I have been using Logic for nearly 22 years, since it was Notator Logic on the Atari 1040.
I recently decided (due to many conversations with colleagues and my own research) that I need to switch sequencers and so here I am.
I am having some minor issues making the switch. I do realize that 22 years of doing something one way does not make it easy or quick to change operating procedures and for the most part I have been able to get Cubase to behave the way I want it to, usually by assigning the same key commands to the same operations.
While I do have a long list of other questions, there is one thing that is driving me crazy and really slowing down my workflow to the point that it’s taking me 40% longer to finish projects. I plan to keep updating this thread with questions ( after doing thorough research first to find the answers myself ) but I am desperate to find out if this one thing is possible.
In Logic on a Mac, in all windows, there is a modifier key that switches the tool to the zoom tool as long as the modifier is held down. So when I hold down “control” & “option” I get the zoom tool, lasso the area to zoom in on and BAM I’m there. I let go the modifier and the tool returns to what was originally selected. When I want to zoom out I hold the same modifier down and click once and instantly zoom out to the previous zoom level. I use this so much that there is no need for any other zoom things for me to think about. It is so fast and accurate that I rely on it heavily in everything I do in every window.
I have tried to find a similar key command in Cubase but I can’t seem to find it. Does it exist? I know that pressing 6 gives me the zoom tool but then I have to let it go, make the zoom, then press the 1 key to get back to the arrow tool. I’m finding it hard to make the switch!! It’s just so much faster the way it works in Logic.
Any help with this is most appreciated. It’s keeping me from making the switch in totality.
First of all, congratulation to the switching. After so many years, that is just awesome!
You have more options, how to use zoom in Cubase. For basic horisontaly Zoom in/ out, you can use “G” and “H” key commands.
Shift+F is Zoom Full, what means, you will see whole project at once, on your screen.
Shift+E is zoom to event.
Option+S is zoom to selection, which I’m using quite often.
Different way, how to zoom horisontaly is to click and press by mouse on to the ruler of the window, you want to zoom, and moving mouse up/down (still holding the mouse button pressed), you can zoom. Personaly, I dont´t like this possibility. I ofted zoomed, when I tried to move by using the ruler. Great is, you can switch this off In Prefferences.
And there is Undo Zoom, which is not affected by other functions. This is very useful.
Btw: Using modifiers (Option Key) is very flexible an custosomible in Cubase. To be honest, I’m not using tool switching very often.
And of course, you can import Logic’s Key Commands.
Hello miramusic - no, to my knowledge there is no direct equivalent of this workflow currently in Cubase. As posted by Martin above, lots of other zoom options available though - but darn, I’m thinking/seeing what you describe in Logic, as being really speedy and useful…!
Good luck, stick with it - Cubase is a great program…!
I also made a macro I call “Zoom to project”. It consists of:
select all
Zoom Tracks Full
Zoom to Selection
Select None
Very nice.
And even though I agree with Puma0382, I do find zooming much better in Cubase than in Logic. In Cubase you can zoom into sample level, audio and midi side by side, in the Arrange window. Very useful.
Cubase has very extensive keyboard command mapping. I expect you already found it. Almost every function can be activated with a user-set key command, and KC sets can be stored. In fact I believe there may already be a Logic KC set (not in front of Cubase right now.)
I’ve tried to map my Cubase/Nuendo KCs when I use Logic (and Final Cut Pro), with only partial success
The modifier keys in Cubase are a special case, you can find those under the Prefs.
The default ones are extremely useful ( i couldn’t do without Alt-click to split a part) but I don’t think Zoom is configurable as a modifier. I could be wrong, have a look at the Pref.
Thanks so much for the welcome and all the good info. To be honest I did not have my prefs set to notify me when someone posts in this thread so I thought I got no replies! My apologies for this late reply and my thanks for your many posts.
I have had to go back to Logic for a while as I had too much work to be using a DAW I don’t know but now I have some tracks to do with no deadlines so I’m back into Cubase to learn some more.
I don’t think there is a way to set the modifier to be the zoom tool. Pretty upset about that but i guess I should expect some things to be different and just deal with it. It’s really hard after so many years of doing things one way.
