Is Cubase Elements good enough for the classroom?

[Symbiosis]

There is a huge price difference between Elements and the other versions and it seems at first glance to offer enough functionality - is there any reason why Cubase Elements would NOT be a good idea over the other versions please?

[Steve21]

We found we needed artist minimum.

 

Combination of the plugins you get, and need for midi inputs for guitar/keyboards etc.

 

Steve

[Symbiosis]

Thanks Steve, can you elaborate a little for me please. As far as I understand, Elements gives you 64 midi and 48 audio tracks (more than enough for our students I would think), we use NI Bandstand for all our VST (not officially supported but seems to run fine) so instruments not an issue. The only thing I'm not sure about is what we would be missing in terms of effects etc?

[Steve21]

I'll try to find out, but I'm sure that's midi tracks, not inputs the one you mean.

 

As it's also limited to something like 3 VST instruments on Elements so you couldn't create a full piece with VST etc.

 

One sec will try to find what I was reading originally.

 

Steve

[Symbiosis]

Thanks Steve, looking at this comparison list Line-upÂ:ÂÂ|Âhttp://www.steinberg.net/ it would seem that Elements offers 16 VST instrument slots (so presumably you can have 16 VST tracks) but limits the number of VST instruments to 3 (which is fine for us as we only use 1 - Bandstand VSTi). We are thinking we may install 1 version of Artist so the students can create a basic piece in Elements (probably fine for the majority of them) and can then open it up in Artist if they need any further features

[Sylv3r]

The previous music teacher we had here, always said to us that Elements wasn't good enough for our Sixth Form students. So we always paid for the better version.