When comparing Cubase vs FL Studio, the Slant community recommends Cubase for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs? ” Cubase is ranked 4th while FL Studio is ranked 5th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful range of audio editing tools
Pro Supports chord tracks
Pro Quantize can automatically tighten MIDI inputs
Automatically tightens your MIDI inputs to be on time. Quantize has two modes. Hard Quantize will adjust based on strict settings (precisely on beat by default) and Iterative Quantize will adjust in increments. Excellent for keeping the human element in recordings.
Pro Incredible and well integrated EQ
Pro Great MIDI editing options
Pro Supervision
All in one plugin for advance audio analysis.
Pro Pro edition is also excellent for audio mixing
It provides all the industry requirements and features an optimized workflow for mixing.
Pro Recent updates have added some great features
Pro Sampler track
Has an awesome and easy to use sampler.
Pro Powerful, time-saving Logical Editor
Logical Editor allows customizing MIDI data according, in order to set rules to save time.
Pro All takes can be shown in a single track
When in stacked mode, all of your takes can be shown in a single track side by side. You can then select what parts of which take you need. If you are recording MIDI, the Cubase DAW allows creating a pattern that can overlap and be re-used as many times as needed.
Pro Large selection of time stretching methods
The Cubase DAW offers 11 different kinds of time stretching methods.
Pro Great summing engine
The summing engine is responsible for processing tracks and combining them into the correct output. In comparison to other DAWs, Cubase's summing engine is excellent.
Pro Direct offline processing
Apply any kind of process offline for selected single or multiple events . Without CPU load great for sound Design.
Pro Control room
A unique recording and monitoring for personal or studio use.
Pro Batch export
You can pick separate tracks to export in one pass. You can even have them open up a new project or drop in the same project automatically. Huge time saver and DSP Saver.
Pro Vari Audio better than Melodyne
Pro The industry standard for MIDI sequencing and arranging
Pro Superior sample editing
Lot's of options to edit samples on the fly with direct offline processing you can apply effects without sacrificing performance. You can even use Wavelab as an external wave editor.
Pro Allows changing a pattern in one place to effect each instance of it
Using Parts, the Cubase DAW allows creating patterns that can be re-used as many times as needed, and can be edited in a single place.
Pro Scale assistant
Great for those who are not piano players or just for quick ideas.
Pro SpectraLayers one
Great visual editing and audio separation source.
Pro AAF support
Great for those who collaborate with pro tool users.
Pro Great for Sound Design
Excellent time stretching , editing and bundled plug ins as well as powerful software instruments for creative synthesis.
Pro Best stock plug-ins
Best stock plug-ins in any DAW. Powerful yet easy to work with.
Pro MPE support
Compatible with the various MIDI controllers.
Pro Latency monitor
Great for tracking latency for each channel and plug-in.
Pro ARA2 implementation of plugins
Plugins that use the ARA2 technology can be implemented into the DAW for seamless and "native" like editing.
Pro Apple metal acceleration
Maximum performance for macOS users.
Pro Eucon support
Avid console compatibility.
Pro Intuitive layout, faster workflow
Prefer Cubase over Pro Tools and it's much less money, and you won't get gouged down the road.
Pro Harmony voices
With one click it creates up to 4 voices to harmonised your voice. Following your chords and scales with your chord track.
Pro Good Youtube trainers
If you find a person that their way of explaining things makes your life easier to understand what you are doing, you should keep going that way. That's what Dom Sigalas and Mixdown Online do on Youtube.
Pro Apple Silicon chips efficient
Cubase with Reaper are the only DAWs fully optimised and use all the cores (performance and efficientcy) with apple silicon MACs. See here.
Pro Their own Vocaling
They have Audio Alignment Panel, works pretty much as Vocaling. Included in the pro version.
Pro More features than any other DAW
Pro Free lifetime updates
With the producer or signature bundle, updates are free forever.
Pro Easy to install
No complex activation shenanigans. No dongle and such.
Pro Easy to learn DAW
The FL Studio DAW utilizes drag and drop, and can generally be learned quickly without any prior knowledge. There are also a lot of resources to help begginers and experienced users learn.
