Welcome to Music Nation and my deep-dive review of Steinberg’s Cubase Pro 15. It’s been a long time since I last took Cubase seriously – my brief fling with Cubase SX back in the late 90s never quite sparked a romance, especially when Logic Audio Platinum was still running on Windows. That was more than twenty-five years ago, and the landscape has changed beyond recognition.
Coming back to Cubase now feels a bit like moving house. You leave behind the DAW you know inside out – the weird cupboard where all your cables live, the templates you’ve tweaked for a decade – and suddenly you’re standing in someone else’s kitchen, opening drawers and hoping you find the cutlery before you starve. My first week in Cubase 15 was exactly that: a lot of wandering, a lot of “oh, that’s where they hide that,” and the occasional moment when the lights come on and you finally understand why so many producers swear by this software.
For context, I’ve been a dedicated Reaper user for years, with Reason and Bitwig acting as quick-inspiration sidekicks. So I’m stepping into Cubase not as a seasoned Steinberg veteran, but with the wide-eyed curiosity of a new user with hope to impart some thoughts on to anyone else mostly looking at Cubase in similar situation, or perhaps looking to jump ship.
A quick warning and apology before we dive in: this is an extremely in-depth review. I’ve spent weeks learning Cubase deeply enough to where I can critique it fairly, and that deserves space. If it becomes overwhelming, feel free to jump ahead using the menu, or head straight to the conclusion for the big-picture takeaways.
First Impressions – The ‘Cosy’ Workspace
First impressions matter, and thankfully Cubase starts strong. Installation is a dream – modular, clean, and completely automated. You can pick and choose exactly what you want in an à-la-carte style, and the whole process runs without a hiccup. I did hit a little confusion with Steinberg’s in-house terminology and the sheer amount of included content, so I installed the bare essentials first, then added more as I learned what each component actually did.
And study I did. Countless tutorials later, plus enough Don Sigalas videos to last one lifetime, I can confidently say Cubase’s workflow is intuitive where it counts. Many producers consider Cubase the “ground zero” DAW, the baseline from which everything else took inspiration. It shows; the interface behaves pretty much exactly as you expect a DAW to behave.
Cubase doesn’t come with the mountain of bundled instruments you’d find in something like Reason 13, but the big names it does ship with – HALion, Groove Agent, and the updated SpectraLayers – are major ecosystems in their own right. As a near-new user, they required some dedicated study.
However, the included VST FX’s is quite impressive, and why not – this is where Steinberg really excel. While most are your run of the mill EQ’s, compressors, reverbs and the likes, a number do jump out as quite unique and interesting, such as the Mod Machine, the MorphhFilter and the VST Amp Rack which sounds way better than I was excepting for a stock plugin.
Though you are bound to already have an extensive collection of VST effects, Cubase Pro litrally has every angle covered if you’re short. Perhaps the only area it might be a little lacking is a dedicated channel stripe and perhaps a decent console emulator, but we’re getting very situational here.
On a side note, I remember HALion was named after HAL from A Space Odyssey 2001, I love those little geek moments.
Back in the early days, the running joke was that “Cubase” stood for Can U Believe Another Software Error? Thankfully, things have changed. Some quirks from the old days are still alive and well, unfortunatly. The one-track-one-instrument paradigm, the classic VST Rack – little echoes of the SX era that gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.
After years of Reaper’s insane levels of customisation, Cubase initially felt… conservative. A bit corporate. Not exactly the cosy, personality-filled vibe of Reason or Bitwig. But customisation was the first rabbit hole I dove into, and it didn’t take long before I massaged the colours, contrasts, and layout into something I was actually happy working in. It’s still not my favourite-looking DAW, but I’ve come to appreciate its serious, business-first aesthetic.
Screenshots online don’t quite communicate how coherent the interface feels in practice. Something about the way everything sits together helps focus your attention on the music, not the software.
A great example is the MIDI editor. For me it’s visually understated to the point of disappearing, yet the MIDI notes themselves are vivid and bright. The effect is almost meditative, your eyes naturally lock onto the music.
