May be I have not found it but this seems to be missing : allow one or several Instruments to take direct input from one midi track.
This without having to play with midi channel and/or midi send.
Just selection of one midi track as input of the instrument track.
This to avoid duplicating midi data in several instruments.
Is there an easy way to do it ?
Inputs for instrument tracks can only be midi ports, not tracks.
The only way to do it is to send the data from the midi track to the destinations. However, this is something that you mentioned you don’t wanna do. Therefore you’re having a bit of a conendrum.
Thanks for confirmation.
I hope Cubase 15 will …
I don’t think this will happen. It would require that every midi track will create a midi port or that Steinberg changes the way data is transferred from and to a midi track or instrument track on a basic level. Of course, it is only my assumption that such a change is a complex task.
What’s so bad about using a midi send?
If you don’t want to use MIDI Sends and/or other convolutions of MIDI track routing, you may try giving a virtual MIDI port a shot. Depending on your OS, this may be a “native” solution for you. macOS has a built-in “IAC Drive Bus” for virtual MIDI use. This way, it’s just a “port” to Cubendo as @Johnny_Moneto pointed out, but you can just select all the instrument tracks you want (and not limited to 4 Sends) as that port for their input:
This example shows a MIDI track with my S88 input and the IAC Driver as the output. All the VSTi’s have the IAC as the input. You can then easily have as many as you want without mucking bout with routing. That said, it’s probably in your best interest to dig into all the different capabilities of MIDI routing in-the-box, but you already said you didn’t want to do that 
When I want to do this in “production,” I use my mioXL USB/LAN MIDI router which lets you create 15 “local DAW” virtual MIDI ports but fully route to multiple other devices anywhere you want, including DIN connectors or network RTP. But the same principal holds true with something like that.
System-based virtual MIDI also has the added benefit of being DAW-agnostic and works across all your apps.
Thanks for the idea, I have an MIOXL but actually dedicated to direct/live play and acting without its PC/DAW physical connection, it seems a good idea to connect and try it for this.
That should work great for you then. In Auracle, I’ve renamed one of my DAW inputs to “xDAW_Loopback” and then I just route that “Input” to the same “USB DAW Output” by de-selecting all other ports other than the loopback for Input and Output (highlighted in blue):
Then just make sure that port is active in Studio Setup → MIDI Port Setup for both In and Out - also make sure the “All In MIDI” checkbox is selected if you want that port listening for any “ALL MIDI” input:
This should now work everywhere you’ve got that “USB DAW” port configured for use. The mioXL routing has a bit of a learning curve (to me, anyway) but it’s a wonderful product in my opinion.
Yes it works perfectly, and Yes MIOXL is a great hardware.
Actually the only drawback I see to this config is that I have to keep the instruments listening to MIOXL in Monitoring Mode, which is a little counter intuitive. Could it have a side effect ?
And the time saved in programing Cubase midi …is just transfered to MIOXL prog 
This has been an interesting discussion. Quite honestly, I tend to just copy the MIDI data from one instrument track to another (possibly recording onto multiple tracks in parallel if I want to feel what it’s like to play the instruments blended, but then, of course, having to replicate any edits on all tracks later). I wasn’t aware of MIDI sends, but that may be something I’ll try next time I have a need for this sort of functionality.
The discussion also got me thinking of another possibility for dealing with the underlying need. Waves has a freebie instrument called StudioVerse Instruments, that can be used for blending multiple virtual instruments together, including with keyboard splits, effects, etc. Of course, they hope you’ll use it with their instruments, but they also support third-party VST3 instruments (you do have to scan those, similar to the way Cubase would scan VST3 plugins). I haven’t actually tried that (I do use their equivalent for audio effects plugins, StudioVerse Audio Effects for this sort of thing from time to time, including with third-party plugins), but it should, at least in theory be a way of using a single instrument track to host multiple virtual instruments, and, in that case, you’d only need the MIDI on the instrument track (or to drive it from a MIDI track if that is preferred). However, you wouldn’t have the flexibility of having different audio plugins on the different instrument tracks (unless maybe that different processing is also done within StudioVerse Instruments). FWIW, here’s a link to the plugin:
Interesting but it seems to be as Fishman TriplePlay or another VST Host, you miss the Cubase workflow using it.
I have to say, for as simple as they are, MIDI Sends are really powerful. I like a nice warm grand piano and use MIDI Sends to not only send a backing track to strings, but to also add MIDI effects right in the send configuration - and you can do this for 4 sends, each with their own midi effect. So a midi echo (with pitch shift) sent to one VSTi and then maybe some simple background chords sent to another. There’s SO much you can do, and it’s easy to set up. I’d totally give it a shot!
I’m not familiar with the Fishman thing (a quick google suggested it is a guitar controller for MIDI?), but, yes, StudioVerse Instruments would be like a plugin that hosts other VST plugins, albeit with considerably more functionality than most I recall having seen (in the distant past). And, yes, it wouldn’t be Cubase functionality inside – more like setting up a multi-timbral MIDI rack. You could, of course, use Cubase’s track-level MIDI functionality, including automating parameters of the StudioVerse instrument (that has been very useful within the StudioVerse Effects, which can be like setting take the place of setting up a complex set of send and group tracks in cases where you only need them on a single instrument, or audio, track).
I just discovered that Fishman has silently discontinuated its plugin, keeping just a Windows/Mac Host….so forget it
I’ve done this kind of routing inside Cubase with Kontakt before.
The only difference being that the first “Midi-Track” that you want to have your notes on has to be an Instrument Track instead.
So I would:
And then you pretty much have the setup you originally wanted.
I still wouldn’t buy Kontakt only for this routing setup (Last time I checked it wasn’t possible with the free version Kontakt Player), but if you already have it you might want to try it out.
Interesting usage of Kontakt, thanks.
I will try.
As you describe it, this solution has the same drawback as the MIOXL one : our instruments tracks sharing the original midi must stay in Monitor mode.
That’s a consequence I have not totally evaluated, workflow, latency, ease of tranforming the output in pure audio ?
Concerning latency introduced; does the communication via USB with the MIOXL introduces more latency than using Kontakt as you propose ?
Any idea ?
No I haven’t used MIOXL before and I also haven’t done any kind of performance test with Kontakt setup before. I guess that’s up to you to figure out.
I will do it, thanks.
The topic of this thread seems similar to the following feature request thread:
The solution could be the development of a Cubase plugin rack, so there is no need for MIDI send: the instruments would go into the rack the rack into the track.
