Naturally, i’d rather have Logic, Protools, or something decent. But for something on a limited budget I’m hard pressed to choose between them. Luckily I have both….

I bought Adobe Audition 1.5 for a spectacularly cheap student price. Student discounts rule! Since then they’ve brought out version 2.0 which I’ve used at a friends studio and I hear rumors that there will soon be version 3.0 (which makes my meager 1.5 sound awfully crappy).

Cubase comes free with audio interfaces by Tascam, Lexicon, and Yamaha. You can buy it on it’s own too, if you really fancy. Most interfaces come with the ‘light’ version, but that is still very good. And it’s a bargain if you get something like a Lexicon Alpha for only $349nz. Though, personally I’d go with an interface that at least has phantom power – eg Tascam US-122. Which I have got, and it does me well. For now…. admittedly I do want something bigger and shinier with ten ton’s of inputs, and jack outputs instead of RCA’s…..

Anyway, back to my subject at hand – Cubase vs. Adobe Audition….

Adobe Audition seems to be much better for mixing in. By better I mean; it’s really user friendly, it has a really good waveform editor, lots of built in vst plug-ins, an excellent pitch correction function (IMHO waaay nicer than le ProTools one) unlimited tracks, lockable effects for when your computer can’t handle ten million reverbs in real time. Good stuff.

But Adobe Audition isn’t without fault. (Now I’m talking about version 1.5 here – if newer versions are better then yay for them ) I wish, oh how I wish, that Adobe Audition did Midi. How can I record cheesy synths, and drum machine drums if we can’t do midi? I also wish Adobe Audition had a proper grid system for editing things to a click. And I wish I could solve my Adobe Audition recording latency problem.

On the things Adobe Audition lacks, Cubase comes to the rescue. Writing with midi controllers and VST plugins is easy breezy lemon squeezy with Cubase. Even blondes like me have very little trouble. The grid is great for those quick “can’t be arsed” copy&paste demo’s. And I’ve never had the slightest problem with recording latency on Cubase. Though admittedly both programs were equally bad for monitor latency, but that doesn’t bother me so much. Who needs monitors anyway

But Cubase is a damn pain to mix in. The panning is all wrong, the bus’s are a pain in the neck, I can never get my head around the automation system. And horror of horror – I get a limited number of tracks and effects per track! How can I go completely overboard when I have limitations like that!?!?

So, neither program is close to perfect, but I’m having a good run lately by recording in Cubase, and then mixing in Adobe Audition. (And then completely screwing everything up by mastering in an old version of wave-lab that’s quite possibly from the 90′s.)

Every time I record I end up wishing I had more money to spend on gear (Specifically LogicPro… Oh yeah…) But if you’re thinking about getting some cheapy software for yourself, I’d recommend going with Cubase to start with. You can do some pretty good stuff with it if you keep it simple.

And there’s always the spectacularly free Audacity. Which keeps getting better and better I’ve noticed.