Other DAWs like StudioOne and Reason feel like sensory overload at all times, this was a surprisingly welcome contrast. Cubase is definatly the adult in the room.
Of course, there are still a few relics of the 90s lingering around. The VST Rack and some default plugins have borders big enough to qualify as architecture. But overall, Cubase 15 Pro has turned out to be a comfortable, friendly environment to work in.
Everything slots neatly into collapsible zones, the spacing is gentle on ageing composer eyes, and once you adjust the theme (Cubase is surprisingly generous with GUI customisation), it quickly stops feeling like corporate accounting software and starts feeling like your DAW.
Interestingly, aesthetics-wise Cubase reminded me a lot of Reaper, or perhaps that’s because I’ve spent years bending Reaper into something that unintentionally imitates Cubase. After decades of refinement, Steinberg has arrived at a layout that simply works. And when you finally sit inside the real thing, it becomes obvious why so many other DAWs have borrowed ideas from it.
The Learning Curve – Not Steep, Just…Wiggly
I expected to settle into Cubase within a week. It took three. Not because Cubase is poorly designed, but because it has built its own cultural language over decades, and learning that language takes time. Features like the Control Room, the way instrument tracks manage multi-outs, or even something as simple as track visibility all make perfect sense once you’ve had the “ahhhh, right” moment, but they’re not immediately intuitive on day one.
Of all the DAWs I’ve reviewed, Cubase may have the strongest overall workflow system. Once I broke a few ingrained Reaper habits, I found myself really appreciating what I’ll call the “4-in-1 window system.” The core workspace sits in the centre, surrounded by four contextual panels you open only when needed, then hide again to keep your focus on the main arrangement.
Yes, it’s conceptually similar to Reason’s approach with its Mixer and Rack views, but Cubase’s implementation feels more purpose-tuned. Each panel is designed for a specific role: open the Browser to hunt for devices and presets, the Inspector for track-level adjustments, the Meter panel for your level and loudness checks, or the Lower Zone for mixing, routing, and editors. They’re all essential functions, but not ones you want permanently cluttering your view.
I really like this philosophy: maximum minimalism without sacrificing control. Cubase keeps as much out of your way as possible, gives you everything when you need it, and nothing when you don’t.
Very cool.
Standout Features for Composers
I’m not going to cover every single feature of Cubase 15, there are already endless YouTube videos diving into the new instruments, effects, and modulators. Instead, I want to highlight the features that genuinely stood out to me as a musical theatre composer.
Chord Track – The Feature That Sold Me Instantly
This might be one of the best songwriting and composition tools in any DAW today. The Chord Track feels impossibly smart for something that’s actually been in Cubase for years.
Being able to extract chords from audio, align harmonies across the entire project, reharmonise ideas on the fly, and audition alternate progressions without committing to anything, it’s brilliant. For someone who does a lot of transcription, scoring, and orchestral sketching, this was the “why doesn’t every DAW have this?” moment.
So What Does the Chord Track Actually Do?
At its core, the Chord Track creates a harmonic roadmap for your entire project. It sits at the top of the timeline acting almost like the musical director of your session, telling Cubase, “these are the chords we’re working with.” Once that framework is in place, everything else can fall in line.
What blew me away is how easily Cubase can detect harmony from almost anything you throw at it. Drop in a piano demo, a guitar stem, even a rough vocal-and-guitar phone recording, Cubase analyses the audio and auto-populates the Chord Track with its best guess of the progression. It’s not perfect, but it’s shockingly good, and it saves a ton of time if you’re transcribing or rebuilding arrangements.
Once those chords are in place, the real magic happens. You can ask other tracks – MIDI instruments, synths, pads, string beds, even certain types of audio – to follow the Chord Track. Want to reharmonise a section? Swap a chord? Test a completely new progression? You don’t have to go in and rewrite every part. Cubase can simply reinterpret the harmony on the fly, and suddenly your whole arrangement pivots with you. For sketching ideas or exploring variations, this is huge.
Auditioning alternate chords is ridiculously fluid. Click on a chord, open the circle-of-fifths pop-up, and try out new options in real time. You can go from a predictable diatonic progression to something far more colourful or theatrical in seconds. For a composer, it feels like having a musical assistant who instantly plays through your what-if scenarios.
And perhaps the biggest strength: it ties your entire arrangement together. Vocal harmonies, brass lines, string voicings, keyboard parts, they all stay harmonically consistent even if you make major structural changes. For someone working in musical theatre or orchestration-heavy projects, that’s a massive workflow advantage.
In short, the Chord Track is like a composer’s sketchbook woven directly into the DAW. It encourages experimentation, keeps your arrangement coherent, and makes the process of refining harmony genuinely enjoyable. Few DAWs offer anything close to this level of harmonic intelligence.
Stem Separation – Surprisingly Good
I didn’t expect Steinberg’s AI-based stem separation to be anything special, most of these tools fall apart as soon as the mix gets busy. But Cubase’s implementation is clean, simple, and far more accurate than I expected. It’s not a full-blown audio surgery tool, but for quick isolation, transcription, or referencing, it’s extremely handy and surprisingly fun to use.
Control Room – The Underrated Genius
The Control Room is something I’d always heard was fantastic but never really understood. Now I do.
If you run multiple monitors, do mono compatibility checks, need instant alternate downmixes, or work with cue mixes and talkback, Control Room is a monster feature. It essentially acts as a full virtual monitor controller integrated directly into your DAW.
Once you’ve wrestled through the initial setup (which is confusing), it becomes indispensable.
I run my studio through an external digital mixer for tactile faders and hardware processing, and Cubase made routing to groups, buses, and hardware I/O both simple and reliable. Running the Control Room as my virtual monitor and DIM controller felt natural, almost too convenient.
MIDI & Scoring Tools
As someone who spends 90% of my time in MIDI and notation, this is where Cubase shines brightest.
Cubase’s MIDI tools are deep yet uncluttered. While I personally prefer MIDI Note Channels over Expression Maps, Cubase’s articulation management system remains one of the cleanest ways to control modern sample libraries. Setting up articulations is fast, assigning them is visually clear, and everything stays organised within your arrangement.
The Expression Maps recieved a big facelift in this edition making it more flexible and usable. I perticually like the articulation delay compensation, very nice touch. You can set the delay positive or negative per articulation, something you can’t do with MIDI Note Channels without scripting in Reaper.
(For readers unfamiliar: “MIDI Note Channels” assign specific MIDI channels to individual articulations with Kontakt, and then to notes so articulations are effectivly “baked in.” This makes the articulation part of the note itself, move the note or transpose it, and the articulation comes with it. It’s visually clear and gives you precise CC control per note. Cubase supports this workflow perfectly, which earns a big tick from me.)
The Score Editor is clean, responsive, and feature-packed without being overwhelming. And while Dorico is Steinberg’s flagship notation environment, Cubase’s built-in editor is excellent for mock-up’s, lead sheets, and quick engravings. More than sufficient for day-to-day theatre and orchestral work I perform, it looks gorgeous and is far easier to use than other DAW’s I’ve tested.
MIDI Hardware Integration
This is where Cubase is night and day better to Reaper. My MIDI hardware just works so incredibly well with no messing around – just tell Cubase what you have and its just works.
As an esample, I use the Yamaha Montage which is always a complete bear to use with its weird hybrid MIDI I/O mode, I’m constantly juggling between internal hybrid mode and external remote for MIDI control in Reaper, its an actual headache all the time. But in Cubase its like the clouds parted and angles started singing – everything locked in immediatly and I had zero issues controlling MIDI channels, MIDI CC through the crazy ‘zones’ system the Montage uses, and even its internal motion control worked flawlessly.
Likewise, my Akai MPD218 just worked, another device I struggle to setup correctly in Reaper. Another big one, the Mackie Control also works way betting in Cubase, having more control over my external digital console is so very nice now.
Performance & Stability
I’ve always believed Reaper was the fastest DAW on the market. And honestly, I still think it holds that crown, but Cubase came far closer than I expected. Loading large instruments and heavy plugins felt surprisingly snappy, and navigating big sessions never gave me the “old Cubase lag” I was half expecting to encounter.
