I’d love to have a ‘macro bar’ as you find in Slate Raven, Devil Tech DTouch etc. Just freely assignable buttons that we can place next to the Transport bar or wherever at the top of the Project. In fact, make the bar both floatable and dockable. The user then attaches icons and keyboard shortcuts or other commands to them.
For example, I often find myself resetting the Loudness Meter around the same time as I’m resetting the Transport. This would enable me to have, effectively, quick controls adjacent to each other, which is handy when using the trackpad/mouse and you don’t have a numpad/control surface handy. Not everyone would want a Loudness reset in that place, but I’m sure lots of people would like other controls there… and assignable buttons would be a great way to achieve this.
A side-benefit of this is that such buttons would be great for users of touch screens, which let’s face it is something Cubase doesn’t excel at!
I use a key command to toggle the preference that has the cursor return to the start or stay where it is when playback stops. It’s easy to forget which state it is in. Having a button that showed the current state would be real useful.
They have a Command Window, where you can place little ‘buttons’ consisting of Macros (complete scripts) plus key commands. So you can -see- your fave commands at a glance and click to activate them whenever.
The problem with Cubase Key Commands is that you have to -remember- them all.
That’s the reason, why controller boards are helpful - never ever remember a KC - see everything needed in clear text within the AVID Artist Control touchscreen.
I solved that problem about a year ago. Previously I’d kept a hand written list of key commands I wanted to remember, adding to it as needed. But items on it weren’t in any order (having been added in no order) and the list would get buried under other papers and eventually become a wrinkled mess. So I put the list into a spreadsheet (anything with tables would work) which made it easy to maintain and keep in order. But here’s the trick - I use the Window’s Snipping Tool to grab an image of the list. Then I use that image as my desktop background. Now the list is visible on any monitor showing the desktop, or I can move the mouse to the lower right to temporarily see the desktop if needed.
There should be a WORKAROUND PUNISHER button on this sub-forum. Anyone suggests a ‘workaround’ gets 12,000 volts right up the internet.
Yes, there are lots of Key Command printer programs. I wrote one (you can have it if you like if yer on Windows). But frankly? I need another cheat sheet like I need another (fill in the blank).
I’ve got cheat sheets for EW. For VSL. For Cubase. For Wavelab. For Reaktor. For Omnisphere. I got cheatsheets up the wazoo. HATE 'EM HATE 'EM HATE 'EM.
I DON’T WANNA HAVE TO REMEMBER ANOTHER GODDAMNED THING EXCEPT MAYBE HOW TO READ MUSIC FOR THE REST OF ME F’IN LIFE!
The thing that’s so great about Adobe is that, even though I’m a casual user, there is just enough ‘help’ available via right click or hovering that I almost -never- have to consult the docs. I am about 1000 times more proficient in Cubase than Photoshop or InDesign or Premiere, but I -know- I consult that friggin’ PDF -far- more often than I ask questions about Adobe. They just -get- how to make it so you can -avoid- having to look stuff up. And the older I get… the more complex my projects are? The more I appreciate it.
There is something on boats called a ‘standing order’. Commands that always go without saying. I wish there was something like that here. When I post on a ‘forum’, my comments are directed at THE EMPIRE. Not ‘you’. It’s like when you call the phone company. You’re not talking to a CSR, you’re talking to THE EVIL EMPIRE.
If I seem like I’m lashing out… it’s at STEINBERG… not you. You’re just the catalyst for the larger issue (making the program easier to use.) But if I worry about being nice to -you-, I then have to let SB off the hook and in fact that’s how big companies roll… they put super nice people out front so hopefully I’ll be polite to the person and be easier to ‘manage’. Screw that.
My (vain) hope is that a Steinberger-ubermenschen-guy will read this and -get- it. The program could be a LOT easier to use WITHOUT putting in a lot more programming time.
NB… I’ve been to Adobe conferences and it’s like a breath of fresh air. They GET ease of use. People in the video world would not tolerate all these hidden functions. Everyone talks OPENLY about ‘self-evident apps’. I giggle just thinking about how ridiculous that is for people in the DAW world.
