What I’m going to write is nothing new, anyway …
I love Cubase and am a big fan for more than twenty years (yes, I’m old I guess).
I can’t think of any more comprehensive DAW, and therein maybe lies the source that, we still have many problems which need to be solved before you introduce new features. In fact with every new feature we get a new set of bugs or inconveniences (Expression Map problem, new “features” like the pop-up side bars etc.)
You guys are great at what you do but please do not loose focus and first do what has to be done before you continue to give us new tools.
Likewise I’m here because of Cubase and Wavelab, but I actually think Steinberg’s virtual instruments are great.
(I think Groove Agent 4 is a masterpiece: a great mix of jamming inspiration, sound quality and ease of use - up there with Stylus RMX and BFD but with better, more immediate and more controllable jamming)
the VST Instruments Development Team is not the Team developing Cubase, Nuendo or WaveLab, but a separate one.
If the concern is shifting resources from, say, Cubase to the VSTi development… this is not the case.
I replied that I could care less about new instruments. I have enough third party synths to last a lifetime. In fact, I refuse to use proprietary synths/effects because of the state of the modern daw software. If I run into a bug or a glitch, I want to fully port that project over to a new host and finish my work. Make it where I can use the bundled synths/effects in other hosts, and I’ll give them a chance.
Thank you for your quick reply and for reassuring us that Cubase’s development will not suffer because (as many of us might already have guessed) you have separate teams for diverse software. I would not dare to criticize your companies inner workings, but as any other company, Steinberg has a finite supply of manpower that it can employ; and it is again Steinberg who decides how to split that manpower.
I would assume that Cubase is Steinberg’s flagship product, and as such, I’m worried, that even with a dedicated teams, it does not get the full resources that it might deserve.
We all know that you are doing your best to keep Cubase where it rightfully belongs: At the Top.
Cubase is “still” the reference DAW by which all other DAW’s are measured, let’s keep it that way.
For my part, I especially need new features instead of bug fixing, for HALion in my case. For the simple reason that there are no major bugs that I see in this program so far, only minor ones.
So I would like to thank Steinberg for this survey to which I replied, but I hope they watch closely the Feature requests section of the forums too.
There will always be bugs anyway. I don’t think they should sacrifice development to focus on bug fixing.
Sorry Fabio I don’t understand. Can you please clarify?
The VST Instruments Development Team is a separate one. But how do they get paid if it’s not from Steinberg? If it is from Steinberg, then aren’t resources i.e money/budgets, being shifted from the team developing Cubase, Nuendo or Wavelab to the VST Development Team?
I realize it could be more complicated than what it looks like on the surface. Maybe Steinberg gets some type of royalties or Halion profits subsidize all the VST’s in Cubase?
Hello Fabio, thanks for the response, don’t take this as a bashing towards you or steinberg, I deeply love cubase and I am making my living out of it. I also like steinberg vsti, even though I don’t use them as much as third party ones.
I don’t know of you have been reading the open plea threads, now it has become somewhat circular, but I wanted to ask you:
-Can you give us a reason as not to engage in some kind of comunication with your customers? A lot of people in that threads is asking for old bugs fixing, but also some kind of info or timeframe…so,
-Is too much to ask for a simple "we think we will have VCA record arm issue, disabled tracks loosing settings, etc. fixed by this or that update"
so we can know you are working in those items (or others) in particular? In case you don’t make it for that update, at least we have some comunication. We are thankful that you are pushing the envelope with new features in every version, but, two flagship features like VCA and disabling tracks have been broken for a year.
We need some dialog Fabio, a little conversation between steinberg an its users, not surveys.
I appreciate the point Fabio, but when I filled out the survey (before reading this thread) I was clear in my comments that I would prefer Steinberg devote more resources to DAWs and less to VSTi’s. While they may be different teams, if we go far enough up the corporate food-chain someone is deciding to invest X resources in Team A, and Y resources in Team B, Since there is no mechanism that allows us to provide feedback to those decision makers, we end up using whatever channels become available. And I’d encourage others to do the same.
That said, it might be unrealistic to expect the VSTi team to recommend that they be downsized based on their own survey results. Reallocated is a better word.
It’s only a guess but I’d say that for various reasons (technical/financial/marketing/whatever), it’s hard to be sure what can be delivered and how long it will take so too much communication can get you into trouble. Look at Avid, talking about the ‘Pro Tools Cloud’ for nearly two years yet it hasn’t been delivered. Then people are crying out ‘Where’s the Cloud you promised us???’.
