Hi, I took advantage of the 30-year Cubase anniversary and upgraded to Cubase 10 Pro yesterday. I was previously on Cubase 8 Artist. The upgrade was half the normal price.
When the first email about the 1/2 price offer came through I got excited and read the fine print, which said the discount only applied on new, full versions. *This offer only includes full versions of Cubase Pro 10, Cubase Artist 10 and Cubase Elements 10 and the competitive crossgrade from all major DAWs to Cubase Pro 10. Updates, upgrades and educational versions are not part of the promotion."
“Bummer,” I thought…
But soon thereafter that all changed, possibly due to protests?
So I was able to upgrade to pro after all. Will be fun to figure out how Variaudio works…
I used to run Cubase 4 many years ago…they treated me like garbage in the middle of a paying session and I’ve never worked with them again.
So what do you think of it now? I really don’t need another DAW, but have found myself intrigued in checking out other ones besides Reaper. I got Cubase LE AI Elements 9.5 “free” in a bundle with another product. It looks like I could upgrade to Cubase Elements 10 for $25 (!), so it’s like one of those “offer you can’t refuse” things. Or I could upgrade higher and get a lot more features probably for not a great deal of cash. There have been so many happy Cubase owners on here (overall) during many years, I can’t help but be impressed just by the reputation of the product. It’s supposed to be really good for stock VI’s and MIDI features I believe, probably better than Reaper in that category.
I actually had a much earlier version of Cubase before I even got into Pro Tools, this was many years ago, and it completely crashed with some kind of glitch and would no longer work at all. So off to Pro Tools it was for me. One of those “fork in the road” things. 
Yes, I also had one of those “fork in the road” experiences with Propellerhead’s Reason some years ago. A massive disappointment that instead saw me head down the Native Instruments route, which I am grateful for now.
I love Cubase, all the different versions of it. Going from Cubase Artist 8 to Cubase 10 Pro was an easy change, although there’s lots of functionality that I will most likely never use, such as the Control Room.
The install was easy, and then I just had to spend an hour to ensure all my plugins were found and working, which is “normal”. I like it so far and it seems to run faster…
I happen to love Cubase, and 10 is my favorite version yet. I’ve tried switching to Reaper, but there are just enough of my favorite Cubase features missing from Reaper that I just can’t get over the hump. The midi drum editor, variaudio, a solid Mackie control implementation. I’m not using it in sessions with paying clients, so perhaps my tolerance for issues is higher, but I haven’t really experienced many big issues. And since they did away with 32 bit plug-ins in 9.0, it’s been really stable for me.
I’ll have to look at the functions in each version, as I’m just wanting to explore it at this point and maybe use it for certain things. I played around with my AI version some more, and had some difficulty getting around in it and figuring out some of the functions, and keyboard shortcuts are very different than I’m used to. Every DAW has it’s own intricacies and flow. I had the same challenge going from Pro Tools to Reaper.
That’s what’s appealing to me, though as I mentioned above there’s a learning curve going over to another DAW too, adjustments of habits etc. I flirt with the idea of using multiple DAWs, but I tried that with Pro Tools and Reaper for awhile and it has its challenges.
Ah, that’s good to know. I hadn’t looked at the plugin architecture aspect yet.
If I upgrade to pro10, do you think I will have problems with existing projects? Should I better finish them first or ?
You shouldn’t (in theory)… might depend on what version you upgraded from. I just went from 9.5 to 10 and there were no issues at all.
I’d say at least take stems of anything that you need to work on.
I am at Studio One Pro version 2 as going up will invalidate a lot of my preamps and other freeware vst that I use…at least in S1 it is easy to create stems so going up in version is not an issue.
Yeah I was also thinking of playing it save 
Just curious though.
I’ve had no issues in going from Cubase Artist 8…
I had a bundleware version of Cubase LE 9.5, and upgraded to Elements 10. It looks like I have to uninstall 9.5 first, then install 10, per a support chat session. The 9.5 version was surrendered in eLicenser so it’s useless now I think. I’m kind of surprised they don’t do an automatic uninstall or overwrite the old program. I’m new to this eLicenser and Download Manager stuff, though it’s becoming common, and I have to use similar things with other software/plugin vendors. It seems crazy to have at least 3 programs just to manage one. 
It was a huge download, and they told me to install the loops/samples extra stuff to the default library first, then use Library Manager (another program!!!) to move it. OK, maybe LM is just a function in Cubase? 