I hve no dog in this fight but it’s an interesting read. My $0.02.
Caveat: No product lives or dies with a Macro Bar so while very nice, it’s not going to stop anyone from making great music. Now … with the necessary caveat (drama avoidance) out of the way…
A lot of this stuff has been around forever, honestly. I think it’s often just the case that some daw developers are so busy or single minded they just don’t bother to look around outside the music software industry very much, and maybe too often kind of exist in a bubble. If you talk to any semi-advanced MS Office user he or she will tell you that stuff like that has existed in all Microsoft apps for decades. Honestly. You can, right now, go grab Word, Excel, whatever, even Corel Draw and some other non-MS apps actually, and create your custom toolbar that runs macros or whatever in 5-10 minutes.
They realized something early on that still escapes many, many modern daw developers, that if you give users the ability to do some things themselves, and make it easy enough, they actually will. So nobody has to bug Microsoft or Corel or Autodesk or whomever for some stuff or continually lobby for it, they can just go do some of it themselves, among many other things.
Reaper (yeah, I know the R word) also understood this basic idea but they didn’t (imo) lean in quite far enough on the “easy to do” part. Tracktion apparently also woke up to this idea recently with Javascript scripting. Vegas has allowed it for many years, scripting.
The rest are (partly, anyway) maybe just control freaks who just let users ask for the same small stuff year after year after year, never even considering the value of giving users the means to go do some of it themselves.
Music engineers (and especially DAW users) were historically ‘geeks’… not -musicians-. I call them ‘engineers’. People who LIKE the tech aspect (you -had- to love ‘drivers’ for the first 10 years.) ‘Toolbars’ are not in their DNA… a guy who learns to use a Fairchild 670 ain’t no little girl who needs no stinkin’ ‘toolbar’! That’s often the mindset. RTFM!
But real -creatives- are more like MS Word users… they wanna CREATE. They don’t -want- to learn about ‘Macro Scripting’. They want to -write-. Younger people are more like that. They don’t wanna hear about how one ‘has’ to learn all the technical junk to be considered worthy. They’ve grown up with easy to use apps and there’s no going back.
The engineers think creatives want to dumb down the program. Far from it. We just realise it’s gotten like a 747… too hard to fly!
Frankly, it’s just taking a while for the ‘engineers’ to die off. I know how that sounds, but you can -never- change their minds. They just don’t value ‘Tool bars’.
And that’s the attitude that (partly) stops it from happening.
A: Spend five years asking for something and never actually get it.
B: Spend a hour or two learning how to do it yourself (if the app has scripting), go do it in an hour and use it.
Sure. Option A is a - much - better end result.
I say 5 years because it was that long ago (or longer) where I asked for that on the old user forum because i got tired of going through those menus to get to my macros in Cubase way back. This is not a new request. If Cubase had scripting somebody else would have probably already done it by now, and you could probably just download it and use it, having not burned any brain cells.
But hey, keep asking. Let me know how that works out. I’ll check back in five more years.
And yeah, I actually fully agree with your other point. Many young people do want everything handed to them on a silver platter. If they have to work hard for it they do often complain. While the young guy is still whining that some company didn’t hand him something yet the older guy is just enjoying the thing he built with the tools he was given.
Funny… InCopy and InDesign drive me into a rage when I’m trying to find some command I’ve forgotten!
For Cubase, I assigned a key to open the keyboard shortcut window and use the search fscility. Another workaround (12,000V for me then) but it’s typically rather quicker than consulting the PDF (another cursed thing Adobe had a hand in!)
Point (half) taken. One caveat is that it’s taking Adobe about a -decade- to make all the component apps 100% consistent… remember that almost all of them were purchased from other companies.
But in -general- apps like Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop have a remarkable ability to guide people just enough. And they all have that Command Window where you can put -your- fave commands/scripts/etc. So when one -does- forget you can just go there.
What I always end up doing is ‘searching’ through the Keycommands list which enrages -me.
