I have spent a long time figuring out how the mute buttons behave after I had an issue with the mixer view not reflecting the mute status of the track view.
I am sharing my observation hoping that I can spare you the pain of going through this.
Case 1:
Create an instrument track; have no other MIDI track feeding into this.
Default state is mute OFF: Behaviour (ok, intuitive):
If the track mute is pressed, the instrument mutes and the mixer mute also shows ‘mute’ on.
Mute/Unmute works on either track or mixer button.
Only one additional state is possible:
mute ON:
Case 2:
Create an instrument track (Track 1).
Create a MIDI track (track 2) feeding into the instrument, either same of additional MIDI channel.
Behaviour (not intuitive):
Case 2.1 - we hear the sound from only track 1
If the track mute of the instrument is pressed, only the MIDI of this track is muted.
The instrument is not fully muted.
The mixer button does not show mute as “ON”.
Case 2.2 - we hear no sound:
If now the track mute of the MIDI is pressed, this MIDI track is muted.
The mixer mute of the instrument is NOT showing mute
Case 2.3 - we hear no sound:
If ONLY the MIXER mute button is set to mute ON (all other three are OFF), the whole instrument is muted
I did not want to complicate this topic with the option of having multiple audio outs (which appear as additional instrument channels in the mixer).
Therefor, as the instrument I was using one instance of Halion with two sounds on channel 1 and 2 like so:
The point I might forgot to explicitely state in the conclusion is:
With an instrument and no further MIDI tracks assigned to it, the track mute button is in sync with the one in the mixer / kind of controls the audio output. Both buttons act in the same way.
In opposition, after assigning a MIDI track to the same instrument, the track mute button does not sync and does not control the audio anymore. The track mute and mixer mute get disconnected for the reason of controlling different purposes.
If I send midi to multiple tracks and I mute one of them, nothing happens. Weird, but it seems to be intentional.
If I solo the track, other tracks get muted in both the track list and the mixer. Why? Mute happens only in the track list, but solo works for both? Why can’t mute work for both as well?
I’m trying to find a decent way to layer multiple instruments in Cubase and it’s a mess. Whenever I think I found a way, some weird quirk gets in the way.
Using Rack instruments adds a bunch of additional tracks to the arranger that can’t be easily hidden.
I thought I found a good way by adding a MIDI track and sending to instrument tracks, but doesn’t let you mute a layer from the track list, only the mixer. If I enable solo defeat on the midi track, I can at least solo one of the layers, but I don’t want to switch to the mixer to mute one.
The only decent way seems to be multiple instrument tracks with duplicate midi events. It seems to be good enough for a lot of successful artists, but I find it quite tedious to manage duplicate MIDI events on multiple tracks. This is the main reason I’m considering alternatives.
If I had the option to link track and mixer mutes, I’d be pretty happy with the midi send workflow. Please?
Or give us instrument layers where we can load multiple VSTi
In this case, the source MIDI data muted. So they are not sent to the Instrument anymore. The Instrument cannot be mutend (otherwice you wouldn’t hear the other MIDI tracks, which is not desired). On the other hand, if you Solo, the Instrument also becomes Soloed, so you can hear it.
Yes, you can Mute the MIDI data (the source) in the Project window.
Yes, but then it mutes all tracks/instruments that receive midi from that track.
Cubase seems to know which channel belongs to the instrument track. It show the correct one in the channel side-panel panel.
Would be cool if there was an option to keep them linked, even if that might not work for some other cases. It would work really well for me and be optional.
As you can see, the MIDI Track is routed to the Instrument.
So what can we see here:
The MIDI Track in the track list is Muted.
The MIDI Track in the MixConsole is Muted.
The Instrument Return Channel (on the left side – the Channel section) is not Muted. This is correct. As you can see, this channel is named Omnivocal (the instrument), and the icon is also Instrument. As you can see in MixConsole (and the track list), the Omnivocal Channel is not muted; therefore, it appears as Muted in the Channel section.
So, the confusion here is: Why does Cubase show the Instrument Return Channel (not the MIDI) in the Channel section? The answer (for me) is: because it’s very useful. In the Channel section, I want to control the audio/sound. And thanks to this concept, I have control over the MIDI (in the Inspector) and the audio (in the Channel) nicely side by side.
From my point of view, this is nicely designed, with the real use case in mind.
