As someone who skipped versions a few times in Sonar my experience of Cubase is similar; I keep having to read the manual.
 
Just seen their equivalent of StudioWare, anyone else here remember when we could create them? 
 
Only had it installed for a few days but have to say it looks good, just need to make some time to read the manual, watch videos and start using it properly.

sharke

Blogospherianman
My biggest complaint with Cubase Pro has to do with the quantizing function, specifically the swing %. With Swing at 0% the beat is straight, at 100% the beat is swung as a perfect quarter note eighth note pattern.... The problem is the lack of ability to Over-swing where the second note goes more than 2/3 of the way to one following. This is used primarily for Jazz ride cymbals and also for EDM. In Sonar, 50% swing represents Straight eighths, 66% is a perfect swing (same as cubase 100%), going up towards 100% in Sonar will actually get the second note all the way up to the third note, as Over-swung as you want. (Try 68%-70 swing on a jazz swing song and see what I mean) In Sonar, values below 50% will under swing, giving a slight rushing of the second note. I have used over- swinging and underswinging on countless songs and find that function very valuable. Go figure the first beat I put down in Cubase Pro was a shuffle and I was saddened to not be able to over swing it!! 😞

My second biggest complaint is seeing quite a few of my 64 bit plugins blacklisted in the plugin manager and not letting me restore them.

That's just my first impressions. I need a program the Really Swings!!

Really appreciating what I have in Sonar! (keeping hope!)

 
Now admittedly I'm tired and not that bright to begin with and therefore I'm probably talking through my hat, but wouldn't a viable workaround to be to reverse the clip, apply the "mirror image" of the swing amount you want, and then reverse it back? 

Hey, that sounds like a great idea! I don't know if it will work, mind you, but good idea...

That would work on the under swung (negative swing that is) down to about what cakewalk quantize swing would be set at 34%. It wouldn't help in the case of over-swinging. I have since come up with an ok workaround though. I can make a two bar clip of eighth or sixteenth notes (dependeing on which value I want swung) in sonar, then quantize multiple versions of those clips to varying degrees of swing (1%-100%), then import the different clips into Cubase and drag them into the quantize and use the clip(s) to make a groove quantize, which can then be saved into the quantize presets for later use.

Appreciate ya chiming in Sharke with a very good idea though! I will use that sometime for the negative swing! 👍😄

sharke
Don't forget Groove3 as well - I've not looked at their Cubase tutorials but the ones I've watched have always been excellent. 

MacProVideo has some nice starter tutorials too. Granted - They are for version 9.0 and older, but they are still very usable. Steinberg has it's own Cubase YouTube channel too.
 
Take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQBdibdDxH2ngu3kNPYOEA/playlists
 
And for a little demonstration what you can do even with Cubase Elements (using the standard plugin stuff that's in Elements), this is an entertaining (so don't take it that seriously) simple song build.
Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQyrrWyy57E&index=1&list=PLeAGmrQnjblaWk9pjSNmSbB5uc3r_T-bG
 
All in all some nice stuff...

Cat Cave
Audio and midi setup was a walk in the park. Plug 'n' play sort of.

 
Huh.  I was a bit intimidated by the VST Connections panel (partly because I didn't understand what "VST" had to do with my sound card).  It made me uncomfortable to think I didn't know what was going on.  That said, like yourself, I got basic audio working without too much thought.  But, I didn't really understand the VST Connections panel until I went back a few weeks later and setup the Control Room.  Again, this was a little intimidating because it dove even deeper into the VST Connections panel and required that I permanently earmark hardware ports to various functions (and redo what I had initially setup).  It took some reading and YouTube videos, but it's working nicely now and I understand it.  As I said initially, the Control Room is one of my favorite features - great if you have multiple speaker configs, headphone outs, etc.
 

ooblecaboodle
I always thought Sonar's handling of audio takes was the dumbest thing ever. The occurrences of me wanting clips piled on top of each other to play at the same time are vanishingly rare, and it always caused much time wasting when copy/pasting or dragging a clip to somewhere else, where I had to go in and remove the underlying pre-existing audio after. Add that to it's awful xfade editing, and it was a complete chore to edit audio. It didn't really matter what you set your drag and drop options to, there were always occasions when it did something you didn't want. Track lanes were just horribly broken.

 
That's interesting.  I typically loop-record takes with a half measure before and after, so the clips can begin and end naturally and can be copy/pasted without worrying about crossfades (usually).  Sometimes, I'll have to add a fade-in or fade-out to a clip, but then it's done - no need to worry about crossfades when I replicate the clip throughout the song.  Cubase cripples this workflow.  Fortunately, Cubase allows users to store custom crossfades, so it's only a few extra clicks to apply my 'no crossfade' crossfade to clips.
 
