Hi there! I’m a Reaper user contemplating moving to Cubase completely (UI, scoring, better midi, track versions, better track/project management, video thumbnail, etc). I bought C7.5/8 last year but didn’t have time to learn it. Now that I’m trying to move to Cubase I suppose there will be a huge learning curve. Hope you guys can put up with my questions.
Are the following possible? (I know every ex-DAW user wants to fit their workflow to the new DAW, but please bear with me):
1). Click anywhere on a clip/anywhere in midi editor and have the mouse locate to that position. I’ve configured it to locate to an empty space but I’d like to locate within a clip too. This is huge for me. I saw cubase & nuendo supercharged workflow video - Steinberg Lounge - Steinberg Forums but it doesn’t show how to do it.
2). Open item in external editor - I use this to open clips in Melodyne from Reaper and quite used to this flow. VariAudio might be great but I’m faster in Melodyne so hoping this is possible in some manner?
3). How do I swipe mute/solo tracks - instead of selecting tracks in Reaper I’d just click on solo then swipe the mouse down and all those tracks will be solo’ed.
4). Shrink mixer channels - they occupy too much space - anyway to make them smaller and stack vertically (instead of just horizontally)?
5). How do I use my horizontal scroll wheel/special mouse buttons? They show up in Reaper but in Cubase I can’t find them. I have a Logitech MX.
What are your thoughts? Is it worth going through the learning curve to move to Cubase or should I stick with the ol’ geezer? Love the look and feel of Cubase and ideally would like to ramp up in a week (took me a few years with Reaper but Cubase looks way less cluttered and more functional).
Update - Phew…spent half a day and looks like inserting ruler tracks for every 25 tracks is the only solid solution for the locate functionality. Such a bummer.
I figured out drag and drop clips from arrange view directly to kontakt using vst-xml, so yay (another biggie).
I can possibly live without the external editor/button swiping/etc, but the navigation part (in arrange/midi editor/audio editor) is a deal breaker. I’m just hoping some angel in this forum comes up with a solid solution (be it through AutoHotKey, or whatever).
Also it crashed on me atleast 4 times today trying different stuff (opening melodyne, undo 100 track delete, editing audio, etc) and render in place does take quite a while (even for small clips). Not such a great start but ahh…that lovely GUI and track versions (which is perfect for me). Arrghh…
Hi keyman_sam, the transition from one DAW to another is always hard I guess. Recently I had to deal with Pro Tools and felt like a noob
Click into any editors ruler bar. The click-in-empty-space-thing just works in the project window.
Not possible. At least the sample Editor is quite powerful, you might check out its functions in depth. Personally I hope for ARA implementation, for using Melodyne in Cubase it’s still necessary to transfer the audio into the plugin. Rewire comes to mind but I never had any motivation to deal with it.
No such function in Cubase. All you can do is selecting tracks and push S or M. Unfortunately the project window has a different behaviour than the mixer. In project window all your selected tracks will be solo’ed by using just S, in the mixer you have to use the quick link modifiers (or have quick link active) while clicking on a solo button (otherwise just the selected channel/the first of them will be solo’ed).
The mixer is completely resizeable in all its parts. Just drag the fader row up/down (this vertical double arrow thing).
G/H will shrink/expand the mixer channels. Don’t think you can have 2 rows of channels.
I have the MX Master too. Horizontal scroll doesn’t work with Cubase
Works fine for me in REAPER and Tracktion. It is listed in the Issues forum. Whether Steinberg enable horizontal scrolling or not is unkown.
I moved from REAPER to Cubase and still miss the flexibility of REAPER in tracks and routing. I also miss REAPER’s undo. You will find the random way that undo works in Cubase annoying. Sometimes you press CTRL-Z and it will undo what you just did, sometimes it will undo something you did 20 seconds ago.
But, I there are more things I like about Cubase and I mainly use that now. The mixer zones, resizable mixer channels, control room, chord track/pads, arranger track, variaudio, audio quantize, I think for writing/fleshing out ideas and recording at the same time, Cubase works better for me.
Oh god, I thought I was imagining the random UNDO functionality. Good to know its a known issue (a bit scary). How do you deal with the navigation in Cubase? Is it something you eventually get over, or is it still a major PITA? Or is there a workflow that allows for fast navigation that I’m not aware of? I can’t imagine folks going up to the ruler all the time just to locate (+accidentally set loop selection). Surely I must be missing something here?
Performance-wise I had realistic expectations coming from Reaper and I wasn’t surprised - 20 instances of Omnisphere in Cubase vs. 30 in Reaper before dropouts, which is fine by me (thanks to render in place). But workflow is a big-ticket item that I need to sort out before I go ahead and setup my templates.
Cubase’ undo doesn’t work random at all. It’s definately predictable - it leaves out every mixer action.
Fast navigation is not so hard when you go with what the program allows. I have a macro keycommand that shows me the complete project page horizontally + vertically. That’s kind of a default view for me. From there I go with the magnifier to whereever I desire (standard kc = 6, not on keypad), zoom vertically with mousewheel while holding alt, horizontally by different keycos for different track heights and so on. Not being used to a different workflow I’m really fast with it. But I can understand any pain when you come from somewhere else where things were subjectively better, more usable or whatever…
I’ve setup some zoom shortcuts with my mouse doing the things you’ve described, but within a single page to start playback at a particular point within a clip, I still click on an empty space near where I want (and then nudge). I’ll ask for an FR to atleast SNAP the cursor when clicked on empty space.
Anyways I’ve moved to 7.5 on account of stability, and its been smooth for a day. Think I’ll go with 7.5.3 till the dust settles with 8.
There is a 7.5.4 out that I don’t believe has any negatives compared to 7.5.3.
Also, re: horizontal scrolling in the mixer - can be done with vertical mousewheel once you click in a little area under the channels, also I’ve used the L/R arrows to do that in the past (those details I can’t remember).
Love the look and feel of Cubase and ideally would like to ramp up in a week (took me a few years with Reaper but Cubase looks way less cluttered and more functional). 
Such a bummer.
