing, like the HD-192, but it costs an awful lot of money, a lot more than the 001.

2. "PT has the world's most intuitive interface..."

Yet, to be considered for professional work you often have to be certified by Digidesign to run it! If it's so intuitive, why do you need certification?

3. "Recording audio in PT is designed to run just like a real analogue mixer."

I spent about 2% of my time recording audio, and the other 98% editing it. Other programs are designed like hardware mixers as well...

4. "If you need MIDI, you can run Logic".

How about if I need MIDI, I use a program that does MIDI and audio? And Logic isn't cheap either...

4. "You need Pro Tools to get any professional recordings done."

I've had several commercial releases on both vinyl and cd in America, England and France that have been broadcast in nightclubs, radio stations, cable and satellite radio...all of them done in Cubase. There are surely others here at Illmuzik who have similar experiences. We get by without Pro Tools, thank you very much.


I'm not saying that PT is a BAD system by any means, I'm sure that it is as awesome as people say it is...it's just that a lot of their users have absolutely no clue about other products out there which match and surpass many of the features in PT and are a fraction of the cost.

At NAMM last year Syntrillium's booth was right next to Digidesign's, we had to sit through them completely drowning out everyone with their Pro Tools sermons. They were showing off things like the Native Instruments plugins, surround sound, monitoring with VU meters, and their new HD series interfaces... Most of that stuff we've seen in programs like Cubase, Sonar/Cakewalk, Logic, etc. for a few years now, the Digidesign people were talking about it like it was some great new thing they had just invented....the crowd sucked it right up and prepared to fork out $20,000 on new systems.

I will say this about Digidesign: they had some FINE girls working their booth.


Take care,

Nick

 

[Cold Truth]

yeah, it does seem like digidesign/pro tools is the Triton/MPC of the recording side of things.... in other words, the company and the consumers that buy them have convinced a lot of people that this particular product is the ONLY way to go.....

me and my friend wound up trading our xp 30 for a triton le because we heard and read all the hype about it.... and i would take the xp in a heartbeat now. it looks like the same situation with pro tools and cubase...

anyhow, it turns out that cubase se is actually a smaller SL, not a smaller sx.... and it says things like...

*only 8 simultaneoyus outputs
*only 2 midi insert plug ins
*5 audio insert plugins
*1 mixer, 8 send effects
*no auto crossfade, no logical editor, no project browser, only one automation track available at a time, and no window layouts.....

sooooo.... that being said, what does this mean, exactly? will these hinder me somehow? whats the deal with the 8 outputs? does that mean that there are only 8 softsynths available for recording at one time? oi am completely new to the sofware realm, so if you could shed some light on this...... does it make more sense to just go with the full cubase sx from the start? i do plan on getting sampletank, regardless of the version i get.... or would the se version be sufficient for a while?

 

[vitaminman]

Hey,

If you don't know what you're missing, their absence won't hinder you!

I have yet to see the specs of SE, but I'll take a stab:

1. 8 simultaneous outputs: I think this means that you can send audio tracks to only 8 physical outputs. Some soundcards have 16 or more outputs...if you have one of these, you can only use 8 of them at a time.

2. 2 MIDI plugins: SX has a bunch of 'plugins' for MIDI, like delay, requantising, filtering, transposing...you can only use 2 of them, in SX I think you can use as many as you want. I never use mine because I prefer to manually program everything, but some are pretty cool for doing things with MIDI which you wouldn't think of by yourself.

3. 5 audio insterts: I think in SX you can have up to 8.

4. 1 mixer, 8 send effects. I think in SX you can have 8...as for multiple mixers, mine only has 1 as well, as far as I know.

5. Auto crossfade...this means that if you have audio tracks overlapping, you will have to manually draw volume envelopes instead of the program doing it for you.

Logical editor: this is used to do complex selecting and manipulating of MIDI events. I love the logical editor's presets in SX, you can do stuff like select only the notes which fall on up beats with a velocity value between 90 and 127, then transpose them 5 steps...you can do this stuff manually, but the logical editor makes it easier.

Project browser: this is a window which shows all the media files you have in your song, their properties and where they're located on your hard drive.

Only one automation track? I remember when you didn't have any automation tracks! Automation tracks are cool, you can 'draw' effect and eq parameters directly on the waveform, like you can in Pro Tools. automation tracks were one of the many cool features in SX, it's a shame they only give you one in SE.

Windows layouts make working with your song a lot easier. Let's say that when you work in the main arrange window, you like to have your mixer off to the right, send rack on the bottom, and a soft synth off to the left...you can save this 'scene' as a layout and assign a keyboard shortcut to it, so that whenever you want to recall the way those windows are positioned on your screen, you simply hit the shortcut key.

SE has a lot more features than the first version of Cubase I used, 3.5...at the time it was an amazing program, we all did just fine with it.

Take care,

Nick

 

[Cold Truth]

ok. question, what do i need an output for? why would i do that? wouldnt everything be done, i.e., recorded, mixed, burning, all within the computer? so whatgood would haveing any output do me?