?So far, learning Cubase VST 5 has been a disaster. Let me explain my situation. I started recording back in 2001 with Sonic Foundry Vegas. Somewhere in there I decided that I wanted to get into midi sequencing so I purchased VST 5.0. Well, local band business sort of took off and Vegas was 100,000 easier to make records with so Cubase sort of got pushed to the side.

Five years and 700 songs later, hear I am...wanting to get back into midi sequencing. I debated about buying a newer version of some fairly high end sequencer, but I already had Cubase. I've been debating if maybe it would have been worth the money to get something else.

I've been plagued by one problem after another. Here's a list. Maybe some of this is due to ignorance on my part, but there are some bugs in this system and they are very frustrating.

1. I have Cubase VST 5.0. I knew they had upgrades. I upgraded to 5.1r1. After a few problems, I decided to go with the latest upgrade 5.2pb1. Well, I can't 5.2pd1 to do anything. It's icon is different from that of Cubase VST Score or VST 32. In fact, I think it's the generic Windows icon that means “I don't know what this is”. Either way, I can not get 5.2pd1 to install. I know my way around a Windows PC and I'm baffled. I'm thinking that their file on their server is fried, but it's a little early to say for sure.

2. The Cubase forum, www.cubase.net, will not let me login. I've tried it on 3 different browsers on 2 different computers. When I attempt to login, the screen freezes.

3. The software is comprehensive and has it's little quirks. I understand that I have to bend over and take it for a while as I go through the fairly high learning curve. However some things are obvious flaws. For example, last night I made a stupid little 30 second bunch of noises. Everything synced properly. Today, I sat down to make a brand new 30 second bunch of noises. I noticed that my recorded midi tracks were very late. This would suggest latency, but I'm using VST instruments in Cubase while I'm playing. I figure if latency was an issue than the VST instrument would be behind as well.
   I figured maybe it was just some settings that I had wrong, so I opened the session from last night. (It appears that Cubase saves system junk with each song). Well, I went to add a track to it and it was severaly behind as well. (I'm talking an entire ? note).
   It's clear that something fundamentally changed in Cubase after the computer sat their for 12 hours. I didn't even restart.

So anyway, so far it's been one frustrating bug after another. If I could sit down and give this program 7 days per week, I think I could work around the bugs. Unfortunately, I have other obligations (like mixing records and recording bands) that makes it much more difficult to learn such a program.