Cubase 6

What’s this I’m reading about Media Bay being a pain in the butt?
Is this true? Can it be turned off so it’s not a pain in the butt?
Is it not good for workflow?

Cheers
Phil

Each problem you heard about MEDIABAY is probably merely due to working ‘outside the box’. It is a good tool that allows you to quickly find loops and samples to use in your productions.


Even I had ‘issues’ with media bay but as mentioned it was because I was trying to work ‘outside the box’. I will explain my problem.


First lets see Media bay interface:

As you can see it makes finding your samples/loops quite easy but here was my dilemma…


ONE and only one of the many sound library producers I buy from had a contest… it was “MAKE THE BEST SONG USING ONLY OUR LOOPS/WAV’s”

WOW !

I was stumped… I never did find a way to sort or list my material by manufacturer and had to manually search my hard drives (completely ignoring media bay) in order to get that task done.

What I needed was some way to BATCH identify loops/wavs - Now that I think about it again - a new idea just hit me… Index by folder name (now sub folders will cause a problem) - but all that is from ‘thinking outside the box’ and many of the problems with mediabay are simply attempting to push it too far.

Just like my problem.

OMG!

The horror!

I will wager, however, that you stimulated some neurons in the process, which is probably not a bad thing. :wink:

“SOME” is an understatement when you have a sample library around 2000 gigabytes in size… 2TB of sounds can take YEARS to sort through (thus my initial excitement with mediabay several cubase releases ago - heheh).

But subscribing to almost EVERY Digitial Music magazine (1 free sample DVD each month) plus local music store selling Sample DVD’s with a listening/testing station just means about 90% of my sounds I have yet to even hear myself…


But MediaBay does make even the 2TB mess of samples much easier to use - as long as you do not try to make it do things it was not designed to do.


a CUBASE SDK is probably the only answer - so 3rd parties can make addons.

Then we can bend it as we please ! … and I could get some interns to tag my samples - even create new categories in MediaBay such as Manufacturer, listing radio songs/artists who have used the given sample, etc…

In Cubase 6 MediaBay is a great tool!!!

MediaBay was introduced in Cubase 4 and it simply wasn’t ready. A lot of people had better things to waste their time on and just forgot about it. Some people, including me, gave MediaBay a second chance and now it works as it should have when it was fist released.

So it IS a great tool but it could be even better. Now it works smooth and fast and most the bugs seems to have been ironed out. At least that’s my impression. No problems at all these days.

I’d be an even happier camper if there was for example subtags for the tags you create yourself. and the tags that comes with the MediaBay doesn’t really reflect how I see the world so a lot of them will never get used. I’ve been doing some field recording since I got a magnificent little tool in the ZOOM H4n. I’ve made the recordings then I’ve edited them, cleaned them and chopped them up. To keep track of them I probably only need a few of my own tags and some subtags if I could create them myself, and they’d fit like a glove. At this point it’s a VERY SMALL collections but a few years from now it could be a different beast! The supplied set of tags would be really awkward to try to use!!! Some of them are beyond esoteric. It would be better for the esoteric crowd out there to be able to make their own tags and subtags rather than clutter the whole MediaBay with what seems like a huge collection of nonsense tags.

I think people using REX files, of which I don’t know or care too much about, are not completely happy with MediaBay?

Bottom line however now MediaBay doesn’t crash or corrupt the database or otherwise mess up the system like it used to do when it got its bad reputation. It’s a great tool not only for keeping track of your sound FX, loops and [insert favorite media type] but also for audition synth patches in various ways. And it’s inside Cubase … :sunglasses:

For those who gave up after Cubase 4 I think it’s time to check again?


You don’t have to use it. But you ought to know how it works.

No. Just don’t use it if you don’t want to. What it is is a file browser that also keeps track of presets and stuff. It’s an integrated part of Cubase and an understanding of when to use it is a good thing. Learn the basics of how to refresh important folders and you’re done. Sometimes your OS and MediaBay haven’t gotten the same instructions from you i.e. you’ve moved stuff in Explorer without telling MediaBay. This can make other parts of Cubase seem to lose e.g. presets. If you know where you saved them you can just rescan those folders and you’re good to go again.

Yes! It may look humiliating but it’s just a filebrowser, really. If you run into problem, ask the forum! :sunglasses:

I buy a fair amount of samples (mostly drum) that don’t come with their own player, and MediaBay is great for locating, auditioning, and then drop-n-dragging them to GA1

I like this thread’s title…“Cubase 6”, in the “Cubase 6” forum.

Yes, switch off Mediabay if you can. You’ll be overwhelmed with all those tags.

  • 1 (for making your own tags (sorry I meant categories in MB :stuck_out_tongue: :nerd: