I have just spent two days trying to understand automation. I failed. It needs drastic simplification. Why?
Two lots of MIDI (one hidden in the Automation controls)
Two kinds of Automation both incompatible with each other, (Track and VST)
The MIDI Remote Function which is clunky and unintuitive - far from easy. It kicks me into windows and I have no idea how to return. The panel is pretty much incomprehensible.
So called “quick” controls - feel like hand grenades sometimes.
The Automation Panel (for both Track and VST or one or the other?)
I heard so much about it being so simple, such a game changer, back in Cubase 12, but it was no way as easy as it was painted. Scripts for only a tiny proportion of controllers, too unintuitive to DIY my Nord Stage 4.
All I wanted to do now, was use a three fader controller to control, VSTs, Multipanner and basic automation and CCs as I see fit, on the fly. It’s so ridiculously hard. Got no idea where to go or what to do.
It’s minefields like this that make Cubase so impenetrable to ‘musicians’. rather than engineering types.
Why can’t we simply do this without all the sweat and unreliability?
I think Cubase is fantastic, but it is also fantastically complicated when it need not be.
It needs a rethink.
Z