Sonar Alternatives: Cubase

Gibson's news will have many Sonar users shopping for alternative DAWs, whether sooner or later.  I hope every user with professional experience on other DAWs will share their recommendations.  I'll begin with Cubase.  I encourage anyone with Cubase experience to augment my list of pros and cons below.  And if you have experience with another DAW, I hope you'll launch a similar discussion in its own thread.

For perspective, I'm a lifetime Sonar subscriber who's used it since Cakewalk Pro Audio.  Nonetheless, I jumped to Cubase Pro a year ago as I began working heavily in surround.  [Sonar wouldn't load Altiverb XL, for starters.]  After some research, I chose Cubase over the rest for its robust MIDI implementation, including full support for poly AT and release velocity.  I have used Cubase Pro 8.5 and 9.  Some of the features I mention will be available in Cubase Pro but not lesser versions.

The Good:

• Strong MIDI support.  Cubase began as a MIDI sequencer in the 80s and, consequently, has thorough MIDI support.  If you're old-school, like me, with racks of vintage hardware synths, Cubase is a strong option.  The MIDI Editor is feature-rich and reliable.  Unlike Sonar, it supports polyphonic aftertouch and release velocity.  The program also features many MIDI "inserts" that can generate LFOs, arpeggios, patterns, etc.  I find them useful and inspiring.  And a lot of fun.  Mine is a fair sized rig, with three MOTO MIDI Timepiece AV interfaces (24 total MIDI ins and outs).  Setting up MIDI devices that aren't pre-defined by Steinberg is a chore but I've otherwise had no real problems between Cubase and my rig.  It's reliable.
• Reliable automation.  In my experience, Cubase's automation curves are easier to manage and more reliable than Sonar's.  As of Cubase 9.5 (released just a week ago), automation now supports bezier curves - a long-requested feature.
• Control Room.  The Control Room affords convenient monitor switching and cue management as would be found on a traditional mixing console.  If you're in a professional studio environment, you might really like this.
• Feature rich.  Many features you'd pay extra for in other DAWs (e.g., pitch correction, beat slicing, sample editing) are built into Cubase Pro.  And, to be clear, these are fully functional and integrated features - not afterthoughts or LE versions of third-party tools.  I was expecting these features to be mere gimmicks, compared to Melodyne, for example, but have used the tempo matching feature quite a bit now and have no complaints.  The results are absolutely professional.
• Excellent multi-monitor support.  I've got three ultra-wide monitors and Cubase does a nice job of putting what I want where I want it and remembering it.
• Excellent control surface support.  I'm using an Avid Artist Transport and Artist Control.  Integration is intuitive and seamless.  Unfortunately, my experience with a Mackie Control and C4 were no better than on Sonar.  In particular, the C4 has virtually no support in either DAW.
• Good surround support.
• Reliability.  In a year, I've experienced one or two outright crashes.  With auto backups enabled, I've only lost a few minutes of work.  On Windows 10 64-bit, it's pretty reliable.  If memory serves, I had quite a bit more crashes in Sonar, though it's unclear how many were recent vs. ten years ago, for example.
• Live video chats.  There's little mention (and broken links) of these on Steinberg's website, but once you find them on YouTube, Greg Ondo's bi-weekly video chats are a good educational resource.  So far, I've asked a half-dozen questions and received immediate answers to all but one of them.  When I emailed him, he emailed me the answer back the same day.  These are archived on YouTube.  Coincidentally, last week's chat was titled "Cubase Migration from Another DAW."  I only stuck around for the first 15 minutes and saw no discussion of the lead topic, but you might want to check it out.
• Lots more.  There's a ton of additional features I simply haven't used.  The program is deep.  I hope other Cubase users will mention their favorites below.

The Bad:

• Steinberg isn't a big fan of UI standards.  In some cases, the ingenuity improves efficiency.  In others, you'll be hard pressed to figure out a feature without a trip to the discussion forums.  As a new user, I found the interface quite aggravating.  [Maybe I'm just getting too old for "change."]  Locating a feature in the menus or buried in the various button bars, etc., is a hurdle.  Furthermore, as if the developers are still using single-screen 4:3 setups, many UI elements are quite small, in an apparent effort to squeeze as much of everything in as possible.  The result is buttons and sliders that are difficult to click without focused effort.
• Cubase's MixConsole is flexible but pretty ugly when compared to Sonar's elegant Console View.
• Simple tasks are sometimes unnecessarily complex.  On the bright side, I haven't found any brick walls in Cubase - anything critical I've needed to do, I've eventually found a solution for.  [There's often multiple ways to achieve the same result (for better and worse).]  In this regard, it's a professional-grade tool.  But, as stated above (and below), finding the solution often involves a scavenger hunt.
  
  • Take Kontakt for example:  Sonar can route all outputs from a Kontakt instrument (e.g., drum kit) to individual channels without any special effort and regardless of Kontakt's default output config.  It's automatic.  Cubase, on the other hand, cannot add/remove VST outputs on the fly when you change instruments and, if your Kontakt instrument contains a combination of mono and stereo outs, it will require dozens of hidden audio channels to route, pan, and combine the Kontakt outputs to the desired layout of audio channels.  Once you get it right, be sure to save your tracks to a "Track Archive" for easy recall.
  • Here's another example:  Audio takes.  By default, overlapping audio takes in a single Cubase track mask previous takes.  By contrast, Sonar will play overlapping takes.  To correct this in Cubase, one must draw crossfades on each take.  This is tedious.  If you're already in the habit of trimming/fading the tops and tails of your takes so they'll blend seamlessly wherever you put them, it's a huge nuissance.
• The 1,300-page Operation Manual reads like a patent application.  "Component A contains a Switch (B) with three positions...."  In other words, it's a lot of dry feature lists without much discussion of application or theory.  Searching the docs for desired features will often return no results unless you hit upon the proper keywords.  Furthermore, some features are implemented as "plug-ins" and relegated to a separate manual altogether.  Unfortunately, third-party Cubase books dried up a few years ago.  [CORRECTION:  See "The Complete Guide to Music Technology Using Cubase 9."]  For example, the latest "Power!" book covers Cubase 6.  [Still, it has quite a bit of relevant info, just FYI.]  On the other hand, Lynda.com has some courses that are current and quite useful - I strongly recommend them.  You can get to Lynda.com freely with a public library card in many cases.  Otherwise, a one-month membership is cheap.  Also, YouTube is full of Cubase videos, FWIW.
• The Steinberg forums don't hold a Christmas candle to Cakewalk's.  In the Cakewalk forums, discussions are typically productive and respectful.  By contrast, Steinberg's forums have too many fanboys and too little oversight.  Commonly, your thoughtfully worded questions will be sabotaged by dopes with no interest in helping you.  In fact, I've become so frustrated with the knee-jerk "it's not Cubase - it's you" responses, that I've taken to adding video demonstrations to my posts.  Amazingly, I still get responses from folks who clearly didn't pay any attention to what was said or shown.  To be fair, it's an active community - you will get prompt responses - and I've received a lot of good help there.
• Until Cubase 9.5, I haven't seen much evidence that Steinberg reads their forums.  The forums are littered with unresolved discussions that repeat year after year.  With 9.5 several highly-visible discussions were addressed, including a few I was personally involved in.  So, things might be looking up.
• No CAL.  To its credit, Cubase supports an enormous list of keyboard shortcuts and user-defined macros.  However, it lacks a versatile programming language.  The Transformer can do some things programmatically, but it's quite limited and documentation is poor.  Prepare to invest lots of time in trial-and-error.
• No Surround Bridge.  Most of you won't care, but Sonar's Surround Bridge allows users to operate multiple instances of stereo plugins as a virtual surround plugin.  Very powerful and cost-effective.  No such thing exists in Cubase.
• In my experience, Cubase upgrades aren't reliable.  Expect to see your preferences wiped clean from one version to the next.  This is a well-documented bug that has gone unfixed for years and affects some but not all users.
• File management.  Cubase leaves files on your hard drive, even if you've deleted the clips from your project.  There is no preference setting to change this.  Once you've finished your overdubs and topped and tailed your clips, you'll want to delete the trimmings via Cubase's dedicated Media Pool to free up the disk space.  I'm not aware of any tools to perform such clean up duties en masse, so you'll have to do this per project.
• No MIDI VST support.  For everything your DAW can't do with MIDI natively, there are many plug-ins that will.  Unfortunately, Cubase's MIDI Inserts only support Steinberg's proprietary modules.  [CORRECTION:  Cubase's MIDI Inserts only support VST-MA formatted plug-ins.  While the VST-MA format isn't proprietary, only a fraction of the freely and commercially available MIDI VST plugins currently support it.]
• Other quirks.  I am constantly discovering little quirks in Cubase - too many to list here.  These aren't deal-breakers and can usually be worked around but it's frustrating and sloppy.  It has the feel of a product that was released too soon.  The company and its software would benefit from some quality management, IMHO.  This is evident in its other products too - I also use WaveLab.  [Again, it's a useful tool, but talk about a bizarre UI!]
  
