A few months ago I declared officially that I was abandoning Cakewalk after 32 years of its being my sole DAW. Lack of EastWest Opus support was the deciding factor, though there were some other reasons as well. I chose Studio One as my new DAW, (and also spent a few weeks trying out Cubase which is very similar), and have been working with it for these past six months or so.
Well, guess what, I'm coming back. Sort of. Here's where I tell you why.
Turns out, despite the numerous jaw-droppingly clunky things in Cakewalk, there are some features which are MUCH better in Cakewalk than Studio One. (And vice versa of course).
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT STUDIO ONE
Compared to Cakewalk, S1 is jam packed with features, and an astonishing number of them are actually useful. While new versions of Cakewalk would invariably tout their exciting new support for SynthyLab's Scoopy-doopy X32 version 5.5 Belgian Edition as if it was the greatest feature everyone absolutely had to upgrade to get, Studio One was actually adding things that make song production more convenient. In fact, there are so very many of them I couldn't begin to incorporate them all. Daily multiple cries of "Oh wow, it never occurred to me that could be this easy", and I was off and running and so long Cakewalk. (I have long suspected that the present day developers for Cakewalk at Bandlab have inherited fragile spaghetti code which prevents them from re-engineering a lot of things that are obvious places for improvement, but I have no way of knowing if that's true.)
These include things like: *** The MIDI velocity editing features are so cool and fun. For example, BY DEFALUT, when you select notes and slide the velocity up and down, it does so proportionally. Duhh... *** Latency correction features cater to those of us who never remember what buffer size means and all that. It's trivial to say "less latency please" or "latency is ok, give me CPU power". CW makes you frickin' LEARN it. Ugh. *** S1 has an amazing Projects feature where you can take a whole bunch of completed or even not completed songs and assemble them into a "Project", where entire songs become like tracks, at which time you can add effects, envelopes, etc., and export a single project as a folder of audio files, and you can double click on any song to open the entire song for a quick edit, after which S1 syncs it back up with your Project. It's like magic. Thrilling! *** S1 has a concept of "Scratch Pads", in which you can try out ideas in separate windows without messing up your real song, and copy paste things around between scratch pads. No more adding a marker at bar 50,000 to do that.
S1 has a rich array of keyboard shortcuts for windows and tools which is not nearly so clean in CW. Their system for which windows to display when and how and the docking functionality is far superior, and was an immediate joy to behold. (I've always hated CW's docking window stuff, way too complicated and confusing.) Similarly, though it has many more doodads available from icons and menus and toolbars, it is pretty well organized and easy to navigate. That was also a big improvement for me.
S1 also has a more streamlined UI, and while it resembles a page of Egyptian hieroglyphs at times, they don't have this big crush on gradients the way the CW UI designers do. That's been refreshing. (If there is a way to remove color gradients from the Cakewalk UI, I'm all ears.)
HOWEVER..... WHAT I REALLY MISSED ABOUT CAKEWALK
As it turns out, there are features in Cakewalk that I was completely accustomed to and had no idea CW was the only DAW I knew of that did things that way. I had no idea how good the Cakewalk PRV really is.
1. MIDI SCRUBBING
The biggest missed feature is Midi scrubbing in PRVat the speed of mouse dragging and for multiple tracks simultaneously. Who knew that Cakewalk is the only DAW that offers this? (Well, probably a lot of people, but I didn't.) Cubase does have a little, but it's one track at a time and not as snappy. And after six months without it, I've just never gotten so I don't still miss it every 35 seconds.
2. THIS:
Who knew that something as obviously useful as this is not available in the other DAWs. I can't solo and mute multiple tracks from within the PRV AT ALL much less organize them into filtered groups. WTF!!!???
