Hi. Thought I would see if there are others that have “trouble” with the new window for loading VST instruments (The F11 function), but first I would like to mention that here on MAC Mountain Lion Cubase 8 run smoothly and that it might have been the least troublesome Cubase installation ever.
Now to what I hope will change:
In the previous solution (Cubase 7.5 and older) the F11 key would open the window for loading VST instruments. If you wanted an instrument you left clicked in an open space and chose from the list of available instruments. If you wanted to change an instrument, you just repeated the process on top of the loaded instrument. In the new version in Cubase 8 you first need to mark the name of the loaded instrument, then move your cursor up to the top of the window to find the pull down menu for the instruments. That is one mouse movement and one click extra.
The new window is also very large. My workflow is optimized by having the F11 window open at all times as I try out different instruments “all” the time. The old window fit nicely into the lower left corner of the mixer. The new window does not fit in anywhere as it is so large it will block other crucial information.
I would like to have the old function back, or at least a choice of window lay out in the preferences or at least to be able to shrink the window to a smaller size.
Probably unlikely we’ll ever see this option. I think they’re trying to get it away from that Cubase 5 look and compete with Logic and Ableton. Sadly, In doing so, we’ve lost some of the more streamlined UI elements
I think Cubase 7.0 was a nice sweet spot because you had some of the old-world stuff from Cubase 5 and 6 blended with convenient features like track/plug in search, etc.
They’re trying to cater to the general market of people who like stuff like Reason and Logic X, w/ stuff like chord tracks and super-cool futuristic Matrix-esque gui stuff. Sadly, all I really want is a sturdy framework to organize my instruments (data), that’s displayed in a way that allows me to see a lot of information at once. Think of the difference between ‘Tiles’ and ‘Details’ in Windows Explorer. Imagine if they removed the details option from your OS Essentially what Steinberg did here.
Of course, this is just nitpicking at the end of the day. I’ve come to accept that Steinberg and Cubase aren’t perfect. It could be a much better application in many ways. It does, however, have a great combination of features that you can’t find in other Windows-based DAWs.
Most of my stuff is pre-loaded these days, so I’m super thankful I almost never have to look at that ugly thing when I’m working
I actually agree with this. When I’m adding or removing virtual instruments, I don’t need a huge list with all kinds of quick controls where I can see what preset is loaded, etc. That doesn’t matter to me. You know how much I use those quick controls? NEVER. I have NEVER used them once. When I want to edit an instrument, I want to use that instrument’s interface, so I open the instrument and edit it.
All I need from Cubase, is a list of which instruments are loaded, and the option to easily open and close the instruments for editing.
Essentially what Steinberg did here.