  • Here's an example:  Cubase's Auto LFO MIDI Insert is a useful tool for generating LFOs to CCs, but they cycle every 239 ticks per beat rather than 240.  Huh?!  Consequently, if you're modulating a filter on your synth, it'll slowly go out of sync with your project.  This might not be bad with a subtle sine wave, but a square wave that's supposed to follow the beat?  Nope.  The workaround is to record a cycle of the MIDI data and, as necessary, nudge things into place after the fact.  Copy.  Paste.  Grrrr.  The point is, you'll find minor aggravations like this throughout Cubase.
• When installing Cubase and prompted to install the "Generic ASIO Driver," don't (unless you're certain you need it).  This can mess up audio in other programs - particularly Sonar - and is difficult to remove, requiring manual edits to your Windows registry.  [CORRECTION:  It can also be disabled rather than uninstalled.  It's a workaround that requires manually renaming some files (and restoring them during Cubase updates or you might see problems).  I haven't done it and don't know the details but, for most users, this will be preferable to editing the registry.]

To summarize, it's worth repeating:  I have yet to discover any brick wall limitations - any "deal breakers" - in Cubase.  Lots of quirks.  Quirks that should've been ironed out many versions ago.  It's slow to learn - you will scream.  But, after a few months of hands-on learning, I'm back to the grind and getting serious work done.  The key, in my experience, is to figure out what works for your routine and automate the drudgery out of it, either through templates or Track Archives, for example.
 
I hope this is helpful.
 

Good info, thanks!

tenfoot
One of my concerns with Cubase is that it may suffer the same legacy of decades of layered code, updates and convoluted behaviour that plagued Sonar.

I suspect you're right.  And it might explain why those old Cubase features are still quirky - nobody wants to look at, let alone debug, somebody else's ancient code.
 
On the other hand, that's almost certainly why Cubase checked my boxes.  As far as I can tell, the newer DAWs have comparatively limited MIDI support, perhaps because there just isn't much demand for polyphonic aftertouch, etc., anymore.  For myself, poly AT was a critical requirement (and, to a much lesser degree, release velocity).  I couldn't find another DAW with equal support for it.
 

Resort Records

tenfoot
One of my concerns with Cubase is that it may suffer the same legacy of decades of layered code, updates and convoluted behaviour that plagued Sonar.

I suspect you're right.  And it might explain why those old Cubase features are still quirky - nobody wants to look at, let alone debug, somebody else's ancient code.
 
On the other hand, that's almost certainly why Cubase checked my boxes.  As far as I can tell, the newer DAWs have comparatively limited MIDI support, perhaps because there just isn't much demand for polyphonic aftertouch, etc., anymore.  For myself, poly AT was a critical requirement (and, to a much lesser degree, release velocity).  I couldn't find another DAW with equal support for it.
 

Thanks again for the info David. I am battling with exactly the same scaled down midi issues. Just spending some time with alternatives to see what lies hidden and what I can live without for the greater good:) Cubase Vs Studio One seem to be my options.

Concerning the Generic ASIO Driver, this got installed (I hadn't seen this post at the time) and Sonars driver did get switched to it. Switched it back to my preferred driver and all has worked fine since.

Am able to swap between Sonar, Cubase, and Ableton with no problems.

ericyeoman
Concerning the Generic ASIO Driver, this got installed (I hadn't seen this post at the time) and Sonars driver did get switched to it. Switched it back to my preferred driver and all has worked fine since.

