I'd love to help, but my area of strength is live performing. I've never used Cubase, but it sounds like you already know of a limitation, huh?
I dabble with Cakewalk and Power Tracks Pro, but I only do minor edits to sequences, like key change, tempo change, volume chganges etc.....
When I record audio in my studio it's done on a VSR880 with all outboard effects and mixer. I like the look and feel of knobs when I engineer.
Sorry I couldn't help, but thanx for the words of support anyway !
(I do have a lot of useless info floating around my bald head, too bad it's not what you needed!)