Hello,
I recently bought Cubase 10 upgrade and I noticed that the instrument rack output shared the icon with the instrument track, but not his behaviour. This made me think the following:
1 - INSTRUMENT RACK OUTPUTS ROUTED TO ACTUAL AUDIO TRACKS
One of the worst things about Instruments Racks is how the outputs are managed. I think you should be able to ROUTE the outputs to actual audio tracks, instead of creating specific ones that would disappear as you modify the rack.
2 reasons:
1 - Now, if you change the instrument rack you lose ALL the outputs. If they were regular audio tracks, you would be able to save all the parameters (EQ, inserts, further routing) and re-use them. If you are changing from Kontakt 5 to Kontakt 6 you will face this problem, or if you are changing from the VST2 version of the plugin to the VST3 one.
2 - You would be able to save these tracks as a preset and use as outputs for more than one rack.
2 - A MIDI-RETURN TYPE OF TRACK
Instrument track can have several MIDI inputs and several independent AUDIO-LIKE outputs (That should be changed as I told you before). This can be useful, but most of the time for each MIDI track you’re going to use one AUDIO track. So…
Why not create a MIDI-RETURN type of track which handles both the input and the output? It will behave similar to Instrument track, but with the advantages of instrument racks. Besides, this will allow RENDER IN PLACE to work properly with Instrument Racks. And furthermore it will reduce the amount of tracks needed by half!!
3 - BETTER MIDI ROUTING
Finally, the last improvement in the MIDI workflow will be routing a MIDI track to several other MIDI Tracks, specially to manage CCs that you want to be the same. For instance, with Spitfire Libraries you can manage Mic balance via MIDI CCs. It would be super useful to have just one track to balance all your MIDI CCs related to those mics. Or CC7 for Volume. Or anything, it will allow a much more creative workflow and it’s a simple thing.
Neither of these suggestions is impossible, as DAWs like Reaper (a $60 DAW!) allows you to do this routing (and much more complex ones!). It would be beneficial for everyone and it would not break the workflow of former users (as changing the color tool did, by the way).
Do these suggestions make sense?