That Generic ASIO Driver is something to watch out for.  This happened to me when I installed the Elements demo.

kitekrazy1

abacab

ericyeoman
Concerning the Generic ASIO Driver, this got installed (I hadn't seen this post at the time) and Sonars driver did get switched to it. Switched it back to my preferred driver and all has worked fine since.

That Generic ASIO Driver is something to watch out for.  This happened to me when I installed the Elements demo.

More DAWs are coming out with their own ASIO driver.  I do believe ASIO4ALL is open source and that's what it is just a different name.

This caused Sonar to stop working.  I already have a dedicated ASIO device.

tenfoot
Thanks for the great summary David! 
 
One of my concerns with Cubase is that it may suffer the same legacy of decades of layered code, updates and convoluted behaviour that plagued Sonar. I was used to its quirks and they were never be enough to drive me away. Now that I have to change, I really want to strike that balance between deep features and young and snappy. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated!

This is a concern of mine as well as I select a new DAW. Sonar had a ton of really hard to pin down bugs and quirks that I'm convinced were caused by legacy code and new code not getting along.  Legacy code wasn't necessarily written to be future proof, and I can't imagine developers enjoy reverse engineering code that perhaps isn't documented sufficiently. Apart from anything it's a drain on resources. 
 
Many of Sonar's oddities were impossible to reproduce with a recipe, which meant that unless the Bakers had an "a-ha!" moment of enlightenment, the chances of them being fixed were small. I must have brought up dozens of issues on the beta forum that never ended up as bug reports because they could not be reproduced at will. Sometimes I would attach projects along with a bug report, in the hope that the project would demonstrate the behavior even if I couldn't come up with the steps. Oftentimes I would hear back "we're not seeing this at our end," which suggests that some bugs were peculiar to specific machines or installations - even harder to track down. A couple of times I heard "we're aware of this but we're not going to fix it because to do so would break another part of the program" (in discussions in the public forum no less) which again suggests a problem caused by legacy code that would have taken too long to get to the bottom of - the Bakers obviously had to manage their project resources frugally and taking the engine apart to find something that was more of an annoyance than a showstopper was probably deemed to be an inefficient use of their budget. So, many of the annoyances stayed across versions without any hope of a fix. 
 
An example of this is that 3 years ago I reported a problem with automation envelopes becoming misaligned when looping a section. A horrible problem which means that you cannot always rely on your automation playing accurately when a loop is enabled. The bug was never fixed, and looping in general has a ton of related problems in Sonar. I suspect that the looping code is an example of the core legacy code which made problems so hard to pin down. Some of the program probably needed a rewrite but they didn't have the budget to do this alongside the pressure to add new features and the like. 
 
So one of my main attractions with switching DAW's is to start with a fresh young program that has a modern, coherent code base. That's why I'm looking at Bitwig and S1. I know that Cubase is probably one of the most powerful, feature rich DAWs in comparison with Sonar, but when I think about it I didn't use half of Sonar's features. Do I really want a bunch of functionality that I'll rarely need, at the expense of potentially dealing with a set of hard to fix, hard-baked bugs in ancient code? 

Our problem was to find a DAW that has all audio features like SONAR or better, becaue we have to work with thousends of tapes and have them to restore. Therefore we bought now Cubase 9.5.
Things that are very easy in SONAR, are very complicated in Cubase. For example to set a simple marker. You have to insert a markertrack. Then you must click on an icon and then go into the markerwindow to name it !!!
Cubase can not render an insert effect to a clip - like in SONAR "applying effect". Instead of this Cubase 9.5 has a powerful feature that can render effects offline to thousends of clips, each clip with his own backup-history. So you can always go back to the original, for every single clip individually.
I always wished that we can name the audioclips in the Eventlist of SONAR. Cubase has a list (audio pool) where you can autoname the clips and batch-export them to autonamed filenames.
 
So we can not use a "fresh young" program. Because we would miss a lot of audiofeatures.
The learning curve will be very hard for Cubase.
 

The Melodyne Essential license is portable as well, not tied to Sonar.

THambrecht
 For example to set a simple marker. You have to insert a markertrack. Then you must click on an icon and then go into the markerwindow to name it !!!

