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Fast, please help me! Studio One Pro 5.3 vs Cubase Pro 11

Which DAW is better for orchestral film scoring?

  • Studio One Pro 5.3

    Votes: 29 36.7%

  • Cubase Pro 11

    Votes: 50 63.3%
  • Total voters
    79
B

BenjaminFisch

New Member
Hello!
I'm currently on the search for a DAW and I'm undecided for which one I should go.

The price doesn't matter for me.

I do mainly film scoring and need a fast and reliable DAW.

I tried the demos of Studio One Pro 5.3 and Cubase Pro 11, but I still can't decide for which one I should go...

Please help! I will be very grateful! :)

Cheers
Ben
Click to read more...
 
I’m an hobby guy who loves studio one. That said, the consensus of all the threads I have read say go for cubase for film work at the present. Better evolved video tools. Also it is a standard and you will find tons of tutorials using cubase. I’m not trashing my daw (studio one) in any way. Im just relaying what I have read on this board and others.
 
Hello, I am in the same boat and I want to be able to score to film etc.

Cubase was very nice and you can find lots of people online to help but I found it crashed upon opening a project 90% of time on 11. Had to make a new project and import the old one to make it work. Even then I still feel the tug towards it. Maybe because I keep being influenced by all the posts that say it has superior midi tools and film tools.

I am currently using Studio One and I found with the new Sound Variations, I found it is really great. Only recently learned about saving instrument presets and assigning macros to add a Kontakt, Opus, BBCSO instance with a press of a button. I also find the midi tools seem pretty sufficient to me and I think adding tracks etc is super easy since its just instrument track or audio track, as opposed the various kinds that Cubase has available. It seems pretty quick to move around the UI for me.

I personally think the Macros make it a huge victory for Studio One. I found it easier to work with then say the logical editor for Cubase. I plan to use that video as a huge failure for my youtube channel.

On another note for Studio One, I found this guy use it for film scoring. He seems to do it quite well. I think the video thing is coming in a future update, whether its studio 5.5 or even a flagship update for 6, I am pretty sure it will come as most of the DAWs seem to have it now.



Studio One is much cheaper, no dongle, and I hope to install it on my future laptop and use BBC discover as a sketch tool when my wife forces me to get out of the house.
 
Studio One is a great DAW for music production, it's almost on par with many of the other more featured ones out there.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but in the video above, he locked the audio track from the movie from editing and being moved. Yet it still is affected by time stretching. Meaning the audio is no longer in sync with the movie any more.

I found this is an issue with SO right now, it's not easy to sync the music to the movie. Nor is the timeline that accurate with tempo, as you need to zoom right in to ensure the enlignment is correct.

Other DAWs such as DP, have various options for timestretching so that tempo changes don't affect your audio or midi unless you specify it. Which means if you are serious about scoring to picture, then right now SO for me is not in contention.

Perhaps check out other options, many of the DAWs including DP and SO have time limited demos where most of the features are available. Before committing it's advisable to download the demos and try out all the scenarios you intend to use them for to see which one works out best.
 
Al Maurice said:
Studio One is a great DAW for music production, it's almost on par with many of the other more featured ones out there.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but in the video above, he locked the audio track from the movie from editing and being moved. Yet it still is affected by time stretching. Meaning the audio is no longer in sync with the movie any more.

I found this is an issue with SO right now, it's not easy to sync the music to the movie. Nor is the timeline that accurate with tempo, as you need to zoom right in to ensure the enlignment is correct.

Other DAWs such as DP, have various options for timestretching so that tempo changes don't affect your audio or midi unless you specify it. Which means if you are serious about scoring to picture, then right now SO for me is not in contention.

Perhaps check out other options, many of the DAWs including DP and SO have time limited demos where most of the features are available. Before committing it's advisable to download the demos and try out all the scenarios you intend to use them for to see which one works out best.
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Oh, I had no idea. I am still newb. Well, listen to this guy then! Cubase has that sale on right now so may be worth it. And if you have any other DAW, then you could get the great crossgrade price!
 
If I can chime Back in and give props to studio one, it is really easy to use. It is also deep with features and options that I am still learning about years later. The time stretching problems can probably be handled in the deeper settings. You may want to go to the website and check out the manual to see how this is handled. Also plus one for the presets. a real time saver.
 
Thank you for the responses! I'm still completely torn between Cubase and Studio One. I tried both demos and found both to be good. So I'm sitting in the dark now, as I have no idea which I should go for. I like the workflow of Studio One, but I'm quite afraid of the CPU issues some pointed out and the missing video features, because I want to use modular templates for film scoring. In case of Cubase I like the stability, but the workflow is not so streamlined as Studio One. But also it's industry standard and some functions, Studio One is still missing. So I don't know in which I should invest for keeping it for the foreseeable future.
 
They're both good and I use both. Somethings are better on Cubase and some things are better in Studio one but none is a deal breaker either way. However, if you plan to do anything but stereo output (ambisonic, 5.1 Atmos) then choose Cubase because Studio One doesn't have an easy way to produce those. (as far as I know at least, someone else can chime in here if that's not correct.)
 
Well Cubase also has macros. It is not as nice as Studio One, but I made a test track preset of Kontakt and so I can essentially make it do the same thing as Studio One for those presets. I think there was search and hide functions etc as well.

It just doesnt look as nice as Studio one.

1626061176928.png
 
I can speak about Studio One. I was using Reaper for the past 8 months then I switched to Studio One 2 weeks ago and there's no going back to Reaper.

Studio One is super straightforward and its really versatile about dragging and dropping.
I've heard that Cubase runs on older code and hence which I why I avoided it.

Studio handling comping in a great way, it shows you all the takes and you can just highlight it accordingly and it will auto fade and its clevellr with colors.

Studio one runs with events, the audio files and midi pieces are called events. You just have to duplicate these using D and thats their philosophy.

The midi handling piano roll is not as good as fl studio which I've used years ago.

What I really like though is the dragging and dropping. You can just drag the vocal fx chain to the side and it saves. Import parts of other songs.
 
7-year Studio One user, 2-year Cubase user, 22-year software developer here (which really doesn't mean a thing). Cubase, hands down, because you said film scoring.

Studio One is still primarily a pop and EDM DAW but has made great strides to accommodate MIDI Orchestration and film scoring, but not quite yet. There are more and more using Studio One, but the SUPPORT for Cubase... the mega-ton of videos and forums and tutorials and articles out there pertaining to Cubase for film scoring makes it a no-brainer. Just a thought.

And as of v11 Pro, Steinberg has implemented Drag-n-Drop in a ton of places (FINALLY), enough to make this former Studio One snob fully switch to Cubase. It's still a little klunkier, Studio One wins for ease of use, but at the end of the day when you hit a snag and the deadline looms, you need to be able to get your answer QUICK with a search. Plus, when you watch Guy Michelmore vids, you'll be familiar with his screen! 🤣
 
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PaulieDC said:
And as of v11 Pro, Steinberg has implemented Drag-n-Drop in a ton of places (FINALLY), enough to make this former Studio One snob fully switch to Cubase. It's still a little klunkier, Studio One wins for ease of use, but at the end of the day when you hit a snag and the deadline looms, you need to be able to get your answer QUICK with a search. Plus, when you watch Guy Michelmore vids, you'll be familiar with his screen! 🤣
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I had no idea cubase 11 added the drag and drop feature as well. Just tested it on a demo. I wonder how many people are going to get sold from this thread...

I also love watching Guy Michelmore
 
BenjaminFisch said:
I still can't decide for which one I should go...
Click to expand...
I'm wondering about the same. Since I am eligible for the EDU discount and have Ableton Live 10 Suite, both Studio One as well as Cubase would cost roughly the same for me at the moment.

There are a lot of things I like about Studio One and which seem to be handled in a more "modern" way than in Cubase. Still, I would like to score some videos from time to time and Studio One still seems to be in its infancy with respect to that ...
 
One question for the experts (I've been trying to find this info on the internet): I know that I can have Markers or Hitpoints in Cubase that are locked to the picture and which I can later snap to the grid and the tempo will adjust accordingly. However, in these cases the tempo makes jumps and stays constant between the markers. Is it also possible to do that with a tempo ramp?
 
mussnig said:
I'm wondering about the same. Since I am eligible for the EDU discount and have Ableton Live 10 Suite, both Studio One as well as Cubase would cost roughly the same for me at the moment.

There are a lot of things I like about Studio One and which seem to be handled in a more "modern" way than in Cubase. Still, I would like to score some videos from time to time and Studio One still seems to be in its infancy with respect to that ...
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Yes, that is my same problem.

I think I will get Cubase for now, and eventually look at Studio One in the future.
 
I am playing around with the Studio One Demo for now. In principal you can lock markers to time/frames but then all of them are locked to time. However, you can have the parts of your arranger locked to beats/bars. It's not too bad.
Also, you can warp tempo according to your makers etc.
 
mussnig said:
I am playing around with the Studio One Demo for now. In principal you can lock markers to time/frames but then all of them are locked to time. However, you can have the parts of your arranger locked to beats/bars. It's not too bad.
Also, you can warp tempo according to your makers etc.
Click to expand...
You can work around this for now by adding as many unassiggned instrument tracks and and use events as markers.
 
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