Steinberg said nothing, but then VST Transit appears. I prefer that than 2 years of talking about it.
Hmm… I don’t know, but I think Steinberg got the message about bug hunting by now.
No need to start the same routine with every survey in my opinion…
And I also think that an DAW is a whole other design/development concept and environment than a VST instrument.
I do not think it is as easy as some people seem to believe here, to pull people from the VST design group out to the DAW design/bug hunting group. That is a whole different discipline, and I guess it takes months -if not years- to get so comfortable with all ins and outs of the DAW to even remotely start on some comfortable level of effective bug hunting. Anybody that has ever worked in a software design environment knows what I am talking about.
So - I get what Fabio is telling here. I really think that this survey is not connected to Cubase itself, and resources will not be “shifted” to (or from) VST instrument design.
I can’t delve into financial stuff, not my duty and happy that way, sorry.
I’ll just say that like in every company, a different product made by a different team generate its own revenues and belongs to a different cost center.
About the communication, that can certainly be improved - I’ll be very straight and realistic.
Yes, I’ve been reading the ‘plea thread(s)’, everyone did. The people in charge replied there, but to address all of the points raised would take a few more people… It has been asked, for example, to be be updated and to communicate about bug fixing and such, sort of a confirmation that Steinberg works on that.
Of course Steinberg does, based on the Forum, mails, phone calls, beta testers, internal testing, QA.
To communicate what’s going on in detail against what is being discussed on the forum is, honestly, not possible. We’re talking about thousands of tasks which you cannot just review reading the title.
Besides that, there is what can be communicated in a responsible manner. To promise a specific fix giving a timeframe is often difficult, as you never know what can happen - i.e. I’m telling you today the ‘silence on automated tracks’ and ‘flickering when using slice/pencil/line tools’ issues are fixed in 8.5.10 (real-world examples ), what if another task breaks it and I promised something not coming?
Rest assured there is a LOT in the works which goes unseen at the moment.
Thanks for the response Fabio, I would like to point out that even though the people in charge responded, they did with a survey that had anything to do with what we were asking. If steinberg is aware that comunication could be improved, why don’t ask the customers what sort of comunication they need…I think is the best approach possible. Then you can decide if it is doable or not.
are the fixes you mentioned coming to cubase 8.0? Or do we have to upgrade to 8.5?
I would like to point that what you are doing here IS comunication, and even if sometimes we can get answers we don’t necessarily like, I appreciate your feedback and responses!.
+1! Thank you so much for that communication, Fabio!
Would like to ask - are the following also looking to be addressed/fixed in 8.5.10?
Enabling a previously disabled track results in MIDI input settings, Quick Control settings, and expression map data being lost after saving, closing, and reopening: Steinberg Forums (A confirmed/collected issue, does that mean everyone has it?).
Similarly, a “Yes, in 8.5.10” … or a “No, but in a later version” … or a “Not quite sure yet” … or even an “Engineers can’t reliably reproduce, but are looking at it” would go a long way towards happiness!
Thanks again for the great communication in this post!!
… what if another task breaks it and I promised something not coming?
I can only speak for myself with certainty, but I suspect many others might agree:
If that situation did come to pass, and then you came back and said something like, “Hey, we were really hoping to get that done like we discussed, but this other task broke it, and it set us back … I’ll let you know when we have a better idea when it will get fixed again.” …
That would be absolutely, completely, totally, and without question … NOT a problem in the least!
There is no perfection expected, I may not be a computer expert but am smart enough to know that “flower” happens in any situation.
So, please don’t feel that if Steinberg found itself in that situation that they would have made things worse! The communication that went on before it would make things so much better!
Those are my bigest issues, if you fix them I would be very happy.
Regarding closing folders I have somewhat found what could be happening, but I am not in the computer now to make a repro report.
In my case It seems that if you have a multi out instrument track in a folder and you unfold the outs of that instruments and then hide all automation it closes the folder.
The weird thing is…if you fold again the outputs of that track it continues closing the folder with the hide automation command.
If you have a template saved in previous versions, and you have 8.5 you should take the tracks of the folders and then put them in new folders and resave, maybe that helps.
Reallocated is a better word.