Yes, and that text box for renaming the marker is nowhere close to the marker itself.  It is insane.  The obvious thing would be to clock on the marker, allowing the user to edit in place.  I find lots of example where you have to click something in one part of the screen, but then go to a distant part of the screen to actually change the parameter.  I guess one gets use to it, but it is very poor on the intuitive scale.
Another example is enabling and disabling the control room.  To enable it, you simply click the enable button within the CR window.  But if you want to disable it, you have to know (somehow) that you must hit F4 which brings up a very detailed dialog, and deep inside that dialog is a tiny button that disables the CR.  It just isn't a very sensible UI, IMHO.
Another example, Cubase automatically recognized my Scarlett 18i20, but only displayed the first two inputs.  It took me an hour of hunting to find the place where I could add the remaining paths, and it was nowhere near the place where you select the channel you want (which would have made sense), nor was it near the place where you can open the control panel for the audio interface.
When I started using StudioOne, everything seemed just where you would guess it to be.
 
Cubase is working reliably and is full function, so I am not terribly worried about it, but the level of inelegance is really a bit jolting, especially coming from a company that has such a high opinion of itself.

I'm studying the Cubase 9.5 trial at the moment, and find myself really missing a lot of Sonar features.
I think the feature I miss the most is X-Ray . . . anyone know of an equivalent in Cubase ?
 
I also called up the Sonar Key commands in Cubase, which really helps in the DAW transition.
 
I really like the fact that Markers are done on a "marker track", which will surely help in a larger project to copy that track downwards.

sharke
The thing is, I don't know of any EDM producers who just throw loops together. The whole "loop based" thing is a cliche, and you'll find that most EDM productions are extremely complicated affairs which utilize the power and features of a DAW to their max. You'll find extremely involved MIDI editing and routing, and every classic production technique (as well as a bunch of modern ones that are specific to electronic music). A lot of electronic producers spend months on a track, oftentimes drawing out hundreds of lanes of automation that would rival any symphonic production. Electronic music has always been on the cutting edge of audio technology, and many of these new production techniques are useful to all kinds of genres. That's why I believe that if Cakewalk had directed their efforts toward making Sonar more appealing to the EDM crowd, not only would we have had an even more awesome DAW with a lot of excellent and very useful features, but a larger user base as well. The young starry eyed EDM bedroom producer is driving a large part of today's DAW sales and tapping into that market is going to be good for the long term future of any DAW. 

I meant no offense.  Clearly, we agree where a good chunk of the DAW market is and what drives innovation.  If I sound cynical, it's mostly that the current generation of keyboard controllers is so cheap when compared to those of yesteryear.  To this point, is anyone even making a keyboard controller with MIDI polyphonic aftertouch anymore?  If not, it suggests the market isn't interested in such nuanced performance.  Or, to be fair, maybe the bedroom market simply doesn't have the budget for those unavoidably pricey controllers.  Either way, it's a tight spot.
 

noynekker
I really like the fact that Markers are done on a "marker track", which will surely help in a larger project to copy that track downwards.

A useful tip for the Marker Track is to position it at the top and enable the Divide Track List option.  [It's the "/" icon in the upper right corner of the track screen.]  Then, stretch the upper split to just contain the Marker Track (and perhaps the Tempo and Signature Tracks, etc., if you also use those.)  It'll keep your markers from scrolling off the screen - more like Sonar.  Save this in your main project template.
 

Makzimia
A lot of sloppy programming today, oh it’s fine lots of resources. When you only initially had maybe 1mb of ram and 20mb hard drives, or floppy disks.. well you worked at a very different approach.

So true.  I wrote 8086/88 Assembly Language in the 80s.  If you didn't mind your resources and document the living crap out of everything, you were totally lost.  Object-oriented programming might be quicker but certainly doesn't demand as much from the programmer.
 
Then again, I tried my hand at OOP (ActionScript) a few years ago and just about fried my noggin'.  I'm just not wired that way.  Really difficult to trace if you're inspecting somebody else's code too.  So, I gotta give up some respect.
 

While I've only had Cubase Pro 9.5 now for about a week, I'm pretty sure MIDI VST's work, since I've got Kirnu Cream feeding MIDI to AAS Player without too much trouble.  There does seem to be a lot of problems in the past with this, but this web page describes exactly what worked for me.
 
http://www.codefn42.com/faq_routing_cubase.html
 
Or am I just missing something?  Why would I care about the MIDI Inserts (which are just Steinberg's I guess)?