Well actually only about 1500 years (for hand copied & 600 for printed), and even then its unlikely you or I could have read them until a couple of hundred years ago at best. Before that it was literally scrolling, or the dreaded cuneiform which was a real drag to cart around.
Seriously, it’s a cost issue. Someone in marketing looked at how much the cost of a printed vs. pdf doc set would raise the product price. I can’t think of any major software I use that hasn’t gone pdf, with maybe a slim printed getting started manual.
Regarding your icon, you should start a new thread (don’t use this one) with a subject like: what does this icon mean? Include a screen grab of the icon and I’ll bet you have the answer in no time. Typically the icons are decoded in the section of the manual that covers whatever window the icon was found in (e.g. if the icon is in the Key Editor it will be in its documentation). Also if you check the box for “show tips” in Preferences/General you should see the name of the icon if you hover over it.
Please, do not hijack my thread . This was NOT meant to be a General “Manual” discussion-thread.
I am finally repeating my advise: Read the Manual, at least roughly. Do that even if you dont yet understand the individual Points. Do not go into Details. Read the Manual with the Intention to create a mental index of what the product can do and where things are discussed.
This is extremely helpful.
And yes, just to leave no doubt: The Manual is hard for beginners and it is definitely not a good reference Manual.
If Steinberg wanted to make a great Manual it would have to privde a user guide plus a reference Manual (like the ones that come with Motif Workstations). But even those cannot address every entrypoint or every Level of the Reader.
the fact that it doesn’t come with a printed manual after paying half a grand is kind of a slap in the face… if they were REALLY worried about keeping costs down why didn’t they just ditch the “e licenser” and distribute it via download?(most of us have ilok’s anyways) Native Instruments gives you an external hard drive instead of DVD’s… if they can “splurge” on a usb 3.0 TB external I think it’s safe to say I’m a bit insulted. and the fact that they don’t really point you towards it, but they do shove the quickstart videos in your face… then they have “advanced” videos that don’t really seem very advanced, so I assume that is the “rest” of their tutorials/guides… I had to actually LOOK for more information… and I do admit my eyes skimmed right past the word “operational” a handful of times… when trying to take in a lot of information at once(a foreign interface) we tend to look at the first half of the first line to decide if we need to keep reading. they could literally DELETED THE WORD in front of “Manual” and I guarantee you there wouldn’t be people posting on the forums ASKING where the manual is. yes- im nit picking at the wording. something that Cubase seems to royally flunk on… looking for something? try looking for ANYTHING ELSE, it’ll probably be called that instead.
fed up with trying to get this thing to import a midi properly, and wading around this things clunky interface… spent a few hours in reaper just playing around and I accidently figured out how to do something 1000x more powerful than the vst3 plugin I bought Cubase for. that and even if I wanted to use the plugin reaper 5 alpha was released recently and it does vst3… reaper is also insanely powerful and flexible… does things literally no other daw can do. I put in a request at sweetwater to see if I can’t just return this thing and spend my money on something that I might get a use out of. if I just use this daw to render stems through vst3’s I would have just bought fruityloops… and im glad I got to play with expression maps… thought it was more sophisticated… by the time you’re done setting everything up for it to work you could have just loaded kontakt player with reaper with all the articulations on different midi channels, then recorded/painted in the notes and simply right clicked a note(or selection) and just changed the midi transmit channel… or automated the midi channel. make your own keyswitches - whatever you need. I can even map the mod wheel to the pre-fx signal mic recording a dog barking.
one theme here on the forums is that most people I see making posts aren’t happy and considering I needed help with a very “simple” procedure and no one helped, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t a place I’m interested in spending my time. and before you open your mouth - yes I read the manual for the specific problem im having. even posted saying that I had TRIED that and it had no result. and ofcourse someone had to come in and quote the manual line that I’d already stated I’d done.
Cubase is my daw of choice for death metal… not for recording it, but getting inspiration.
Something that might be helpful for new users - and easier to set-up than a new or printed manual - would be a general glossary of methods & terms. If you’ve come to Cubase from another DAW, the jargon can be a little mystifying initially, even if you feel fairly at home with other DAW’s, (e.g. “vst connections” having nothing to do with vst plug-ins, ‘bounce’ vs ‘flatten’ vs ‘freeze’, what on earth is a ‘child bus’, etc.) - and a glossary could help users avoid getting in lost in an index black hole. Even among experienced users in this forum, you can see people debating at cross purposes due to confusion over basic terminology.
Or just sell a version that’s been “translated” to the language every other daw uses… but yeah cubase is basically a high school girl on the emotion + communication level… you have to learn when she says x she means y. And when she does y she calls it z.
Sigh!!!
If you start a thread where you are advising people to read the manual, you are going to get a discussion of the manual.
There have been a number of times I have read part of the manual, been confused and gone to You Tube for clarity.
The thing about a manual is context. The assumption that you know a number of other techniques or concepts related to the explanation is often the problem with manuals.
I am a teacher and I know that my students do not learn from a text book alone. The teacher contextualises the information in the text book and gives practical exercises to help that information make sense. Manuals only really begin to make sense when you have acquired a sufficient level of knowledge and experience. Unfortunately many people find that understanding the way language is used can also be a barrier to comprehension. This can be exacerbated by the use of technical jargon. When I started I was very confused as to what a “clip” was. Go to the index to find “clip” and you see a reference to clip editing - it tells you all about editing a clip, but not what a clip is.
Reading the manual is useful, but not always helpful.
So how do you expect people to express their displeasure? There were a lot of complaints about MCU not working or the Click not functioning properly. The first being the second time Steinberg has got this wrong - the first being in Cubase 7.0.0. Some users earn their living in studios that use control surfaces and were rightly miffed. The second being an essential part of recording in a DAW - very frustrating. It annoyed/is still annoying the hell out of me.
