This got me curious so I ran a test. I have two machines, one with Nuendo 13 and one with Cubase 14 Pro. Both monitors are side by side so it’s easy to compare.
I set up identical projects with audio and MIDI tracks, group and FX tracks and folder tracks as well. I used the same audio file to drag into both projects and got the following results:
Audio and MIDI tracks.
I could drag the file anywhere amongst audio or MIDI tracks and a new track would be created where the green line appears between tracks. (Not above or below, but right where the green line is). This is consistent in N13 and C14.
Folder tracks
In N13 I can drag a file anywhere around folder tracks (above or below) and the new track will be created where the green line is, just like audio / MIDI tracks above.
In C14 it’s fuzzier. I can drag a file immediately below a folder track and it will work every time, but dragging to a slot above a folder track is variable… sometimes it will work and sometimes the new track ends up at the bottom of the list. I haven’t been able to find what conditions affect this.
Group and FX tracks
These tracks are a special case.
When I create either one of these tracks, they will appear by default inside a folder marked either ‘Group’ or ‘Effect’. If you’re dragging a file into the project, it wouldn’t make sense for the file to appear inside those folders, so if you try to do that the new track defaults to the bottom of the track list.
In my case, however, I tend to drag the group or FX tracks out of their folders and place them somewhere meaningful in my projects, so they’re now ‘free floating’. In this case, you would expect that dragging an external file above or below a group or FX track would behave the same as the other tracks, but it doesn’t.
You can’t drag a file above a group or FX track or between multiple group or FX tracks, even when they’re free floating, but you can drag below the last of either of them. I think this is because they retain their ‘folder’ flags even if they’re no longer in their group or FX folders, i.e. they continue to behave as if they were in their default folders. I could argue that, once the group or FX tracks are pulled out of their default folders, their ‘folder’ flags should be turned off and they should behave like any other random track (when it comes to dragging in files).
I hope that explanation was clear. This group / FX behaviour is consistent in both N13 and C14.
So, my findings are that most behaviours are the same when dragging in tracks to N13 or C14, but there is a difference around folder tracks. The fact that the behaviour is not 100% repeatable in C14 suggests that there is actually an issue that needs to be looked at.
Test was done on Windows 11, Nuendo 13 and Cubase 14 Pro, all at latest updates.