The mute tool is streamlined because events are muted/unmuted as soon as you marquee-highlight them.
The eraser tool is different in that doing the above action will only select the events, then you have to click on one of them to actually delete them.
If you think about usefulness, like when you want to remove tiny accidental snippets of events that were left over from cutting and editing, it’s much quicker if it worked like the mute tool – ie. draw a marquee around the events you want to delete.
If it worked like the mute tool, you could just draw a marquee box around them and boom - they will be deleted immediately.
edit (3/2) MAJOR IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS:
Events are instantly deleted as they are marquee-selected by the Eraser tool.
Eraser tool can marquee select event(s) while starting the action on top of the event.
If there was a modifier key in combination with the eraser tool to make it work like the mute tool that would be great. Just to have a safety step to prevent events from being accidently deleted.
I guess that’s the philosophy behind the way it works - to avoid accidental deletes. But in my view, if you’re on the Erase tool you want it to be snappy and streamlined, like the Mute tool.
If you forget you’re on the Erase tool but accidentally delete things, that makes no difference in the way I’m proposing it to work.
I think you got a point, and for two reasons. You already mentioned that the mute tool marquee works differently. And then there is no difference between using the erase tool marquee and the select tool marquee other than in one you can do a mouse click to delete marked objects and with the other you press the Delete or Backspace key.
I also suspect that it is maybe designed like that to prevent against accidental deletes, but then a) there is an undo and b) you actively have to first select the delete tool and then select the events, so that is pretty much enough protection against accidental deletes.
Would be much better if those tools work consistently.
I assume this will not change, even if these are valid points. It’s the “Cubase is like a tanker” syndrome. The Erase Tool worked in the current way for many decades. If Steinberg changes it now it might disturb many customers because the current style is in their muscle memory.
Yes, you are right. Selecting the Eraser in the first place is already some sort of safety tier. In this light, changing the behaviour in terms of consistent behaviour makes sense.
I don’t think it would upset so many people, given it is not very useful as tool.
Just look at when you have tiny event snippets as leftovers across your project - it makes no sense using the Erase tool because once you have them selected, you need to zoom right in to click on one of them. Pressing the Delete key is quicker.
If it worked like Mute, all the snippets would instantly disappear as they are highlighted.
I can’t see this being a very popular tool.
Also muscle memory does not take long to update.