I’m also trying to find a way to make my lower right trackball button become the Range Selection tool while I hold it down.
I will try the macro thing as suggested above and see if I can find a way that works for me to do these things.
Go to Preferences, Tools. uncheck right-click to bring up tools. Now when you right click you will see a list of tools with numbers to the right. On mine zoom is number 6. Now hold down 6 and right-click and you have zoom.
With the method you described above I am still having to make a tool selection, then make my zoom, then go back to the original tool. With Logic the zoom tool is selected as long as I have the modifier held down and it behaves just like I had selected the zoom tool. It’s really just so much quicker and provides a much quicker workflow for me.
The modifier tool switcher IS a great feature in Logic. I understand that you miss it. But:
I have my tools in Cubase on the number keys. So I hit “6” to get the zoom tool and “1” to get back to the select tool. That is two steps. Just like holding down modifier key,( zooming,) release modifier key is two steps in Logic. And there is no risk of bringing up a wrong tool in steed of zoom like in Logic - unless you never change secondary tool of cause.
Also remember to uncheck the preference “Tools-Zoom tool standard mode”. Otherwise the zoom tool only zooms horizontally.
And of cause take a serious look at all the other useful zoom commands in Cubase.
And if you are still not satisfied try to zoom into sample level on an audio track and a midi track laying next to each other. Nice isn’t it?
Still not satisfied? Set the midi track to “edit in place” and zoom in. I find this SO elegant and very useful in many situations when editing. And Logic just can’t do anything like that.
Another technique, which is not exactly “zooming” per se, is to use Parts in your workflow.
When you create Parts for your audio recordings you can easily open one or more part into a full screen, fully zoomed editor.
This is extremely valuable if you want to work on two or more items at one time that are not on adjacent tracks. Shift click a Part on track 1 and a Part on track 21 hit Command E and voil’a ! those two items are right next to each other in a wonderful full screen editor. After you make your changes, hit command W and you’re looking at the arrange page again.
The one caveat is that the Part editor will open to the cursor location (as opposed to the location that you click on).
I also created custom zooming functions using the arrow keys modified by the Control button.
So, I hit Control+Arrow (up, down, left, right) and what ever window is open zooms accordingly. I can either zoom in steps or hold it down and it zooms till I let go.
When ever you switch or learn a new program there are always some growing pains. I’ve tried almost every audio App out there. Cubase is still the best IMHO.
Thanks for the useful info guys. I’m getting better all the time. Still frustrating though and I keep finding new things I miss terribly. There will always be that thing I guess. A couple of other things I am looking for in Cubase…
Part/Object solo. Is there a way to do this? Can’t find anything in the key commands. Basically you select any object in the project window and solo just that object/s and not the entire track? Handy for quickly solo’ing different parts to hear how they sound together/fine tune.
Adjust start/end of object to cursor. Let’s say your 5 or 6 objects extend past bar 6 by varying degrees. Simply park your cursor/spl at bar 6, select all the objects and hit the key command. All object ends snap to bar 6. This can be done with object starts too. I can’t find it in Cubase.
Clicking on the track (down the left side of the Project window) automatically selects every object in that track. Possible?
Smart Snap. The snap value automatically changes depending on your zoom level. So when you are zoomed out, snap is set to bars. As you zoom in closer it automatically snaps to beat, etc all the way down to samples when you are super zoomed in.
I’m not trying to do ANY kind of Logic vs Cubase thing here. Just trying to fine tune my new workflow by incorporating as many things from Logic that I am used to into Cubase.
congrats, you pretty much nailed an already almost complete list of clear cubase workflow disadvantages compared to logic in very little time i dont like logic very much (allthough i used to have to work on it very often for countless projects, but these are more or less exactly all the things id like to see implemented in cubase as well.
control k splits all selected objects at cursor. you will still have to delete the following parts with another button press, but they are selected automatically, so its just one more keypress. of course you can get rid of the extra keypress too if you set up a macro for this, which would be a combination of “cut at cursor” and “delete”, and you could do the same for object starts with “cut at cursor”, “move selection left” and “delete”. personally though, i prefer doing it manually because it might want to do different things at different times.