To get a fair comparison, I spent a good chunk of time running proper apples-to-apples tests: identical projects, identical track counts, identical routing setups, and absolutely no third-party plugins or fancy instruments. Just pure DAW horsepower. And while Reaper still edges out Cubase in raw responsiveness, the difference is much smaller than I’d assumed.
What really impressed me was how well Cubase handled massive orchestral templates. I’m talking 500+ tracks of routing, articulations, folders, and busy MIDI data, Cubase didn’t even flinch. Clearly this is one of Steinberg’s priorities; when composers like Hans Zimmer rely on the platform for cinematic-scale projects, he’s not loading up a dozen MIDI tracks and calling it a day.
Some will argue Cubase includes a far bigger suite of high-performance built-in effects than Reaper, but I’m not convinced that’s a decisive factor. Reaper’s JS effects might look like something dragged out of a mid-90s shareware CD, but they’re ludicrously efficient and sound every bit as clean as Cubase’s stock plugins. At the end of the day, most producers instinctively reach for their favourite third-party processors anyway, regardless of how good the DAW’s own offerings are.
Now, there is a huge caveat here, because there is one area Reaper massivly outperforms Cubase, and thats with Track Presets. In Cubase a Track Preset containing Kontakt (or any other multitimbral sampler) takes forever to load as Cubase pre-loads the entire sampler structure, regardless whether you’ve disabled and purged all the sample data. On a full orchestral library, this could easily be 10-12 minutes + per library.
In Reaper, it’s version is called Track Templates, and they load instantaneously. You can completly load a full library in seconds as no actual data is being loaded until you enable the track – and even then, it only loads unpurged samples. So if you’re clever and purge all samples before saving, your complete orchestral template will load in seconds.
I personally use Track Templates for everything in my daily composing (rather than creating a single massive orchestral template), so this is a major issue for my workflow. Its just the preloading time which is a pain, once loaded it runs perfectly fine, so Cubase user would want to set everything up to load, and go make a cup of coffee while it did its thing.
So ignoring this, all the stock effects/instruments and judging purely on engine speed, Reaper still has a slight advantage, emphasis on slight. Cubase can lose a bit of that snappy feel on monster 100 track+ projects, and once you start sprinkling EQ and compression across dozens of channels, things can bog down in ways Reaper tends to shrug off.
But the days of Reaper leaving every other DAW choking in its dust are long gone. Cubase 15 is fast. Faster than I expected. And absolutely capable of handling modern professional workloads without complaint.
Crashes & Glitches
Now the other side of that coin: I had some truly scary crashes. Cubase has mostly been running flawlessly, but when it decides to hiccup it does it with fireworks.
One special occasion when I tired loading various major resource hog plugins (Spitfire Audio Abbey Road and BT Phobos come to mind), the entire system came to a screeching halt, causing my audio driver to crash hanging my digital mixer and the Nvidia graphics driver for my entire system to hang. I needed to hobble along at what felt like 1-frame per second until I could hard-close down the entire system.
Fun times. And easily repeatable, so I could record the process for the support people to see.
And this is where I encounter the actual major issue to Cubase – the support is quite litrally non existent.
There is no easily accessible support service at Steinberg – at all anywhere. The only course of option you have is to either rely on the forums/Google search, or go through your local Yamaha dealership here in New Zealand. After a week I finally got a rather confused reply from some intern who I don’t think even understood what Cubase was. My support ticket was put through someone else who asked me to force-crash my system again so I could provide session logs for them, and then radio silence for over 3-weeks now.
I’ve since given up and moved on.
Unfortunatly, this wasn’t the only isolated major crash I experienced.
- Twice my entire system crashed when exiting a project after saving it. Reboot required.
- Very glitchy performance after running true ARA plugins within the lower zone project window
- A random complete system crash while using the stem seperation funtion.
And without access to support I cannot unfortunatly inform you of any fixes or resolutions to the problems other than they seem to happen very infrequently, but catastrophically when they do. The big takeaway: Save, save and resave constantly.
