This could also read as:
“There are without a doubt things that need improvement and fixing (in Cubase)”.
As a senior member of this forum you could help by advocating a change in the way Steinberg prioritises to maintain product satisfaction within Cubase’s user base.
Cubase get’s the job done, sure. But it doesn’t feel like professional software. For USD$600, it should. Presonus implement feature requests within weeks. Steinberg takes years if at all. Steinberg need to allocate a Sh*t tonne of resources to rewrite Cubase from the ground up, end of story. Or it will be the end of the Steinberg story.
So much BS in this thread lol
Do you care to tell us what you disagree with?
It seems to me the main point here is that Steinberg is at a critical moment. Cubase has loads of bells and whistles, and is perfectly capable of just about everything you expect of a DAW today. But it is seriously behind the pack in terms of UI and general workflow. This is important – at this stage probably a lot more important than the latest haphazard feature.
I don’t know that the penetration in the movie scoring field is the best measure of this product considering that Steinberg seems to favor Nuendo for that segment. Nonetheless, the same things that turn off new movie composers will also turn off potential new users in all segments.
And if these turn-offs continue long enough, Cubase will not be a sustainable platform. Sure, it can be a cash cow for a long time, but I don’t think most people here want to be milked like the proverbial cash cow.
Nuendo is actually more about Sound Effects, spatial mixing and mixing in general, dialogue, project and asset management, sound design - I’m not sure there is anything in Nuendo that is really additional composer utilities which is why Hans uses Cubase and not Nuendo.
I’m not sure what is behind about UI apart from some of the windows being dated which isn’t a big deal? We can either skip an update cycle or two and wait for every window to be updated at once, or we can take whatever we can get as they update the different window UIs and have a mix of old and new.
Workflow in what regard? Workflow isn’t one thing or one context - it is dependent on the type of work you are doing and in many regards, Cubase is better. A drill can take more time than a hammer, but they achieve different results.
I have plenty of critiques for Cubase, but I don’t have to turn full-biatch mode on and say it’s the worst program everrrrrrrrrrr.
Cubase is a platform of integration and customization - you have to invest time in tailoring it to fit your needs and think about your workflow, your signal flow, etc, etc. A lot of people complain, and it’s like, really? How deep have you gone? How deep have you gone into thinking about your Workspaces? How have you utilized the 3 mixers? How deep have you gone into Project Logical Editor and Logical Editor? How deep have you gone into MediaBay? How deep have you gone into MIDI Channels and all the features like the input transformer?
I get a lot of, “huh? what is Project Logical Editor?”. I’ve accomplished things with PLE that no other program does.
Perhaps you can find some of that info here
mispost
lol they aren’t your government
I have looked into the MIDI transformer – rather unsuccessfully. I tried to use it to transpose an octave and never did get that to work. After 20 minutes, I just edited the MIDI up an octave. One day I’'ll try to figure out why that didn’t work.
I have not gotten into the others you mentioned and appreciate those references. I spent some time studying the Project Logical Editor tonight and can see some cases where that plus macros would simplify some things I do.
Thats not what the MIDI transformer is used for.
If your objective in key edit or drum editors, is to transpose a midi note or group of midi notes, (regardless of number of note steps) you can use the transpose function in the key editor left zone. However, iirc, there currently isn’t a KC for that. And since that’s such a common task for myself, I use the Logical Editor where I think there should already be a preset for this. If the preset is absent, then I probably downloaded it from Jonos LE presets which are found in the Cubase-Metagrid downloads.
https://www.metasystem.io/downloads/
download Metasystem app specific resources, then open the Cubase folder, then open Logical Edit.
The MIDI channel input transformer is at the MIDI input stage, not the channel stage. They are useful when creating project templates if you have external MIDI controllers and synths. You can use it to sort of organize and cooperate your MIDI gear or make changes, for example - some MIDI manufacturers have different octave numbers so, you can use it to make all your MIDI gear the same octave. You can filter out MIDI message types like aftertouch, or if you have a broken erratic MIDI joystick. For some of my synths, I record SysEx to have the program and settings stored in Cubase and have a separate channel for that so I filter those messages out on the notation channels, and filter notation out for the SysEx channel.
Those are just simple examples, you can get creative with something like input transformer - but it is that. Changes at the input, not channel MIDI playback. Input Transfer is very very useful if you have a lot of external synths and controllers - life saver.
Project Logical Editor is endlessly deep, the more you program with it the more you realize you can do. I ignored it for 8 years or so and I wish I didn’t.
So understand this about PLE and macros
-When you create a macro - it shows up in Key Commands.
-When you create a PLE - it also shows up in Key Commands
-Macros can therefor contain PLE Commands
-and PLE commands can contain a macro.
You can daisy chain them any which way. You can have a Macro that Contains a PLE that contains a macro that contains a PLE and so on. You can literally program Cubase to do what you want with this in many instances.
You can use your colour palette as a targeting method. You can use track names for example, name containts “gtr”.
Things like - Show all tracks with ‘gtr’ that have data.
It’s endless. It changed everything for me. I need them to fix the Macro thing in PLE because I have so many PLE related macros they don’t fit on screen.
