Marking Fader Position

Cubase
,
1

I have the following feature request:

I am an old-school producer, circa 1980’s. I’d like to start off by first thanking the developers for Cubase for always staying a step ahead of me in implementing new features in Cubase. I have been a user since 1.0. In fact, I still have my 1.0, 3.5” install disks! That being said, I think I may finally have something for you guys to think about:

I would like the ability to make a tick mark along a fader.

Even when working in the big mixing houses of LA, utilizing sophisticated mixers (Neve G Series, SSL 9K’s) I was in the regular habit of marking levels along the fader, using a thin strip of tape, and making tick marks for the different levels of a channel throughout a song. These level ticks were used to audition levels before riding the levels into automation.

Automation in Cubase is great; however, before making any level changes in automation most engineers I’ve worked with have marked the fader. If, for example today in Cubase, I have a vocal in perfect position for most of the mix but need to push it up in a section I would first have to record (write down) the fader position to mark the “perfect” position before hunting around for the new level and eventually making the movements with automation recording the movements. Even though I could do something similar in Cubase today, in that I can ride levels and undo whatever I don’t like in automation. This is not the “real-world” process that I am used to. It would be much quicker for me to make a mark and be able to move to these marks to audition before riding for automation.

As far as I know, Cubase currently does not provide for this. If it does, please respond to this post explaining how to work around this function.

So to summarize:

I would like the ability to mark the current position of a fader along the length of the fader with the ability to make several marks if needed. Please post here if there is a way to already accomplish this. After that, it would be gravy to be able to assign the tick-marked levels, in automation, to different parts of the song.

Thanks!
Tony Sylvia
The House (Studios)
Plumas Lake, CA

2

good idea +1

3

Definitely a good idea!

It could have interface similar to markers:
[some shift-control-alt-whatever combination]+number keys - to mark fader position
[another shift-control-alt-whatever combination]+number keys - to recall fader position
and of course have visual markers on fader to remind you of your stored positions.

4

Yes - I do this all the time - I would love to have tick-marked levels…

5

I had a similar ideas that included exactly this - “post-it notes” - except being able to sticky them to anywhere. ie, little coloured tack marks that can expand into a notes window that you can type in… by a fader, on a region, in a plugin, etc, etc.