On the bright side, Cubase’s auto-backup system is excellent. After a major crash my projects were always fully saved and reverted. Almost like Steinberg spent a lot of time working on this feature due to so many irregular and untraceable errors.
Things I Struggled With
Since we’re complaining, lets look at the elements within Cubase I found subpar (from a Reaper user point of view).
Routing Is… Well, Simple
Internal routing in Cubase is good, but not user friendly. Even after a few dedicated tutorial sessions, the mixer’s deep-layer routing behaviour still feels like it belongs to another era. Once you get it, you’re fine, but this is an area Steinberg could absolutely modernise.
In stark contrast, Reaper’s routing is incredibly easy and done directly on the track. Internal routing is done using simple drag and drop system, plus a simple grid matrix is available for larger routing processes.
Project & Track Management
For a composer, this is a critical part of the workflow. Large orchestral projects routinely stretch into the hundreds of tracks, and clear, reliable track management is essential if I’m going to see exactly what I need at any given moment.
Reaper’s Track Manager remains the gold standard here. Cubase’s visibility tools work well enough, but they feel clumsier and often require more clicks than necessary. In Reaper, the Track Manager gives you global control over track visibility across the entire project. Arrange and mixer visibility can be toggled independently, tracks can be colour-coded, renamed, reordered, grouped, and even separated, all from a single panel. MIDI channels can be set, organisational separators added, and complex layouts managed with ease. None of this is possible in Cubase in the same way.
While Cubase does offer solid tools for showing specific track states, it simply isn’t as deep or as flexible. In Reaper, scripting allows me to filter and display tracks based not just on whether they contain MIDI, but on what kind of MIDI, specific channels, articulations, or even playing styles. I can show only staccato instruments, only kick drums, or any combination I can imagine, instantly.
Most producers won’t need this level of control, but for orchestral and theatre-style composing it’s invaluable. It’s very common for me to zoom out and work on the entire project, then immediately narrow my focus to a single articulation, instrument group, or MIDI channel. Cubase offers a version of this functionality, but it’s far more basic. Reaper, by comparison, feels purpose-built for this kind of detailed, large-scale work.
Key Commands
A huge area for me is my massivly customised key command setup in Reaper. I use an external Razor Tartrus as a controller whcih has perhaps 50-60 custom key commands split between it and my main keyboard, so I’m locked in to some serious tech-nerd level muscle memory problems I just cant break overnight.
Cubase has what I would call adequate key command customisation, but I’ve encountered some very frustrating limitations.
Cubase’s menu system is pretty much hard-locked as well, you can’t create custom menus or buttons. My Reaper interface is completly scripted to my perfect workflow needs, sure it’s not a slick as in Cubase, but its very minimal and 100% only what I need and want to see.
Instrument Scaling
Some of the bundled FX and instruments simply don’t scale to high-resolution displays. In 2025, that’s something Steinberg really should address.
While the entire Cubase GUI can be scaled, its in increments of 25% up or down, never quite getting the sweet spot for my monitor resolution. Reaper leaves Cubase in the dust here with its excellent Track Control Panel, allowing incredible flexibility of scale, track layout, control elements and situational-awaire visibility (meaning some controls only shown when, for instnace, you’re editing MIDI or audio)
Value – The Huge White Elephant in the Room
Let’s talk money. Cubase Pro rings in at over $900 NZD, while Reaper politely knocks on your door for about $60. Is Cubase better? In most areas, proberbly yes. Is Cubase fifteen times better? Not even close – unless Steinberg quietly ships it with a free intern assistant I haven’t discovered yet.
But value is a highly conjectured subject. For a working composer who essentially lives inside their DAW – sunup to sundown, coffee to whisky – that $900 spread over five years of daily use starts to look more like an investment than a purchase, expecially if there are career-breaking functionalities within the DAW that make your professional income possible, then they could triple the price and it would still be excellent value
Still, the sticker shock is real, especially for fresh cadets and hobbyists joining the team who might feel taking the helm of the full-fat Pro edition like some kind of privileged space captain. Accessing all those sweet, top-shelf functions I’ve covered here might simply be outside their budget.
Luckily, there are saner-priced variants. And to be fair, most of what lives in the Pro edition is truly pro-level infrastructure that hobbyists, students, and casual producers will never fully tap into. Cubase Elements, at roughly $156 NZD, might be more than enough to keep someone happily composing for the foreseeable future, you still get the core workflow, the Steinberg polish, and none of the chest pain from the credit card statement.
I personally feel it better to not cripple the feature-set, effectivly making the DAW a poor experience for everyone except the upper echelon professionals. But, perhaps to limit the included content which is proberbly where the fresh R&D money is invested.
Traction Waveform’s free core model might be taking it a bit far, but a Reaper-competitive core Pro edition with paid DLC would make the entire Cubase universe more accessible to new users.
But regardless of which version you’re eyeballing, the question has to be asked: why is there such a massive price gap in the first place? And the answer is both simple and mildly infuriating – a combination of legacy ecosystem, professional expectations, and, yes… proberbly marketing.
Conclusion
Reviewing Cubase Pro 15 has been a bit of a rollercoaster, but a genuinely enjoyable one. Yes, it can be maddening at times, particularly when it comes to quirks and Steinberg’s less-than-stellar support. That said, every technical issue I initially encountered has since resolved itself, and for the past several weeks Cubase has been rock solid.
I say this while cautiously touching wood.
I’ve probably been a little unfair at times by constantly comparing Cubase to Reaper, but the comparison is unavoidable. The two DAWs are remarkably similar in capability, and it’s no longer a case of the big players controlling the market by default. Modern computers are powerful enough that raw performance is rarely the deciding factor anymore, it really does come down to which DAW makes you happiest to use.
That’s where the price becomes hard to ignore. Cubase Pro sits roughly $850 NZD above Reaper, and while Steinberg does offer cheaper editions, those are far easier to outgrow – and in those tiers, Reaper simply walks all over them.
This leads to the big takeaway I will back 100%: buy the DAW that makes you happy. All modern DAWs are capable of excellent results – some just hurt a little more at the checkout.
Once you move past the credit card sting, however, Cubase Pro 15 genuinely feels like the DAW you step into when you’ve made it. There’s a sense of going from Padawan to Jedi Master, of sitting, at least philosophically, at the same table as the professionals who use it every day. That may sound superficial, but there’s something to be said for investing in a top-tier tool and taking it seriously because of that investment. If you don’t sound like Hans Zimmer straight out of the box, that’s on you, not the DAW.
I’m not here to convince anyone to jump ship. Whatever DAW you’re currently using, you can almost certainly keep using it. But if you’ve never properly tried Cubase, Steinberg’s two-month (!!) free trial is generous enough to make an informed decision without pressure.
I completely understand Cubase’s loyal following. For me, the Chord Track alone justified giving it a serious evaluation. Add stem separation, Control Room, stable VST handling, and a thoughtfully designed interface, and you end up with a DAW that feels powerful, comfortable, and quietly addictive.
If you’re after a definitive verdict, here we go: strip away bundled content, ignore price entirely, and judge purely from a composer’s perspective – Cubase is, in the long run, a more complete and refined environment than Reaper, specifically where it counts for me with MIDI hardware integration, composistion, editing and notation.
Cubase feels less like a collection of clever scripts and more like a cohesive, purpose-built system. It runs smoothly, includes a smaller but more focused set of genuinely usable tools, and benefits from Yamaha’s backing and some genuinely bleeding-edge technology that hasn’t yet filtered down to its competitors.
Most importantly, if you’re a media composer who lives in MIDI, relies on tight integration with modern orchestral libraries, or values sophisticated harmony tools, Cubase Pro 15 is absolutely worth the climb. It isn’t the easiest DAW to learn, and the price is… well, the price. But once you settle in, the workflow carries a quiet confidence that’s hard to find elsewhere.
Not perfect, but genuinely excellent.
For more information and purchasing options, head over the Steinberg’s Cubase website: www.steinberg.net
