Hey Harley, unfortunately Win 8.1 was a bit of a band aid version of Vista (arguably the worst Win release ever, though some liked it). I spent hours with my friend trying to get his M-Audio interface working with Pro Tools on his Vista machine. It was supposed to work, cost quite a bit, eventually we gave up
. Now this was still when Pro Tools would only work with their own hardware (as M-Audio is). Like my Digi001, the S/W was free but only worked with their hardware. Now every thing (AD/DA I/O devices) is USB and you pay for the S/W and/or they come with a trial version etc. So IIRC your Focusrite 18i20 should have included a trial version of Pro Tools ?? It probably would work with a Mac but that's an expensive (and to me frustrating (they take away all my options e.g. one button mouse, no scrolly wheel, hey I'm sure it's what you are used to). But you own Cubase, you spent the $s, so learn it (makes sense).
At the end of the day, they all (Cubase, Audacity (well not so much), Pro Tools, Studio One, Reaper etc.) do much the same thing, interface with a AD/DA I/O and let you make audio compositions.
Back when this all started (from the PC S/W perspective) and prior to digital recording, there were midi sequencing programs (e.g. Creator, Noteater for Atari). Cubase has it's origins there, it was a competitor with those MIDI sequencing programs and ran on Atari (Motorola 68000 CPU), and many thought it was better. So to record a song, you could program (sequence) your drum machine (we had an early Alesis) and your keyboard (we had the infamous Korg M1), put a SMPTE time code on one track (we had a Tascam 688, 8 track + mixer cassette thingy), record all the analogue tracks (guitar, bass, vox) on the other 7 tracks, mix and, well listen to the attachment...That's how it was recorded, guitars are Rockman X100).
Digital recoding came later, sure Cubase added that capability but still had/has a sequencing flavour. Pro Tools stared life as a digital recording studio, so the layout and functions etc. seemed to be designed around what you would expect if you were in a analogue/tape studio (I found it quite intuitive). Moreover, they made their HD hardware/S/W to replace everything in a studio and became the industry standard for digital studio recoding. But they also added/included midi sequencing. I expect, over time, Cubase has caught up (on the digital recording side), and these programs have all morphed a bit, so what we see these days, and PreSonus Studio One is probably a good example, is a melding, and something new(ish) for how musicians interact with the whole process these days. Basically you have to learn (well I have to) to interact with it in a slightly different way.
I initially bought a Focusrite 8 in/out IO, I found it 1: a pain to connect (and be recognised) to my Win7 device, and 2: a bit clinical sounding, so I swapped it for a PreSonus Studio 18/24 USB, which 1: interfaced with Win7 much more easily and 2: sounded a little less stark and more "musical". The sound difference is very subtle, and in some ways the Focusrite was more accurate??, but interfacing it was a bigger difference.
IIRC you have been having issues getting Cubase and the Focusrite working consistently?? However, you have now spent quite a bit buying Cuebase and Focusrite. My feeling is, if you get your OS and PC H/W upgraded, it should come together in a good way. OK so I went with a hi end MSI laptop, and it's great (albeit not cheap $4.6k AUD). Yeah you could go Mac, but, then you are locked into the apple ecosphere, you loose quite a bit of granularity (which not everyone wants, but I do...), they are very expensive, and they have naph all I/O (your lucky if you get a thunderbolt 4 connection), let alone monitor (screen) options and a big "un learn it/what you are use to" adaption (
I'll have to learn how to use a PC from the ground up). I suspect you'd be better off learning how to drive Cubase, just saying
.
An example of the things I've found frustrating getting into Studio One vs Pro Tools, so I recorded some vox and keys, I want to put some eq and fx on the vox, ok so I right click (can't do that with a Mac
) in the "Inserts" screen, up pops a selection of effects inserts, they are all like grouped macros, e.g. Female Vox, Drums etc. So I select Female Pop vox, it inserts a Compressor, Eq and Reverb. Ok, not bad (in some ways) but the inserts are all dialled in to what "whoever" thought was what you'd want. I then dive into each Fx, not the interface I'm used to, and NOT the parameters I want to adjust (e.g. for compressor I'm used to - knee, attack time release time, pre delay, reverb time etc. ahhhhh). But unfortunately, it seems, that's how it is these days (I know grumpy old dude...).