Ideally, we could choose the behavior in Preferences.
 

ooblecaboodle
Also, a BIG show-stopping issue for me...
How easy is it to export individual audio files from start to finish, for each track? Sonar does this magnificently, some other DAWs seem to believe they exist in their own little world where nobody using any other software will ever collaborate with its users. Project (or at least project data, including rendering softsyths) interchange is an absolute must for me.

Recording stems (wet) is pretty easy to do and is part of my routine archival strategy too.  Here's the steps:

1. Cubase > File > Export > Audio Mixdown…
2. Enable Channel Batch Export (checkbox)
3. Select all audio channels, group channels, fx channels, and any active output channels you want to render
4. Press the Naming Scheme... button to automate naming of your rendered files.  Naming Schemes can be saved and recalled.

Cubase's export options are a bit more robust than Sonar's.  In addition to all the file formatting options, you can downmix and split channels.  If you haven't recorded all of your outboard MIDI instruments to audio tracks yet, you can enable Real-Time Export and get the equivalent result.
 
I seem to recall Sonar offering the option to export tracks dry.  Unfortunately, I don't see this option in Cubase.
 
Another thing that might help you exchange projects with other studios is Cubase's Track Archives.  I forget the standard these are based on, but these XML files come close to a universal DAW import/export file format.  How many DAWs read them?  I don't know.  There's a chart somewhere.  The files contain pretty much everything you would expect from a proprietary channel import/export format - fader settings, EQ settings, plugins, sends, colors, etc.  Might be better than stems.
 

bartveld
I've spent a week now methodically reading the 1000+ page manual, trying out many things I read. Meanwhile I set up a few projects....

Kudos to you!  Perhaps if I had tried this approach, my initiation would've been easier.  Well, "easier."
 

Mitch_I
I've ordered The Complete Guide to Music Technology Using Cubase 9 from lulu.com.

 
Wait, what?  There's a Cubase 9 book?!
 
Thank you!

After being baffled at first after installing the Cubase demo, I'm beginning to like it. 
 
One question, however: Can anyone tell me whether Cubase has a n "Event Filter" feature to Sonar's? I've seen the Event List, which is great, but I really love the Event Filter as a way to make universal changes to a MIDI track (such as replacing all occurrences of a note with another, a boon for rhythm track editing). I know you can do similar things in the piano roll view, but I really like Sonar's search and replace feature much better. 
 
Does anyone know whether Cubase does this? I've looked everywhere on their help site for "Event Filter" but all it seems to say is that this feature just determines what will be shown on a particular Event view. 
 
Thanks!

Resort Records

ooblecaboodle
I always thought Sonar's handling of audio takes was the dumbest thing ever. The occurrences of me wanting clips piled on top of each other to play at the same time are vanishingly rare, and it always caused much time wasting when copy/pasting or dragging a clip to somewhere else, where I had to go in and remove the underlying pre-existing audio after. Add that to it's awful xfade editing, and it was a complete chore to edit audio...

 
That's interesting.  I typically loop-record takes with a half measure before and after, so the clips can begin and end naturally and can be copy/pasted without worrying about crossfades (usually).  Sometimes, I'll have to add a fade-in or fade-out to a clip, but then it's done - no need to worry about crossfades when I replicate the clip throughout the song.  Cubase cripples this workflow.  Fortunately, Cubase allows users to store custom crossfades, so it's only a few extra clicks to apply my 'no crossfade' crossfade to clips.

I take issue with the audio editing in Sonar, and your solution is (as I understand it) to not bother. It's worth bearing in mind that it's highly unlikely that any clip will begin at a zero crossing, so some kind of pop or click is inevitable, unless your DAW is doing "something" that you didn't tell it to do, to your audio clips.
As for recording half a bar in/out, what about the little fret noises, breathing, people clearing their throat and so on that happen before a take? You can't just leave it there, it needs to be edited, to be cleaned up.
 

Also, a BIG show-stopping issue for me...
How easy is it to export individual audio files from start to finish, for each track? Sonar does this magnificently, some other DAWs seem to believe they exist in their own little world where nobody using any other software will ever collaborate with its users. Project (or at least project data, including rendering softsyths) interchange is an absolute must for me.

I seem to recall Sonar offering the option to export tracks dry.  Unfortunately, I don't see this option in Cubase.
 