Pro Inbuilt cross 32/64bit plugin bridge
You don't need to install/configure a third party bridge.
Pro Intuitive piano roll
Piano roll is a FL Studio's instrument step sequencer. It is considered to be among the most intuitive and flexible tools for quickly creating patterns and manipulating all aspects of each note. A single left click inserts a note, while a right click deletes it. It's possible to mute notes, splice them, stretch them, add shuffle, etc quickly.
The Piano Roll caters for those new to Music Theory as well, containing an array of chords from which to choose, be it a Major, Minor, Minor 5th, Minor 9th, what have you.
Pro Scalable interface
The interface adapts to the screen size it's used on.
Pro Non-invasive DRM
Forget copy protection USB-dongles and phone-home activation. Just import a reg key file and your license is activated.
Pro Has the best startup sound
Pro Powerful Sound Editor
Edison is a great way to record and edit samples, sound effects and is a very easy way to create sample packs and sound libraries.
Pro Supports resampling
Supports resampling (non stretch) which is something some DAWs don't support.
Pro Excellent for visual learners
All the stock plugins look really nice and really show users what is being done, it's a great way to learn mixing theory for a beginner. This approach makes FL Studio easy to learn compared to other DAWs.
Pro Great support & community, lots of tutorials
Pro Flexible non-linear workflow
Pro Fully open: accepts a variety of formats
Accepts VST/VSTi (v2,v3) Wav, Aiff, Rex, Acid, Apple Loop, Ogg, Mp3 as well as almost every video format including Mov and Mp4.
Pro Sampler
FL Studio has a very unique sampler which allows all kinds of sounds to be experimented with, be it a siren, a water drop, or more commonly, the infamous "Progressive House" Kick. The Sampler also allows the user to retune a sample to any key he/she desires.
Pro Very comprehensive plugin suite included
You have basic and advanced plugins right out the box.
Pro Each update is major
When Image Line releases an update, it's safe to assume that there are major improvements in there.
Pro Unlimited creativity
With tools in the piano roll like the "Riff Machine", and the "Randomize" tool, you can literally let the computer automate the production if you want. In addition to plugins like "Gross Beat", Slicex, DirectWave, the ideas can be limitless.
Pro Good for the studio
Some DAWs are good for live shows, some DAWs are good for production, but the FL Studio DAW has carved its niche in the studio recording arena.
Pro Smooth UI
Compared to other DAWs, FL's UI moves at full monitor refresh rates while others are somehow laggy.
Pro Can import/export 32bit audio
Just as the internal engine bit depth, there's no loss in quality.
Pro It comes as VSTi and Rewire
So you can use it inside another DAW. There's no other DAW capable of doing that.
Pro The only DAW with a VJ graphic generation suite (ZG Editor Visualizer)
No other DAW has that.
Pro Fully vectorial UI that will scale to virtually every screen
Because most DAWs don't scale well yet.
Pro Sample/MIDI Manipulation in the Playlist Mode
The Playlist mode comes with various tools for cutting out sections of a sample, midi arrangement, or otherwise. One can also clone, mute, solo out, and stretch a sample by any degree, although the sample's key will change.
Pro Flexible internal linking engine
Its linking engine and controller plugins are very flexible and useful all across the software. For mixing and also for performance mode.
Pro Patcher: Modular environment
Patcher is similar to Max for Live in Ableton and The Grid in Bitwig and allows you to build your own complex generator and effect chains.
Pro Perfect for engineering because of the production style workflow
The workflow for creating beats in FL Studio is among the fastest which make mixing and mastering a breeze inserting plug-ins and routing on the mixer.
Pro It is the only DAW where you can program real scratching sequences (Turntablism)
You can make your own scratches with the "Fruity Scratcher" or "Wave traveller".
Pro Imports video for scoring
You can open several video players.
Pro It's possible to run FL Studio on Linux via Wine without a noticeable performance impact
Version 12 of FL Studio includes a new Generic ASIO driver that's capable of achieving same low latency performance as the native Windows version. Instructions on how to set up the DAW to run on Linux via Wine can be found here.
Pro Reasonable and liberal license
Buy once, and you're allowed to use it on every computer you own.
Pro Amazing sequencer to input midi
Pro perfect for arrangement and homerecording
Pro Complete control over multiple Launchpad Pro animation lightshow projects
Live can, but working with more LPs is a pain.
Pro Shows other instrument notes in background if needed
Pro A lot of good synthesizers and instruments (over 30)
E.g. Harmor, Flex, Sakura, Sawer, Sytrus, Poizone...
Pro FL is famous for its great sequencer
Great software for creating rhythms.
Pro Well-functioning mobile version
Pro Large number of effects (approx. 70)
E.g. GrossBeat, Newtime (tuning), Patcher (own complex generators and effect chains), Maximus, Soundgoodizer...
Pro Built in Audio Visualizer
Game Editor . lets you make cool sound-triggered animations in no time
Pro Soundgoodizer
HAHA Soundgoodizer goes brrrrrr
Pro Very flexible timeline
Pro Best stretching algorithms in the market
Pro Developed by a team of friends
Cons
Con Quite expensive
This costs significantly more compared to other DAWs.
Con Confusing pages
The Cubase DAW displays pages that tend to confuse users.
Con Not the best look
It looks a bit old and unorganized, If you come from another DAW like logic or Studio one, Cubase looks old.
Con Not beginner friendly
Con Runs poorly
Con Installs third-party software on your computer (e-licenser)
But needs no dongle.
Con Export Menu is not intuitive and bad
Con Not the most stable of DAWs; crashes relatively often
Software is relatively unstable. It is quite temperamental and can crash at times, especially when you're working on big projects.
Con Not the DAW for tech savvy users
Con Not what it used to be
The new updates kind of ruin the old classy feel.
Con Poor sample editing
The sample editor isn't too great and there's no option to launch external sample editors.
Con Closed source
Con Lack of built-in noise reduction
There's no built-in noise reduction FFT profiler like you might see in some other DAWs. There's noise gate but it's not the same. If you're on Windows, then you can get around this by downloading ReaFir.
Con A small number of slots for effects in the channel (max 16)
Con The Browser is archaic
Every time it has to refresh, it closes the entire menu. So if you just navigated several dropdowns to find an automation parameter of a third party plugin and you want to automate a second parameter, you have to navigate back to that dropdown all over again. Searching within the browser is a slapped on feature that only shows you a single result at a time, and you have to press a hotkey to cycle through them one by one. Really, your browser in FL is the Windows File Explorer, or Finder in OS I assume. The FL Browser is workflow molasses and should be avoided at all costs except to find samples you already know the location of.
Con Not intuitive for track based recording approach
Con Shortcuts are weird
And non-reconfigurable.
Con Audio recording not as good as the other DAWs
Recording audio is always a problem in FL Studio.
Con The GUI is very difficult to see
The color scheme of GUI is terrible. They use a lot of dark and similar color for the GUI.
Con Most controls are hidden
In the mixing console, mid, bass, and treble are not explicitly stated as they should be.
Con Limited number of 125 mixer channels (500 tracks) and 10 effects slots
You can use the Patcher plugin or routing to the next channel, but it does not always work efficiently and properly
Con Not great for Mixing
Every channel should have input gain controller and extra plugins should be added for more creativity.
Con No Dolby Atmos / Surround
Con Lack of other midi keyboard brands
Con A
Con Bad sound for expensive piano plugin
Rendered using the same MIDI note and compared it to the render on other daws, it's really bad.
Con Crashes when loading plugs
Con Brak ARA (komunikacja audio np. z Melodyne/VocAlign)
Con Has a slight tendency to crash
Always save before loading a new VST or doing something important: FL is prone to crashes.
Con The soundfont player will trash your projects, no 64-bit version available
Remember that nice project with a soundfont in it ? Yeeeah, load it again and prepare to face stuck MIDI notes and a trashed project.
Con No channel folder and channel grouping in mixer
Con No Saturator
Only Waveshaper, Fast dist, Maximus + Soundgoodizer.
Con Proprietary
Con Can not customize the GUI
Can not change the UI as you like.