Please increase the number of MIDI inserts, already!

Cubase
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Why only four slots? This is such a PITA. What I would love:

  • As many MIDI inserts as we would like, just as with the mix console

  • The ability to save presets for an entire rack of them that we use, for example, with a specific instrument.

I use Transformer especially often. But I can’t stand that I can only alter 4 CCs of my choice, max. We should be able to alter any number of them. It’s MIDI.

I’ve tried, oh how I have tried, to like the MIDI Remote, but I find it fiddly, buggy, overly complicated, and frankly just no damn fun to use. It filters SysEx on my master controller, a Montage, for some inexplicable reason, so I have to disable it if I want to use the Montage again. Nice work, O Yamaha-owned Software House.

In all seriousness, Steinberg really seems to be focusing too heavily on stuff that’s other than the basics recently, and not getting those right when they attempt to remedy the situation. Simple is great. Fast is great. Learn from Google and how much money they made by focusing on that, first & foremost: it responds absurdly fast to any query, no matter how esoteric.

MIDI data is tiny by 2024 standards and we should not be overcomplicating this with “just eight, sorry” Quick Controls or any of that kind of nonsense. I do not like arbitrary limitations like this. What if I want to have ADSRs for amp and envelope for a hardware synth, plus filter env amount and key tracking in easy, physical, muscle-memorized reach? Can’t do it, sorry! Eight shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be eight. Nine shalt thou not count, neither count thou seven, excepting that thou then proceed to eight. Sixteen is right out.

Seriously, guys: why keep spending all these development cycles on stuff that still doesn’t work right when you could just solve these very, very basic problems for a large number of electronic musicians who rely heavily on MIDI?

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+1

Fix and improve what’s already there. That’s should be our mantra.

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Couldn’t agree more. I just found Microsoft removed a feature for “reasons”, one that I relied heavily on. I’m spent for the evening.

It’s so enervating having to constantly petition mega corporations to stop breaking stuff and removing useful, tiny features like the beat calculator for more software bloat and useless telemetry that they don’t even know what to do with other than build pie charts for statistically invalid “metrics” for PowerPoints and appear well-dressed and important in meetings with execs who likely have no idea how music software even works. It’s ridiculous.

Do these PMs and middle managers not pay attention at all to things like what made Google wildly successful in the first place? Larry Page was a musician and his whole impatience with anything less than instant, with the search engine not breaking our rhythm, was probably his single greatest strength as a leader. No addictive, fun-to-use speed, no ability to keep people on your site and no ability keep selling ads. He knew this.

HE’S A MULTIBILLIONAIRE because of it.

Steinberg could be absolutely crushing the industry if they’d cut the bloat and focus on raw power, speed, and stability, first and foremost. Make it blazing fast, make it highly intuitive (everything drag & drop), and remove arbitrary limitations, stop writing software cruft that we don’t really want or need, make it your mantra and your reputation, and watch your market dominance take hold.

Why does Ableton launch so bloody fast compared to Cubase? Why have I basically never had Ableton crash upon launch? How insistent is Ableton on a new, major version on a regular cadence, no matter what? Hmm? Hmmm?

Does Ableton have a clunky “MIDI Remote” that allows me to fidget with unintuitive, irritating panel creation when I could be just binding a controller with lightning speed? No, it does not. It has a much, much better system for binding MIDI to any control on any VST plugin. It’s an approach without arbitrary limits or multiple, often contradictory, frustrating, overwhelming ways of doing the same thing.

Steinberg finally, finally relaxed the insert effect limits after many, many years of petitioning. I suspect getting them to stop limiting MIDI inserts will take about as long. But “never” is probably more likely.

That focus is why, come Ableton 12, Steinberg ought to be very concerned about its prospects among the younger generations, especially. They do not have the patience for this crap and I no longer do, either. Polite time is over: you’ve cost me too much time and caused me too much stress. I’m sure there are legions here who feel similarly.

Watching chipper Dom Sigalas sell us on new features in his Steinberg-branded headphones that you can’t even buy on their own (heh) has become something of a dark parody now: you know they’re gonna be broken af, many of them. You just know it. And you smirk as you think this to yourself, knowingly. But you click “buy” anyway, because some part of you still wants to believe. You install the upgrade and it’s just one… thing… after… the other. You have no right to be mad because you knew what was coming, but you can’t help but be disappointed anew.

Wake up, shape up, or be left behind, Steinberg.

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