It would be stellar if they made an adaptive grid and combine object and range selection tools like Ableton does. Here is a short screencast I shot of what I am talking about: - YouTube
Adaptive grid: When you zoom in or out the grid is automatically adapted. In Cubase 1/16 might be great for surgical, zoomed in work. But it is not good for zoomed out, overall selections. I am constantly having to switch the time value to adapt to my view. In Ableton, you have the traditional 1/4, 1/8, etc but you also have widest, wide, medium, narrow, narrowest which adapts to zooming in. With that I very rarely have to change the grid because it’s automatic.
Combine Object/Range Tools: Combine functions of both and also have to option to move the locator to wherever I click, not just an empty space. That would cover a huge amount of common mouse tasks in the project window in just one tool.
I feel it slows me down when I have to be constantly changing tools or having to move up to the ruler to select the position of the locator (I know I can set the locator to automatically move whenever I click an empty space but I don’t like the way it’s implemented so I have it off).
Typical scenario for me in Cubase: I double click an event to edit midi. Go back to the project. Now I want to split it in half and move the parts and play from any of the splitted events. I have to select the range tool, select the area I want to split (if I had a previous range selected it’s now gone), move splitted event, select the object tool or double click the event, select the other event, move it, go to ruler and select new locator position to play from.
Ableton does this very effectively by automatically switching between range selection/locator and object selection by hovering over the top and bottom parts of the midi or audio event. So I never have to change tool, just aim the cursor at the right area and switching is done for me.
I understand not everyone might working like this so they could give us the option to use this mode in the preferences.
“Why don’t you just use Ableton?” you might ask. Well, I do for mostly electronic work. I use Cubase for orchestral work but I’ve been wanting to completely switch to Cubase so I don’t have to switch DAW’s constantly.