@Tim Barnes said:
I have also realised that cubase 5 can run on PC & MAC, so i might use that, but its not very good when it comes to writing directly to picture.
Cubase is extremely good for writing to picture. Who told you otherwise, and what were their concerns? It has more advanced features in that area than either ProTools or Logic.
I also think that it's a good choice, because it's cross-platform. Obviously you have your reasons for wanting to use MAC, but currently performance is far better on a PC and even with a Mac it is better using Windows than OSX, both for Cubase and also VSL (and many other products).
IMO the best thing to do is see what you need to be able to do, what sort of latency is possible for you to work with, and then decide your choice of hardware. If your needs are not as demanding as mine (for example) then a Mac might be good enough for you.
DG
Cubase is good for a linear and direct workflow for midi. I prefer the way the key editor aka piano roll is set up to Logic's.
As far as latency, Cubase under OSX is horrific. I've been working with Cubase 5/OSX for about 15 mos; which outside of VE Pro, is really not viable for large amounts of virtual instruments. My uses tend to be modest compared with a symphonic composer, too. VE Pro has a latency compensation which makes up for some of it, it's swell, but Cubase is slow. Cubase uses ASIO, OSX does_not. Core Audio runs under what I'll characterize as a wrapper, cellaed CoreAudio2ASIO.bundle. It requires more cycles, upon more cycles for every task, and it adds up.
Logic is known for low latencies. I've seen benchmarks I actually trust which indicate you need ca. 4x more latency with Cubase for the same taks, all hardware being equal. But. There appears to be a limitation on the number of midi ports the sequencer sees, up to and not more than 16 chennels. So... Cubase 5.5 handles 4 or more cores noticably better in my own projects so far; but still nowhere near what I expect from a fairly robust master machine. I'm weighing these two hosts' limitations in terms of the next project. I don't think I can really give Cubase/OSX a good rec for larger ensembles of virtual instruments, it's very high maintenance work.
I say there's nothing wrong with Cubase's capabilities; it's workflow isn't for everyone of course. But the latency situation under OSX is not at all good. I'm no keyboardist and expect to do some tweezing; people who expect to nail some performances and make quick work out of it will be driven crazy I think.
My performance with VE Pro on a MacPro 8-core Nehalem 24 GB as a slave is quite splendid. Before you believe anyone on broad claims on platform performance per se, I'd look at some benchmarks, and with a critical eye (for instance I saw one 'platform wars shootout' which used Cubase as the host, which is going to come out Majorly in favor of Windows, since ASIO is the low latency standard there. The writer neglected to mention the ASIO vs Not ASIO problem, which is HUGE, until after he started)... Another problem with this Core vs ASIO is when you have the AU component version installed, as I do, here's what Cubase does when you instantiate a VST plugin: it fetches it from the Components folder and wraps it into the .vst. I know this from crash reports.
At this point, I'm not sure if a windows box/Cubase would have been better for my master machine vs Mac/Logic. Logic is a more attractive package in terms of bang for the buck, that much I can confidently say. Cubase 5.5 behaving much better, VE Pro allows far tighter timing with this latency, there's no midi ports limit with vst3...
