Hey everyone 
I know the following is a lot to handle… But I’m seriously considering purchasing a “non-lite” version of Cubase, and this might be the thing that gets me to buy, as it’s kind of fundamental to my workflow. Questions are in red.
I’ll start off by saying I currently own Cubase AI 6 as shipped with a product of mine. It serves a decent purpose for what I desire to do at the moment. However, I know that sometime in the future I will want to upgrade to Cubase Elements, Artist, or Pro. I’m thinking that I might as well not delay the inevitable when I have a suitable budget available to me.
My first question is about the List Editor that I’ve heard lots about. I’m unable to find this editor in the “lite” versions of Cubase such as Cubase AI 6, which is disappointing because numerical data entry is something I tend to do a lot when it comes to automation. Using the Key Editor can be accurate when it comes to MIDI notes, but the GUI oriented drag-and-drop doesn’t allow for precise control-changing. It’s just too slow using the limited vertical scroll space and the mouse. For instance, I would like to enter in note data similar to the following: [note][start-time][end-time][velocity] etc… I’m guessing this editor is included in Cubase Pro, but what about Artist or Elements? I couldn’t find it on the comparisons list.
My second question is in regards to the functionality of the List Editor. Let’s say I wanted to “virtually” turn a physical controller knob on my MIDI device. Where 0 is the knob turned fully left, and 127 is the knob turned fully right. I know this can be achieved through MIDI messages such as “brightness”, “release time”, “pan”, “resonance”, etc… One can output a MIDI track’s MIDI messages to an external device that has been configured in the Device Setup menu. If I wanted to “virtually” turn the brightness knob on my device smoothly from 0 to 127, I would have to send a brightness MIDI message with the value 0. Then after that, I would send: 1, 2, 3, 4… All the way up to 127. It would simulate a linear (constant-speed) turn of the knob from the left to the right if the messages are placed at constant intervals. As you can imagine, this would take a fair amount of time to do manually, but if there was a function that could automate the entry of this automation data, that would be extremely convenient. Does such a function exist? I know a lot of LFOs that do similar things. You can tie a MIDI message (for example, brightness) value to the LFO, and the brightness will go up and down in accordance to the LFO waveform. Be it square, triangle, sine, anything. The difference is that an LFO just keeps going until you turn it off, whereas automated automation data entry can occur as much as you like.
P.S I’m aware of how to copy and paste in the Key Editor, draw automation lines and such in parabolic, linear, triangle curves etc… Yes it’s quick, but if I had access to the List Editor, I would use it even if only for hardcore precision. I’m not totally sure whether the lack of such a feature would deter me from purchasing, since as I said, It’s inevitable that I’ll want a higher track count or something similar in the future.