Then that's a big no-no. I need to be able to give out raw multitracks, and expect to receive raw multitracks. Extra steps such as removing all plugins and so forth just isn't tolerable. I'm not wasting my client's time, or mine, with unecessary extra steps.
 
So, Cubase isn't an option. Nevermind, still plenty to go.

Mitch_I

bartveld
I've spent a week now methodically reading the 1000+ page manual, trying out many things I read. Meanwhile I set up a few projects,

I think that's a great method. The trouble is that the Cubase operation manual is long on description and short on procedures. To fill this gap, I've ordered The Complete Guide to Music Technology Using Cubase 9 from lulu.com.

Short on procedure, that's true. But at least it gives you some pointers and I find that figuring things out myself (and not slavishly following a description of a procedure) usually makes it stick better in memory.

"Then that's a big no-no. I need to be able to give out raw multitracks, and expect to receive raw multitracks."

 
Remarks please, Steinberg is not like Cakewalk, there you can found more different specialised Software Modules.
 
If you work longer with Cubase, then you can handle alone within your Homestudio, or then with very good Companions like WaveLab (  .raw files with different PCM supported https://steinberg.help/wa...ed_file_formats_c.html ).  Both Software works together ease (see this youtube demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15rmxGg9rxo&list=PLKgGKF-FSsJ_H-HEYgHJLnbovOoU226mz
 
You can also found for Gaming or Orchestral Surround Design etc. compatible big Brother of Cubase named Nuendo. 
 
you can found interesting DAW comparison Tables (Dec. 2016) there on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_digital_audio_editors
 

raisindot
One question, however: Can anyone tell me whether Cubase has a n "Event Filter" feature to Sonar's? I've seen the Event List, which is great, but I really love the Event Filter as a way to make universal changes to a MIDI track (such as replacing all occurrences of a note with another, a boon for rhythm track editing). I know you can do similar things in the piano roll view, but I really like Sonar's search and replace feature much better. 
 
Does anyone know whether Cubase does this? I've looked everywhere on their help site for "Event Filter" but all it seems to say is that this feature just determines what will be shown on a particular Event view. 

 
This is a nice example of the documentation troubles I described in my original post.  Yes, Cubase can do this.  The keyword you're looking for is "logical editor."
 
To complicate things, there's two living versions of the Logical Editor and, of course, they're named differently.  The Logical Editor runs as a function, filtering and transposing data as you describe - it's the closest thing to CAL scripting Cubase offers.  The Input Transformer, on the other hand, is pretty much an identical tool but runs in real-time as a MIDI Insert.  Consequently, it's not covered in the main Operation Manual - you'll only find it mentioned in the Plug-In Reference.  Intuitive, right?
 
Now that you know the keywords to look for, you can get  more help - you'll need it - in the docs, forums, and on YouTube.  Good luck and have fun!
 

ooblecaboodle
I take issue with the audio editing in Sonar, and your solution is (as I understand it) to not bother. It's worth bearing in mind that it's highly unlikely that any clip will begin at a zero crossing, so some kind of pop or click is inevitable, unless your DAW is doing "something" that you didn't tell it to do, to your audio clips.
As for recording half a bar in/out, what about the little fret noises, breathing, people clearing their throat and so on that happen before a take? You can't just leave it there, it needs to be edited, to be cleaned up.

 
That's why I mentioned sometimes adding fade-ins and fade-outs.  I only say "sometimes" because I don't always worry about it before the mixing phase.  Then, to be clear, I pretty much always clean up the tops and tails (and this is where having linked clips is a real time-saver).  Removing the noises you describe is part of it.
 
Sorry if I was unclear.  I guess the point is that my workflow involves cleaning up clips so they can be duplicated and overlap at the tips/tails without concern for crossfades.  Otherwise, no, I have no need for stacked clips playing en masse either.  If I end up using multiple takes, the double always goes to another track.
 

ooblecaboodle
Then that's a big no-no. I need to be able to give out raw multitracks, and expect to receive raw multitracks. Extra steps such as removing all plugins and so forth just isn't tolerable. I'm not wasting my client's time, or mine, with unecessary extra steps.

I can understand that.  It's a feature I'd like as well (but for archiving), so I've posted a question on the Steinberg forums and will let you know if the results are positive.
 
And don't forget Track Archives.  If I were collaborating with someone, I'd prefer them over dry stems because it conveys all of the track(s)' minutia, including plugins.  It's supposed to be based on an open standard but, I'll admit, I have my doubts when it comes to trouble-free file exchange between applications.  I wouldn't trust it until I tested it thoroughly.