I always try to install that stuff to a custom location so I have it all together where I know how to find it.
The little bit of experience I had tooling around in LE was challenging. I didn’t find it very intuitive, but every DAW is pretty different in some ways. Which reminds me … I need to find the new User Manual too. 
Any advice on this uninstall/install process would be appreciated. I’m going to do it when I have some time to mess with it. 
Yeah I’m on Pro and for some reason it doesn’t over-write the previous version. So it continues to open older sessions in that previous version… then I uninstall it and all is well. This is on Windows too, which usually has much more disaster potential.
I don’t install any of the loops and samples or any of that stuff, but from my knowledge the Library Manager was formerly a part of Halion but has been integrated or perhaps just renamed to be part of Cubase.
I think because I don’t use any of the “extras”, the Download Manager and eLicenser have been pretty easy to manage. When there’s an update I just download it and install it, and if need be I uninstall what needs to be uninstalled… I’ve only had to mess with the eLicenser once, when I first bought it. I know what you mean about needing all the apps to manage one… my desktop is littered with apps from various vendors.
I haven’t seen LE but I’m assuming it’s more-or-less the same as Pro but some functions may be cut back. I moved from Pro Tools to Cubase and I found the workflow was VERY different. Took me a while to get used to it… but once I did I realized how insanely powerful it is.
That probably doesn’t help you in the slightest bit… I can answer more functionality questions though if you ever have any!
LE is very basic. They told me the versions in order of functionality are: LE, AI, Elements, Artist, Pro. So it was extremely basic, but usable. I think Elements could be a nice balance as I’ll probably still be mainly with Reaper. I was kind of tempted to go to the Pro version, since Reaper - as much functionality as it has - may not offer all that Cubase has. Especially in terms of stock VI’s and MIDI. But I did a switch from Pro Tools to Reaper some years ago and that was quite a challenge. I’m not sure I have another full DAW switch in me at this point.
Thanks! Any information is helpful. Just to know that you had something similar to work through on Windows is very reassuring.
I tried this… Once I started to get super frustrated with PT I installed Reaper and give it a few months. I just couldn’t gel with it, which is funny because I’ve seen sooooo many people who swear by it and move around it effortlessly. Most have said you have to kinda customize it for yourself, which frankly I’m waaaayyy too lazy to do 
It’s definitely built for “tweakers”. 
On one hand, it’s great you can change things around the way you want. On the other hand, you probably want to change things around the way you want. 
The stock interface is very vanilla, so lots of people change to custom themes. I initially tried a Pro Tools theme for Reaper, but I got even more confused. I finally just stayed with the stock theme until I learned it well, and still use that most of the time. Switching themes is an easy keyboard shortcut, and I probably have 5-6 that I have played around with.
I have to say, that’s all really cool in many ways, but I’d probably be more productive with something that was “same old, same old” for several years. My inner tweaker always wants to learn more and adapt to the new versions and features that come out every few weeks at least. But when Pro Tools stayed exactly the same for a year and a half at a time, I got a lot more music recorded. 
That was a potential attraction of Cubase.
Going to Cubase Artist would be pretty close to going Pro…
Still, there are things in the Pro version that I really like, especially Variaudio - holy cow!
I’ve got an old song I want to tidy up using that…
Meanwhile, I finally spent some time learning more about the Chord Pad and the Chord Assistant.
The main thing I learned today is you can drag “chords” from the Chord Assistant onto any track, and the chord gets plonked down in that position. Then you can just merge the clips and fiddle with it… that makes writing orchestral stuff so much easier.
This is a good video on that topic, not a lot of waffle… but some great tips…
I prefer the proximity display to the circle of fifths display…
And so I bought this vocal package today, because I really love the vox of the first tune especially.
Needless to day, I am using this vox to create a non-EDM track… having fun!
I am really happy with the quality of this vocal package.
Got off to a good start of a tune, I think. Using the above-mentioned Chord Assistant for sorting the chords after first scouting the territory on the Les Paul.
Doing this kind of stuff, finding out chord structures to “something already existing” is kinda new to me, so you’ll have to excuse my excitement…
S
Still waiting on my dongle 
Also took the advantage at the last moment, and got the pro version. I don’t see them do big discounts often, and it was 30th anniversery, so thought fuck it, better spend some money now and save some later