also note, its one thing to rebuild an established workflow somewhere else, but it should be said that one can tend to then overlook the strenghts of any given program. regarding object cutting, splitting, positioning and stuff, i highly recommend you take a closer look at the info bar in the arranger (if its closed, open it, and keep it open for eternity from then on ) - lots of nice stuff to be done there, absolut lenghts, relative lenghts, moving on grid of off grid, in bars or beats, all at your fingertips, starting points, offsets, everything equipped with modifier key functionality for absolute and relative, and it all of course works with single or multiple selections. its also where the incredibly useful “object volume” is, a feature thats probably among the most often used in daily workflow by many…but i digress, sorry
should be doable via a macro as well i guess. personally i prefer to have “select all objects on track” as an individual command though (side to side with “select all right from cursor” and “select all left from cursor” and stuff).
huge gap in cubases featureset. its not so bad because you quickly get used to switching resolutions depending on what you need, but it is a lot of clicking that one could easily get rid of, yes. also switching from absolute to relative grid is not yet avaiable as modifier but is a strict on/off setting.
but trust me: theres some stuff that makes you do a little more clicking, but at least the functionality per se is there, and you get quite a lot of stuff that simply does not exist in logic in return. and, to me the most important feature to this day, the reaction time of the arrangerwindow to edits is by far the fastest. once you get used to the editing speed you can have, copying, sliding, offsetting, whatever-ing stuff during playback and you hear the result the instant you release the mouse button with no latency whatsoever, pretty much all the other daws start to feel painfully slow very quickly. but of course its a difference you only notice once you have setup your personal workflow and enter into the typical “high speed expert operator” mode ™ of someone who knows a program really well.
Well that was only a partial list of the things I miss every day when using Cubase but I see no point in adding too many more items. I realize that I need to learn the Cubase way so that I can get the full benefit and not bypass great features. Old dog, new tricks!
I have purchased some Cubase training videos and will get stuck into them once I have a break from work. I just have too much going on right now to switch DAW’s completely!
Looking forward to getting into Cubase with the same depth as Logic.
I’ll keep posting questions and comments as I go though so any help is always appreciated.
im not familiar with the english terms (not even in cubase, actually
can you quickly describe what it does?
assuming it bounces and object with all plugins and stuff: range to selection, solo, export audio (with “reimport into pool” checked) would do it. that should be “macro-able”. of course theres also options to render through the mixbus (meaning, including any plugins that are on the sum bus, aux returns etc) or not (in that case just the individual channel is rendered, so the best way would probably be to end the macro at opening the export window, so you can choose appropriately from there.
if you just mean rendering a mess of edits, object volumes and fades and whatnot into a new file without the whole mix and plugin business, thats…uh…in german its “auswahl als datei”, that would be “selection as file”…11th entry in the audio menu, for what its worth.
and then theres rendering any timestretching or pitching business that youve done. a nice thing is that you can work in cubase like in ableton, with it all being realtime (with selectable algorithms optimized for transients, pitch clarity, with or without formant correction etc), and at the end, use the render function “fix realtime editing” (thats what its called in german) and have it all calculated offline in highest quality with MPEX etc.
Yes I think your first example is what I am talking about. With "Bounce In Place’ in Logic…let’s say you have a soft synth with sends and inserts and have recorded 8 bars. Now you decide you like this but want to use the same soft synth to quickly try create/audition other sounds. You select your 8 bar object, click the key command and Logic bounces only that selection (solo’d) with inserts, then it creates a blank audio track WITH THE EXACT SAME SENDS as the soft synth and places the bounced audio file in exactly the same place and then mutes your midi track. So now you have an identical copy in audio form with all your effects( sends) in place. You can also choose what it does with the midi soft synth once the bounce has happened such as “leave the original alone - mute original - delete original - leave original and mute copy”…etc…etc. Happens in seconds too.
Huge time saver!
I think I will fool around with Macro’s and see what I come up with. I’ll post it if it works.
ah. cubase cant do that. auto setup of bus routing and aux effect business is rather high on my wishlist too, i agree its a huge timesaver.
allthough in that particular scenario, i would probably just copy the instrument track (if its an instrument track) or use a different midichannel (if its a multitimbral and/or multiout synth, something cubase is very fond of in its approach).
