I’m using the cubase demo and deciding whether or not I’m going to purchase the cubase crossgrade deal and I know I’m running out of time with the sale so hopefully I can figure this out quickly. I can’t get the key editor to open with any of the rack instruments (kontakt or opus) stereo outputs that I have routed like I’ve seen in tutorials. I’ve highlighted a region and double click on a track in the project window, but nothing and the editor says nothing selected. I’ve tried another vst like addictive keys and it works just fine by double clicking. Any thoughts anyone?
Hi,
It’s not about the VST. Could you attach a screenshot, please?
Select the MIDI Part and double-click.
You mention rack instrument outputs, which would be on audio tracks. You need to double click on a MIDI clip to get the key editor. If you don’t have a MIDI clip on a MIDI or instrument track, you need to draw one first to get a clip (you can add notes later). (That is something I had trouble understanding when I first started using Cubase after other DAWs where you could just enter notes directly on a MIDI or instrument track.)
Do I create 16 midi tracks for the 16 outputs per instance of kontakt or opus and route those?
Hi,
There is no MIDI Part. I expect, you click on the Track in the Track list. The MIDI Parts sit in the “arranger”, under the ruler (time line).
I was able to get it to work by routing a 16 midi tracks to the 16 stereo outputs from the rack instrument. But that was 32 slots in the mixer for just one instance of kontakt or opus. Is there a better way to do than that because that’s a terrible way to have to set things up?
Different people have different opinions with respect using rack instruments that are fed by multiple MIDI tracks and deliver their audio outputs to multiple audio tracks (or even just one audio track to essentially do a submix within that instrument).
Personally, I mostly prefer using a single instrument track (which combines the MIDI and audio sides into a single track) per “instrument” (e.g. a virtual guitar, piano, bass, brass instrument, etc.), with the minor exception that I sometimes use drum and/or percussion instruments multi-timbrally and with separate MIDI tracks driving the different outputs). (At least for a drum kit, I just as often use the built-in submixing capabilities in Superior Drummer.) I’ve heard some argue that this setup is actually better for performance since Cubase may be able to allocate things across multiple CPUs better. That said, if I were doing big orchestral things, I might be inclined to have multiple MIDI parts driving different MIDI channels within something like Kontakt but separate each section into its own instance.
Either way, you still need the same number of MIDI tracks. It’s just that the number of audio tracks for the VST instrument’s output, which can effect the total number of tracks. In the case of one virtual instrument per VST instrument, it is one Instrument track for each needed instrument. In the case where you do the multi-timbral thing with one VST instrument output per virtual instrument, you’re doubling the number of tracks. With some middle ground, you might have one MIDI track per virtual instrument plus one virtual instrument per section (or whatever unit of submixing you want to do at the VST instrument level.