Make better use of user Media Bay Categories - Custom Categories, here is how

Cubase
1

This had me stumped for a while, but now I have cracked it. It’s not obvious, but here is how to create your own custom categories that are searchable for all your custom loops, sounds etc:
Maybe you want to easily search your vast database of cow sounds, or Church Bells, or Car sounds, or “Sounds used in project with Freddie Mercury” - you create your own categories.

*NB: Creating your first category takes a lot of setup steps - after this , for further categories it’s a simple type in job.

Here is how:

  1. Go to preferences / Media Bay and ensure “Allow editing in results list”.
  2. Open up the big screen Media Bay (f5)
  3. Go to the Attribute Inspector ensure “Defined” is selected and the gear icon is highlighted.
  4. You should see a "-+ " icon, hover over it, it states "Add user attribute - hit the plus sign.
  5. A dialogue box opens. “Add user Atribute”
  6. Ensure “Attribute type” is set to text
  7. Enter a Disp;lay name - I suggest “My Attributes”. You could make several of these, but I suggest starting with one attribute . *Careful, I can find no way to delete or rename these. This attribute will be seen under “Various” in the attribute pane.
  8. After step 7 is completed, select some samples that you want to mark with your own attributes e.g. Car Sounds, Church Bell Sounds.
  9. In the top of the Results pane in Media Bay is a list of properties - first one is usually name.
  10. Realise that this display is modifiable. If a property type is taking up too much space you can grap the side bars and drag them smaller. Also - importantly, by dragging the slider to the end you can find hidden properties (e.g. bars and beats, tempo etc)
  11. Your newly created attribute type “My attributes” should be viewable at the very END of this horizintal list. By dragging the slider at the BOTTOM (Ooh, a rude word! ) of the results page you can bring it into view.
  12. Drag "My attributes horizontally left, along the title bar, until it is in the veiwable part of your “Results” screen.
  13. You have now done all the hard work. You can easily now enter your own custom categories for each sound type - according to your wishes - Cars, Church Bell etc
  14. Conveniently, the first time you enter an original category in this attribute, you type in the name of the attribute - “Car”. The second time you wish enter Car, you will find it is already present in a drop down list.
  15. As your custom list expands you will be able to select formerly entered categories swiftly.
  16. Lastly, it might be worth your while to find a quiet hour, to classify all your own sounds and loops this way. It gets easier after the first couple!

*One last thought. Although the above seems complicated, after it’s achieved you have a category "My Attributes where you can set up easily your own custom lists of bespoke sounds - wharever you choose.
However, You can only enter ONE category per sound. So, if you wanted to be able to select “Car sounds used in Gary Numan track” but you still wanted a general, all inclusive generic, “Car sounds” list that will show Numan’s cars and all other cars, then you need to create a further attribute drop down list.
Imagine, you would like to categorise sounds according to which Artists you used them with. This could be done by creating two Attributes - the first being “My Attributes” as detailed above and then a second Attribute called “Artists”. You could then bring up all the “Car Sounds” that are also marked mark “Gary Numen” in a your second Attribute list “Artists”.

Z

14 Likes
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Great idea to post these directions. A lot more folks will be customizing their Media Bay now.

1 Like
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Thank you Zero
that was very helpful :+1:

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The instructions described here are easy to understand :wink: But I would like to add my own entries to the existing “Category” attribute. But it seems to me that this is not possible?

Thank you for feedback from the “professionals”.

1 Like
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From inside Cubase, true, this is not possible. It can be done by manually editing mediaBay’s database from the outside, so probably this is for more advanced users. At the same time, creating new categories, subCategories and characteristics, when done in order for example to comply with a VST’s properties, may easily lead in the end to big fragmentation. When I imported Omnisphere to mediaBay, at first I thought to do exactly this. Then I realised that this way I could not compare many presets with those of other VSTs which is actually what I like about the mediaBay, because otherwise, I can simply use the native browser of the plugin.
Not sure if Steinberg will allow the editing of such properties in the future, but even if this is done, it has to be used with caution and sparingly. At the end of the day @ZeroZero 's workflow is good enough for almost all use cases.

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:+1: :sleepy:

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Also, you can modify your “My Attributes” attribute:

  1. Go to Media Bay > Attribute Inspector > “Defined” tab
  2. Select the right-hand gear
  3. Expand the “Various” section at the bottom
  4. Double click on “My Attributes” (or whatever you called your custom attribute)

Here you can rename it.

1 Like
8

Great and helpful info. There also is already a ‘Keywords’ option that appears to act like your process for ‘My Attributes’. Not sure if one is better than the other or if they complement each other. I already started using some Keywords before finding this post.

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Thanks for this great info. I followed all the steps, but the “My Attributes” is not appearing at the end horizontally. I can see it in under “Various” in the Attributes inspector. Also how do you assign audio to the tags?
What does ticking the “My Attributes” do in the inspector
Has anyone done a YouTube video showing how this is done?

I want for example: To be able to tag Percussion one shots and Percussion Loops separately. Searching by filename and looking in folders works, but that method is very outdated. Be great to tag audio files properly, like in Machine or Battery, works very well.