All this stuff shows up in Generic Remote to, so you can assign PLEs to MIDI buttons on your controller.
Another good example would be
You could create an entire custom muting/soloing system assigned to MIDI buttons on your desk if you do a lot of listen muting in your workflow. SO again, you could mute based on track name (if you are consistent with your track naming)…
MIDI button 1 - Solo tracks containing ‘Voc’
MIDI button 2 - Solo tracks containing ‘Gtr’
MIDI button 3 - Solo tracks containing ‘Bass’
MIDI button 4 - Solo tracks containing '‘Drm’
and so on.
You could do this using a PLE, it would be something like
-PLE →
---------Container Type is | Equal | Track
---------Name | Contains | ‘Gtr’
/
---------Track Operation | Solo | Toggle (or Enable)Function: Transform | Macro: _________
Save this PLE, and then you can take it a bit further, and also select those tracks. You could do it a number of different ways…
-PLE →
---------Container Type is | Equal | Track
---------Name | Contains | ‘Gtr’
/
---------Track Operation | Solo | Toggle (or Enable)Function: Transform | Macro> : _________ > <----- This macro here, you would add what I call a MacroPLE, this is a method of what I was talking about with daisy chaining. You make another PLE…
---------Container Type is | Equal | Track
---------Name | Contains | ‘Gtr’
/
---------Track Operation | Solo | Toggle (or Enable)Function: > Select > | Macro: _________
You then also save this PLE as say, ’ MacroPLE-Select’Gtr’ ', you then go into keycommands, create a new macro, and add this new select PLE to it, go back to the Solo GTR PLE, and add that new macro… which would give you
---------Container Type is | Equal | Track
---------Name | Contains | ‘Gtr’
/
---------Track Operation | Solo | Toggle (or Enable)Function: Transform | > Macro: MacroPLE-Select’Gtr’
------------------------------------Container Type is | Equal | Track
------------------------------------Name | Contains | ‘Gtr’
---------------------------/
------------------------------------Track Operation | Solo | Toggle (or Enable)---------------------------------------------Function: > Select > | Macro: _________
And then you could assign that to a MIDI button to it in Generic Remote. You could take it further actually and make it so only the Gtr tacks are visible by adding a visibility command to the MacroPLE or doing another daisy chain. So it essentially becomes your own custom “Solo+Select+Only Selected Tracks Visible” command for all your Gtr/Guitar tracks.
Another common example is using PLE to colour tracks by name. And remember, you can have a series of targets in PLE so that one PLE is targeting any track with ‘Gtr’ or 'Guitar or ‘Guit’ or ‘Git’ etc.
So you could theoretically, colour every single track in your project with its appropriate user created colour for each instrument type based off track names at the press of a button.
Thanks for that clarification. It all makes more sense now. And in investigating the workspaces, I can definitely clean up my view. I had been a bit irritated by the default behavior of the mixer to collapse the inserts, sends, etc. I see it is easy to customize this.
Well of course they are, if you give them a 100 free licences and generate their publicity along with offering good student discounts they’d be silly not to. Peronally I think you should have given them 100 nuendo licences and asked them to buy a mirage and see how long it took them to vanish in the desert heat!
No doubt they have in depth traing on avid software and hardware as thats practically all the majority of high end studios use.
Just to point out, I think it was genius for Steinberg to obtain the old Sibelius team and create Dorico - the effects of this probably hasn’t completed a real visible positive business cycle yet, but I’m sure it is and will continue to. This will bring a lot of composers to Cubase and my guess is eventually these products will have some cross integration.
I find everything Steinberg is doing business wise, much more exciting. The relationship with Yamaha which IMO is a great company, the development of Halion and scripting, power of Groove Agent, all the other VSTi development like Backbone and their new delay and padshop, collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs, obtaining Spectralayers which is going to release version 7.
I could care less how many composers are using Cubase, I’m having fun. I could never imagine switching to logic, imo, the only luring thing would be their MIDI scripter plugin.
Everything you are describing about making a selection based on the Track Name also applies to the Color Name of the Track’s color. This is especially useful if you rename your colors to something useful to you rather than the default ‘Color 1’ (if I recall the default names correctly). You can even have several colors with the same RGB values but different names - so visually the same but different text tags.
On the flip side it was idiocy of AVID to treat the developers like they did.
correct.
If I am taking in projects to mix and the engineer has given them some form of typical naming scheme, I can get every track coloured almost instantly how I normally would and if they have some weird acronym that doesn’t register I add it to the PLE and save so next time it does register. huge time saver.
PLE is something you could create an efficient multi-room post-production business off of.
touche on AVID, it’s like they cut out engine grease and oil on their production cars for the sake of saving money.
Friendly reminder: This thread is called ‘Cubase no longer film composer mainstay’
Many of us have been wrestling with issues to do with using large orchestral libraries, i.e. Expression Maps. It has become apparent that fixing things in a timely manner is NOT one of Steinberg’s strengths.
This!!!
I agree with the sentiment of the OP, I just don’t think nuanced quirks listed or typically complained about are even close to making me switch to Logic.