steinberg cubase le comes bundled with a bunch of different hardware and cubase elements is
the next upgrade after le and ai and recently i was asked is it worth it to do the upgrade so
in this video i'm going to look at steinberg cubase le versus cubase elements 11 and then
i'm going to let you decide if it's worth it for the upgrade for yourself i'm zane welcome
to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can unleash your
creative beast and just so you know this video is not sponsored i purchased the upgrade to
cubase elements and i have no affiliation with steinberg as of the recording of this video now
first let's look at cubase le and see what it's all about it's a free piece of software
that you get with various audio interfaces and hardware recorders and i think i've gotten like
four different licenses for it and basically you get the same audio engine and workflow of cubase
pro but there are some track limitations and you don't get all of the same features or plugins
but it is a great piece of software for a lot of us home studio musicians that don't require a lot
of fancy stuff and we use third party plugins anyway but cubase led does come with 23 effects
and these are very nice effects including a guitar amp sim you also get a couple of instruments
like the halion sonic se synth and you also get groove agent se which is a great drum instrument
you also get the chord track and chord assistant that can really help you compose your songs
now some of the main limitations of cubase le are you can only have up to 16 audio tracks 24
midi tracks and 8 vst instrument tracks which is actually quite a bit maybe even more than most
of our laptops and computers can handle anyway also with ellie you can only have eight physical
inputs and outputs again this is plenty even for recording drums this will be fine plus
there's no comp recording in le which is a feature that's very useful but it's also not available in
cubase elements so comparing the two it's not really a factor so if you purchased a piece
of hardware that does come with a cubase le license you might want to stick with it
as it is a pretty powerful oem daw and you can create great tracks with it now let's look at
some of the features that you unlock when you upgrade to cubase elements 11. with elements
11 you have a much higher track limit as you can have 48 audio tracks instead of the 16
you can also have 64 midi tracks instead of 24 and 24 vst instrument tracks instead of just
eight so already this has opened up your projects for more possibilities and in addition to that
you also have up to 24 physical hardware inputs and outputs so if you're like me
and you like to use outboard compressors and eqs and mic preamps and you still want to have
open mic preamps on your audio interface this allows you to do that with cubase elements 11
you get the same instruments as le but you also get another instrument called prologue and this is
an analog style subtractive synth so with the drum instrument and the two synthesizers you're really
ready to create some great tracks and another thing to note here is that with cubase le the
combined number of sounds from the instruments is over 185 but with cubase elements that number
increases to over 1000 sounds so let's quickly check out all three instruments right now
cubase le includes 23 vst effects plugins whereas cubase elements 11 includes 47 vst effects plugins
and these are all really high quality great sounding effects and one of my favorites
that's included with both le and elements is the grungeolyzer this is a lo-fi plug-in that
can add some noise and static to your tracks it can be a cool effect to add every now and then
to a few tracks here and there and another effect that's included in both len elements
is the amp simulator which is a nice easy to use guitar amp sim but with elements you also get the
vst amp rack which takes this to another level with more amps and cabinets that you can choose
from plus you also get some stomp boxes in there as well there are quite a few other plugins and
really you could easily create music using only the included effects and instruments if you wanted
to but of course you can bring in third-party plugins into both ellie and elements and one
other thing to note about elements is that it allows for sidechaining le does not plus in cubase
elements you get the arranger track and i enjoy using the arranger track in any daw that i use
it can save time and easily help you to arrange your song the best way possible
cubase le doesn't give you this feature so this is a great bonus in elements for me and there are
several other differences but these are some of the big ones for me so back to the question is it
worth it to upgrade to cubase elements 11 from cubase le well that all depends on your needs
do you need those extra tracks the added hardware inputs and outputs that extra instrument and all
of those added effects that you get plus the sounds that you get and is sidechaining
something that's important to you if you answered yes to any of those questions then you might want
to consider upgrading to cubase elements 11. typically you'll get the upgrade offer for 50 to
upgrade to the elements version and really that's not bad considering everything that you're getting
in one of the industry leading daws so only you can answer that question if it's worth upgrading
for me yes it was and i'm actually considering doing a video where i record a song and i only use
the stock plugins that are included with cubase elements 11. so if you're interested in that
let me know down in the comments and i'll create that video if you're not interested in it then i'm
not going to create it as it takes time to make these videos and i don't want to create something
you're not interested in now if you are interested in seeing what the best daw for you might be click
the video on the screen right now or click the one under it to see what youtube recommends for you if
you liked this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos
like this thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon