External instruments - Over complicated or not?

Cubase
1

Why does it have to be so complicated to set up an external midi instrument in Cubase?

Don’t get me wrong, moving from Lottie to Cubase Support. Been a complete change of workflow for the better, but this seems really slow and complicated. It also seems to have quite a few bugs or and least odd behaviour.

Logic pro on the other hand simply has a External Plug-in , you simply at the end for audio out audio and your computers midi IO done

2

My answer is: Yes it is complicated.
My thoughts: But it allows for quite complex interactions between the instrument and the DAW. At the same time it is a bit an ‘old fashioned’ way of working.

3

Hi,

Could you be more specific, please? What do you find complicated? Do you need a help? Is there anything what doesn’t work for you?

4

I was wondering what the benefits could be ?

7

I have many problems as I use a Laptop

  1. You can’t use a laptop because is you disconnect your USB interface all connections are lost and there is no simple way to reconnect , you have to delete each Ext Inst 1 by 1 and re add … every time!
  1. Seems to be a bug , if I add an External Instruments from Favourites its not showing up in my Plug-in list , until I add a new External Instrument.
    Cubase Ext inst - YouTube

Add a new Ext inst in Logic -

Add a new Ext inst in Cubase -

if you change IO in Logic -

8

Not sure that I got exactly what you are trying to achieve, but for me, things are rather simple and I use them because :

  • They have allowed me to create my own patches list for each of the three external instruments I have.
  • Using MIDI tracks is more logical for me than using instrument tracks for them, especially when they are multitimbral, which is the case for all the ones I own.

And no, I do NOT use them with instrument tracks. Basically :

  1. I have created a MIDI device for each of them and created the necessary banks/patches for them. I save/retrieve them with the Export Setup and Import Setup options. They are saved as simple .xml files.

C12_ExtInstr1
C12_ExtInstr11014×1077 40.3 KB

  1. I added each external instrument in the Studio > Audio Connections > External Instruments panel, associating it with the relevent MIDI device previously created.

C12_ExtInstr2
C12_ExtInstr2825×701 31.9 KB

  1. In the VSTi panel of the Arrangement right zone, and using the Instrument rack menu, I choose the Add rack instrument option and select in the list the involved external instrument which appears as this, in the Steinberg > External Plug-ins category :

C12_ExtInstr3

Adding an instrument rack allows you to directly create an associated MIDI track connected to it. After this, I can activate as much busses (and eventually create the corresponding MIDI tracks) as outputs available on your external instrument, using this option :

C12_ExtInstr4

Overall, I use the external instruments feature since Cubase 4 : been rock stable here, since more than 15 years…

1 Like
9

Thanks. Never thought of that. I mean to use it as a Rack instrument.

Cheers!