Cubasis 3 - DAW & Music Studio

I switched to using iPad as my main writing, and performing tool a few years ago and I had to choose which DAW was going to be my main tool. I downloaded them all and to a process of elimination Cubasis 3 has come out on top. Key reasons are that it reliably supports inter app audio, as well as a AUV3, the midi mapping is fantastic. I was even able to use an M audio, oxygen pro, without having to do any mapping as it got automatically picked up using the Mackie HUI setting. I can export both audio and midi as separate tracks to share with my Band mates. There are no rendering issues when exporting like there are with other DAWs that I tried. The built-in sampler allows me to bring in sounds from other iOS apps, such as the organ that I like in GarageBand. It just has all of the features that are Songwriter requires built-in, such as being able to pitch bend or time stretch audio without needing to do it in a separate standalone app. It recognises all of my media equipment and the routing features are fantastic and easy to use. The file management is intuitive and works perfectly with The Files app. I find the workflow better in Cubasis 3 than in Zenbeats, the workflow in Baker three is good, but it fails on rendering you threes more frequently than I would like. I had to compromise on at least one or two items with other DAWs. I don’t have to compromise on anything with Cubasis 3. There is nothing I can’t do on my iPad with Cubasis 3 that I need a desktop computer for.

I love Cubasis because it’s got everything you want in the place you want it. It makes sense to use. Coming from Logic, I feel like the learning curve wasn’t too steep. It’s expandable with interapp audio and AU. So anything missing is easy to get. Overall though, I rate it. It gets out of the way and lets you make music the way you know to. Lay a track, give effects to the channel or send the channel to an effects group, mix it up nicely through the mixer. Even some basic mastering tools. Midi or audio are both equally as easy. Loads of presets to get ideas from. Time stretch and transpose tools make it super easy to import loops into. Can freeze the tracks in place and save on CPU. Basically, they thought of everything. It’s pretty robust and it just works.

Comes out as a Zip File separately; not complete audio together. Just possibly missed out on a $400 opportunity bc of it. Booo. :(

I absolutely LOVE this app for being able to write on the go and get work done on mobile devices quickly. However I think one HUGE needed key is needing the ability to do time signature and tempo changes throughout a song & project. It’s very limiting that you can only change the time signature and tempo for the entire project and not also individual sections. I adore this app dearly and would love to see it continually be part of my workflow and see it grow. Thank you for all you do 🙏🏻 - Tommy

Anytime that I do anything on the app it freezes up and I have to restart it

Please please please add take folders! Let me start by saying: I do love this app its great. I even released an album using version 2 however I didn’t really use any of the included MiDI sounds. Mostly sounds from MODX and Omnisphere. Like version 2 this app version 3.5 it still lacks a complete way to record audio vocals or instrumental solos. There is no take folder to make a comp from different takes! Assume we Wanna record a singer or a guitar solo or a sax solo, different takes over and over to later pick the best takes and merge them into one. Logic Pro automatically makes a take folder within the same audio track, parts of this takes can than be highlighted or selected and later be merged into one comp of your favorite parts of each take. Once Cubasis has this feature and better Audio manipulation it will be Complete. It seems that the focus is on things like the metronome or fx or more mediocre midi instruments that don’t really sound that good. Let’s be real, is any professional really gonna use an acoustic piano from the included samples? Or strings or brass etc.? I think the next update should concentrate on adding real benefits to audio recording so that we can record anything we want. Like a take folders now recording vocals or instrument solos is tedious at best. I requested this feature ever since version 2 I don’t think we need another reverb or another delay or the ability to add colors or to make the metronome sound different, I think we really need for this to behave like a real DAW. (Just saying) And it’s so close !

Play stops at 11th bar regardless of anything. Verified on multiple iPads running iOS 17.4 and 17.5

After trying all of the old DAWs (Beatmaker 3, Auria Pro, Zenbeats 3, GarageBand) and the new king of the hill, Logic for iPad 2, I can say with confidence Cubasis 3 is the best choice for a DAW on iOS/iPadOS. While Logic 2.0 has arguably a few more features, there is really nothing that can’t be done now within Cubasis as a self-contained environment with the IAP, namely: HALion, Neo FM, FM Classics, and the Waves Bundle and Waves Real-Time. With these IAP, Logic’s instrument and Alchemy library are actually outmatched. Additionally, the mastering/mixing tools with the Waves Bundle are as good as Logics. Finally, with Real-Time you have one of the best auto tunes there is. The system resource management is more efficient, the workflow is much smoother, and the UI is just much more sensible and useable on the iPhone and iPad than anything else out there. If you get all of this on sale it is less than $75 for Cubasis 3 and all IAP, and you own them and can use them on iPhone and iPad. Development is ongoing and the team is very responsive to help, troubleshooting, and feature requests. I think in the next update or two, we will finally see the implementation of time sig/tempo changes, which is the main feature that differentiates Logic and Cubasis. (Mind you, Logic has AI, but that is a new feature that I do not care for nor will I ever use because I compose my own music). Aside from that, the reason I use Logic as comparison is because it is the most powerful DAW (possibly due to Apple’s access to proprietary iOS API) but only by a few measures, and to me, they are negligible completely. I feel if Steinberg wants to close the gap and take the lead, they could easily do so, but as it stands, Logic and Cubasis are on fairly equal footing, with each having its own strengths and weakness. Tempo/time sig change features and better hardware integration (like being able to map 3rd party plugin midi parameters to hardware controllers) would greatly narrow this divide. I think if the Cubasis team at Steinberg really buckles down and does these updates for Cubasis 3.7, it would be a momentous occasion for the iOS production community, and it would finally give Cubasis 3 the respect it deserves as the original gold standard of the next generation of iOS DAWs.

I tried Cubasis 3 SE and instantly fell in love with how intuitive the interface was. I’ve successfully recorded high quality audio tracks with surprisingly professional results. I use Cubasis 3 on my iPhone when I need to jot down quick ideas for a song, easily transfer it to Cubasis 3 for the iPad to continue working on it. I’ve also mastered full songs on my iPad, using their mastering suite. The support for this app is outstanding. Lars is amazing and there is a forum by which he tends to all concerns for Cubasis 3 users. I sincerely feel that this is the best professional recording app for iPad, and iPhone. I’ve also gone ahead and purchased a version for my android tablet. Recording and third party app support is not up to par with iPad and iPhone but what the heck, I still use it to jot down ideas then transfer it to the iPad. I’m highly satisfied with this recording app and intend to use it for the duration of my work in music.

Hi Cubasis team I wanna say thank you for all those beautiful updates but I have a little bit of suggestions for a next update pls take this into consideration next update pls put audio clip gain, steam splitter, put some more waves plugins specifically a vue meter for gain staging a way to quantize audio and more sounds. Thank you for all you guys do for use producer at steinberg