3. EVENTS EVENTS EVENTS
Like Cakewalk, Studio One employs the concept of "Events", blocks of material which are represented as discreet rectangles in Track View. But S1 retains that concept within its Midi Editor view, so that there are constantly visible event borders indicated by different background colors, and you can be in the Midi Editor and actually have places in the track that you are unable to record or edit at all because there's no event there yet, and worse, if events overlap, there may even be notes audible in the track that YOU CAN'T SEE. Everything has to be in thrall to an event. CW understands that while events may be important in Track View, if you are editing Midi you probably don't care about events, so it ignores them. Bravo.
4. TAKE LANES
S1 and Cubase are allergic to the idea of multiple takes in a track. You can do it, but it's not a default, and it's more limited. Apparently, recording ten takes of a phrase and having ten take lanes - which you can mute and solo and audition as needed, and then can drag around freely like real grown up tracks - is not something Studio One thinks would be useful. You have to select the takes one by one, then deploy a function to convert them into regular tracks, and then audition them that way. You want six unison takes for BG Vocals? You'll need six separate tracks. It's confusing as <swear word>.
CONCLUSION
However, I have a lot invested in my EastWest Composer Cloud subscription, and I love it and know it. I couldn't lose it. So going back to Cakewalk would mean finding all new instruments for everything. Deal breaker. Here's my new solution:
I'm going to do all my composing and editing in Cakewalk, where the Midi editing features are robust and keep me in the flow. I'll just use lower quality instruments. Once the piece is "done" (-ish), I will export as Midi and import into Studio One, where I can attach Opus instruments to it. I'll still be able to do last minute Midi editing in S1 of course, and I will. What this means is that there will have to be a rubicon crossing moment where I decide I'm done with the piece and am departing Cakewalk with it. This might be good for me, because it will prevent me from second guessing myself too late in the game, and also prevent me from getting too deep into mixing and effects while the piece is still being composed.
Anyway, it's going to take me a week or three to re-learn my Cakewalk habits, but I'm looking forward to it. I know this post was long. In college when I wrote long term papers I would often throw in non-sequitur sentences just to see if the professor was actually reading it. I like strawberries. Thanks for reading.
Question
jkoseattle
A few months ago I declared officially that I was abandoning Cakewalk after 32 years of its being my sole DAW. Lack of EastWest Opus support was the deciding factor, though there were some other reasons as well. I chose Studio One as my new DAW, (and also spent a few weeks trying out Cubase which is very similar), and have been working with it for these past six months or so.
Well, guess what, I'm coming back. Sort of. Here's where I tell you why.
Turns out, despite the numerous jaw-droppingly clunky things in Cakewalk, there are some features which are MUCH better in Cakewalk than Studio One. (And vice versa of course).
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT STUDIO ONE
Compared to Cakewalk, S1 is jam packed with features, and an astonishing number of them are actually useful. While new versions of Cakewalk would invariably tout their exciting new support for SynthyLab's Scoopy-doopy X32 version 5.5 Belgian Edition as if it was the greatest feature everyone absolutely had to upgrade to get, Studio One was actually adding things that make song production more convenient. In fact, there are so very many of them I couldn't begin to incorporate them all. Daily multiple cries of "Oh wow, it never occurred to me that could be this easy", and I was off and running and so long Cakewalk. (I have long suspected that the present day developers for Cakewalk at Bandlab have inherited fragile spaghetti code which prevents them from re-engineering a lot of things that are obvious places for improvement, but I have no way of knowing if that's true.)
These include things like: *** The MIDI velocity editing features are so cool and fun. For example, BY DEFALUT, when you select notes and slide the velocity up and down, it does so proportionally. Duhh... *** Latency correction features cater to those of us who never remember what buffer size means and all that. It's trivial to say "less latency please" or "latency is ok, give me CPU power". CW makes you frickin' LEARN it. Ugh. *** S1 has an amazing Projects feature where you can take a whole bunch of completed or even not completed songs and assemble them into a "Project", where entire songs become like tracks, at which time you can add effects, envelopes, etc., and export a single project as a folder of audio files, and you can double click on any song to open the entire song for a quick edit, after which S1 syncs it back up with your Project. It's like magic. Thrilling! *** S1 has a concept of "Scratch Pads", in which you can try out ideas in separate windows without messing up your real song, and copy paste things around between scratch pads. No more adding a marker at bar 50,000 to do that.
