First all, let me say, love the new cubase 7 interface and plugins. For an amateur, home user, the inspirations just keeps coming. I was hoping someone can point a novice like myself onto the right path. Whilst I can use the volume slides to mix different instrument tracks, the same is not true for MIDI instruments. The sliders are always right at the bottom, and even if I adjust(raise) when I restart, the volume goes back to levels that I do not want. I have to delete all MIDI volume settings from the track, and then I can use the sliders, but I have to do this for every track. I don’t want to create multiple instrument tracks so I can conserve CPU, so I would like to use the VST instrument option, and load with required instrument sounds. Is there a QUICK way I can set up to use the mixer slider control in the same fashion I can with the instrument tracks? Also a lot of the inserts for instrument tracks can not be added on midi tracks. Is there any way this can be achieved easily, other that routing the output to an audio instrument track?
Apologies if this question has been previously asked or sounds silly to experienced users, but I could not find any relevant articles when searching in these forums.
It looks, there controller 7 in your tracks, which are Volume (represented by the fader of the track).
If you want to use faders only, you have to delet all these MIdI CCs. The fastest way is to select all events (ctrl/Cmd+A), open it in the List Editor, filter all MIDI Notes, and other irrelevant data, select all MIDI CCs7, and delete them.
If you are importing MIDI data from the MIDI File, you can set in the Preferences, the first comming MIDI CC 7 will be displayed by the fader of the MixConsole. Of course, any other values of the MIDI CC 7 in the track, will changes the position of the fader.
On the MIDI track, you can add just MIDI Inserts. On the Instrument track, you can add MIDI Inserts and audio Inserts too.
If you want to use all effects on any track (both MIDI and audio), use an Instrument effect. Or you can use a MIDI Tracks, which are routed to VST Instrument rack. Lots of VSTis can route channels to diferent outputs. Use this, and create new audio (in fact) track for any virtual output of the instrument. Now, you can add any audio Insert effect too.
There is no another way, how to use audio Insert effects to MIDI tracks.
I assume by “MIDI Instrument” you mean MIDI track assigned to a VST instrument. Normally you can change the volume of the output tracks of your VST instruments only, and their MIDI track volumes do not function the way you want unless they are routed to an external MIDI instrument (sound module, etc.) after setting it to receive volume data on the respected MIDI channel. I’m not saying its impossible, but personally I never mess with a MIDI track’s volume knob because of the same problem you mentioned among other reasons.
When you use a single output VSTi, obviously you change its volume on its output track, but when using a multiple output VSTi and multiple MIDI tracks assigned to different patches with their own MIDI channels, you might like to add as many output channels for that VSTi as you need and change their volume on their output tracks. This applies to automation as well. To add outputs, go to the VST Instruments window (F11) and click on the small icon to the right side of the e (edit) button.
The insert plugins for MIDI tracks are basically completely different from those used in Audio/VSTi output tracks. You can NOT use a plugin insert for a VSTi output track on a MIDI track, just the way it is impossible to insert a MIDI plugin into an audio track.
I hope this will be helpful.
Good luck.
Thank you all for your prompt and detailed replies. I guess, and as I suspected, there is no quick way, and certainly there are differences in what you can do with instrument, MIDI and audio tracks.