Yes, I understand that’s how it works now. But it doesn’t work for my use case which is very real to me.
I want to control multiple instruments via one MIDI track. That works. But when I want to mute one of the layers, I have to go to the channel and can’t do it from the track. That’s annoying.
As you can see in the screenshot, I have muted my track, but audio is still playing. This might make sense if you know all the underlaying mechanisms of how this is implemented, but it’s weird from a normal user’s perspective.
If I were to mute the MIDI track both layers would stop playing which is not what I want.
So the only way to mute one of my layers is through the channel. It’s not the end of the world, but I’d like to see this improved.
Based on the videos on the channel, Steinberg seems to be interested in attracting electronic music producers. Layering is an important part of that and DAWs like Ableton Live and FL Studio make it easy.
Would be nice if we could see some improvements in the future of Cubase/Nuendo.
Maintaining the link between the track and channel would be an improvement that seems easy to implement, but I don’t know the code base. Maybe not.
That’s another option, yes. Doesn’t help if there’s a VST on the track that’s producing noise or something, but at least it mutes the instrument.
My whole point is that I just want the mute button in the track list to work. I don’t want to worry about how the MIDI gets into the track. I want to set it up once and then forget about it.
I’ve made a video to illustrate the issue. I hope that explains it.
I don’t think the function of a button should change because another track sends data. At least change the color or something so there’s clear feedback that the mute button is useless.
But even better, keep the behavior consistent.
And yes, I know there are options like muting the midi track (doesn’t work for multiple layers if I only want to mute one.)
I know I can disable the send. But then I have to find the MIDI track first, remember which send belongs to my instrument and then disable it.
If I set the instrument as I did in the video, disabling it will remove it from the project. That’s no good either.
The best option is to go to the channel and mute it. But since there’s no visual indication that a mute button is dysfunctional in the track, I have to remember which tracks receive MIDI to go to the channel instead of the track list.
It’s inconvenient. I’m using Cubase because it has a lot of convenience functions and good workflows. But layering instruments is really tedious.
I would love to see some improvements, even it’s minor like keeping the track and channel mute linked.
I just wonder if you can select the desired target channel first by clicking the little icon to the right of the channel name, and then mute the channel.
You have to imagine, the Instrument Track has two parts: the MIDI Part (which you can Mute in the Project window) and the Audio Return (which you can Mute in the MixConsole). This way, you can distinguish what you want to Mute.
If you have MIDI Part on the Instrument Track and you would Mute the Instrument in the MixConsole, the whole Instrument becomes muted. So you wouldn’t hear the sound of the source MIDI Track, nor the source Instrument Track. But, if you Mute just the Instrument Track in the Project window (and MixConsole Instrument Return Channel remains unmuted), you can still hear the sound from the MIDI Track (which is routed to the Instrument).
Yes, but clearly that distinction gets blurred if there’s no MIDI send to the track. Then both parts get muted at the same time. Because it’s convenient. I like convenience.
I understand how it is working now, but I can’t imagine a scenario where I would split my MIDI events between the instrument track and a MIDI track and then want to mute only the MIDI coming from the instrument track. So the current behavior makes no sense for me, even if I understand the reasoning behind it.
I would like the option to keep both the track and channel mute state linked, even if there’s a send somewhere that sends MIDI to the instrument track. Because it’s convenient. I don’t believe that the edge case where you want to mute only the midi part is worth the sacrifice in convenience. At least for me.
Maybe it’s not clear that I’m asking for an optional change in behavior, so I’ll make a dedicated feature request thread at some point, if I stick with Cubase/Nuendo long enough.
It’s the very common multi-timbral use case. You have only one Kontakt instance with multiple sound slots (violins, violas, celli, bases,…), and you feed all of them from dedicated MIDI Tracks. Of course, you want to be able to Mute just the violins or the celli.
And as you already have the Instrument Track in the project, one of the MIDI source could be also the given Instrument Track.
So you’re saying you would put e.g. the midi for the violins on the instrument track and then have additional midi tracks that send also to the instrument track for violas etc.? I guess there are people who do that.
But if you’re having multiple midi tracks anyway, wouldn’t a rack instrument make more sense? That doesn’t seem like a good use of an instrument track.
Thanks for the explanation. Having a setting which allows to toggle the behavior would still be nice.