S1 has a rich array of keyboard shortcuts for windows and tools which is not nearly so clean in CW. Their system for which windows to display when and how and the docking functionality is far superior, and was an immediate joy to behold. (I've always hated CW's docking window stuff, way too complicated and confusing.) Similarly, though it has many more doodads available from icons and menus and toolbars, it is pretty well organized and easy to navigate. That was also a big improvement for me.
S1 also has a more streamlined UI, and while it resembles a page of Egyptian hieroglyphs at times, they don't have this big crush on gradients the way the CW UI designers do. That's been refreshing. (If there is a way to remove color gradients from the Cakewalk UI, I'm all ears.)
HOWEVER..... WHAT I REALLY MISSED ABOUT CAKEWALK
As it turns out, there are features in Cakewalk that I was completely accustomed to and had no idea CW was the only DAW I knew of that did things that way. I had no idea how good the Cakewalk PRV really is.
1. MIDI SCRUBBING
The biggest missed feature is Midi scrubbing in PRV at the speed of mouse dragging and for multiple tracks simultaneously. Who knew that Cakewalk is the only DAW that offers this? (Well, probably a lot of people, but I didn't.) Cubase does have a little, but it's one track at a time and not as snappy. And after six months without it, I've just never gotten so I don't still miss it every 35 seconds.
2. THIS:
Who knew that something as obviously useful as this is not available in the other DAWs. I can't solo and mute multiple tracks from within the PRV AT ALL much less organize them into filtered groups. WTF!!!???
3. EVENTS EVENTS EVENTS
Like Cakewalk, Studio One employs the concept of "Events", blocks of material which are represented as discreet rectangles in Track View. But S1 retains that concept within its Midi Editor view, so that there are constantly visible event borders indicated by different background colors, and you can be in the Midi Editor and actually have places in the track that you are unable to record or edit at all because there's no event there yet, and worse, if events overlap, there may even be notes audible in the track that YOU CAN'T SEE. Everything has to be in thrall to an event. CW understands that while events may be important in Track View, if you are editing Midi you probably don't care about events, so it ignores them. Bravo.
4. TAKE LANES
S1 and Cubase are allergic to the idea of multiple takes in a track. You can do it, but it's not a default, and it's more limited. Apparently, recording ten takes of a phrase and having ten take lanes - which you can mute and solo and audition as needed, and then can drag around freely like real grown up tracks - is not something Studio One thinks would be useful. You have to select the takes one by one, then deploy a function to convert them into regular tracks, and then audition them that way. You want six unison takes for BG Vocals? You'll need six separate tracks. It's confusing as <swear word>.
CONCLUSION
However, I have a lot invested in my EastWest Composer Cloud subscription, and I love it and know it. I couldn't lose it. So going back to Cakewalk would mean finding all new instruments for everything. Deal breaker. Here's my new solution:
I'm going to do all my composing and editing in Cakewalk, where the Midi editing features are robust and keep me in the flow. I'll just use lower quality instruments. Once the piece is "done" (-ish), I will export as Midi and import into Studio One, where I can attach Opus instruments to it. I'll still be able to do last minute Midi editing in S1 of course, and I will. What this means is that there will have to be a rubicon crossing moment where I decide I'm done with the piece and am departing Cakewalk with it. This might be good for me, because it will prevent me from second guessing myself too late in the game, and also prevent me from getting too deep into mixing and effects while the piece is still being composed.
Anyway, it's going to take me a week or three to re-learn my Cakewalk habits, but I'm looking forward to it. I know this post was long. In college when I wrote long term papers I would often throw in non-sequitur sentences just to see if the professor was actually reading it. I like strawberries. Thanks for reading.
Edited by jkoseattleLink to comment
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