Automation writing in Cubase is incredibly poor

Maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe my controller isn’t good enough, but from my perspective - this is something good innovative coding can account for.

I’m using Korg padKontrol rotary pot faders to write the automation. I’ve played with the reduction level in Cubase but can never really seem to get a result or response I am happy with. It’s either removing too much or is too inaccurate, or it’s stepped and blocky. Slow adjustments are stepped with the reduction low, so you adjust the reduction to be high, but then fast adjustments/curves are triangulated.

A few things, first, this could just generally be improved I’m sure.


I would like to see a a feature in Cubase that gives automation lanes “track versions”. The first “track version” is a raw data track that shows the basic midi input values 1-127 which would looked stepped. This track would always (or maybe by option) be a background track version, as Cubase would automatically create a automation track version that features algorithmic smoothing/reduction/etc, - ie this is what you would see when you are writing automation (should be able to be down in “real time”, minor delay) and what is shown when finished. If you need to, or are unhapy with certain sections, you can go to the raw data track version for reference and take automation points and copy them to the other track or create a new one and combine the best of both.

But absolutely automation writing in Cubase needs to improved greatly. It’s actually fairly useless.

i agree with some points! i like automation has it is tho, few adjustments would be nice but i strongly feel what you said about that inaccurate writing. Even with 0 % reduction cubase squares the result, and that is unlogical. That is why i made this request some time ago:

It’s clear that the reduction/smoothness of automation writing needs to take into account the speed of which a parameter is moving. Ie, if the parameter change is slow, reduction needs to be high (straight line is better than steps), and if the parameter change is fast or moderate with a curve, reduction level needs to be low.

This is mostly just the visual representation that shows steps.
I agree that it could be improved and should be more intuitive.
I would not call it poor at all, dated perhaps.

I don’t think it is just visual because drawing it with the pencil does not have this effect and the actual resolution of the automation is actually much greater than MIDI resolution - it’s clearly when using MIDI which only has 127 values that this is a problem. You can hear it with certain effects as well such as a resonant filter sweep.

It’s definitely the hardware side of data resolution that is lacking in the industry, but it would be nice to see some good clever coding/features to account for this.

See picture below, Sends Level 1 is what I automated using Korg padKontrol

I hope to see some improvement in the automation area.

On my side i wish those :

-Macro control
-Bezier curve
-Rename CC Line
-The “range selection” tool is only available in the Project window or in the “Edit In-Place”, it really need to be also available in the “Key editor” for different purposes like to copy quickly some automation in sync with the grid…

I almost never do filter sweeps, mostly recording/mixing local rock and blues bands.
For that use the automation is just about “good enough”.
Just to clarify where i’m coming from :slight_smile: