Proper support for big projects (proper freeze, etc)

Working with Hollywood Strings and Brass and other multi-mic sample packs off of a non-SSD setup has led me to considerable frustration when dealing with anything more substantial than a trivial project (ironically upgrading the hard drives is almost as major an investment as some of the most expensive investments I’ve made to set up my rig, including sample packs). This has led me to formulate what would be required for even a high end setup to be performance-wise relatively viable off of a “mediocre system” (I do have 16GB of RAM and 8 cores to start with). The integral element here is the freeze function, which, while not useless, is so lacking in user friendliness that with the advent of terabyte sample sets IMO deserves a very serious overhaul.

On a lesser note it all starts with “I cannot believe there is NO INSTRUMENT BYPASS button on the main interface”. It wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if I could not only mute, but group-bypass entire instrument sections without having to open each instrument’s interface independently (if you don’t get why this is important - try mixing a 30-track orchestral piece. The convolution reverb alone will hog up most of the CPU time, not to mention the disk access, which for a regular 7200 RPM drive can be clogged up by two fully loaded instruments playing a poly pass). The only alternative to this is freezing, which becomes literally the only alternative if you also want to hear all of the tracks. Which brings me to my new segment: “Okay, VariAudio is nice and I’m sure LoopMash will make some people happy, but are you seriously serious about the freeze function?”

Here’s how to fix it (trust me, it’s not that hard):

  • implement “part freeze” by selecting MIDI events and clicking freeze for a small subsection with a custom tail (just like it is the case here). I don’t care if the freeze cuts off a long fx release trail if I know I’m causing it. Moreover, this would be far more useful for instrument freezes without effects in the first place
  • tempo-adjust the damn freeze tracks. Cubase does this for audio tracks, why not frozen audio? This alone would alleviate hours of headache.
  • implement out buss routing for instruments. Now, this is so crucial that I’ll repeat it: implement out buss routing for instruments. In all fairness I read somewhere that the word on the street is Steinberg promised this as part of a 6.x update and yes, I know I can gain access to all out signals by using a VST instrument slot instead of a regular one, but have noticed what a mess it is. In my opinion this is such a fundamental feature and coming from Reason I can’t believe there’s no hands-on WYSIWYG routing after 10 years of development that it actually deserves a facepalm
  • give me batch freeze so I can go and have a pizza while my computer is crunching
  • add bypass and group bypass buttons to the main interface

All of these are part of different types of functionality that already exist in Cubase. Why these haven’t been actually implemented instead of stacking up new effects that have far superior variants out there (GuitarRig for AmpRack, QL Spaces for REVerence, etc) is a mystery.

PS - why does save time stack up so quickly as the project grows? Not sure, but it feels like this could be done faster, if simply by making a quick in-memory copy and dumping that to disk in a separate thread instead of locking up the GUI
PPS - this is probably a Play issue, but when loading an instrument, Cubase could force a child window status on the instrument and its children so it wouldn’t keep grabbing focus, making the computer unusable while the project is loading

I fully support all your proposed fixes (apart from the wysighxyx story which I simply don’t understand :stuck_out_tongue:)
I should however note that I am rather happy with the amprack and have no hard feelings towards steinberg for developping that one altogether, because that saved me quite a bit of money on plugins :slight_smile:

You want Jeff Hyatt to jump in here, with tales of working with his regular 700+ track template…!!

Maybe he’ll notice this and chip in with some thoughts on how he manages/copes. Me? I’m a junior; rarely get past the 130 track mark, more normally 60 - 90

Without addressing each of your points, I think you make an excellent overall observation that in this day of huge sample libraries, as well as multitudinous VST instruments, the development of the Freeze functionality is lagging considerably far behind the pace

Probably old news…

http://www.steinberg.net/en/artists/community_stories/hans_zimmer.html

What’s interesting is that if ‘freeze’ was a big priority for major players, would this have been flagged as area of weakness sooner?
Reminds of PDC in Pro Tools - left for very late in the development evolution, in my opinion, because the $$$ pro’s didn’t have a need for it as much as the $ pro’s.

Not sure I follow this train of thought. Bypass the VST instrument or musical sections within the arrangement or mute sounds loaded to channels (e.g. viola’s on CH4)?

Not agreeing with you here… the visual patch-bay of Reason makes sense within the use of Reason - it started as synth rack and mixer remember, weak in many aspects of actual midi and audio arrangement.

I (and I suspect many users) have never required routing other than what one can achieve typically from my mixing desks. Sure, there will always be the requirement for exotic routing, but my suspicion is that this is more for dedicated synthesizer type application; and for that we have Reason and any other app that can be Rewired.

If the “jumping cable GUI” can be integrated into the existing mixer without turning into a spaghetti mess - go for it, if not…MHO - leave it out.

Unless I’m blind there’s no bypass button on the main UI. When you mute an instrument, it simply prevents the out signal from the instrument from being mixed by the mixer while the instrument still keeps generating sound (in the case of a complex instrument playing a complex passage, this might use up a full CPU core or choke the hard drive with disk reads even though no sound reaches the output). Bypassing an instrument will cause the channel to be switched off - no CPU or disk time is allocated to the instrument, causing it to not use any resources. The only place I can find to bypass an instrument is from the VST wrapper panel when you open a VST instrument, right above the instrument’s own GUI. In order to bypass or un-bypass you thus need to open the instrument window and click each bypass button individually. Unless, like I mentioned, I’m blind.

I absolutely agree with you here - the cable style approach simply wouldn’t work in Cubase as Cubase is an MDI application. That doesn’t mean routing cannot be made simple. The simple routing scheme I’m asking for is being able to access 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, etc stereo out pairs from an instrument and use them for individual freezing or adding effects to individual signals. This could even be done as a graph in a separate routing editor. Like I also mentioned in the OP, this is essentially supported if you don’t use the instrument slot, but rather open your instrument in a VST slot.

As for mixing desks - you’re talking about a true studio setup, which is not what the majority of people have access to. Routing is an essential part of making music no matter what you’re working with.

As for Rewire - you’re not using 64 bit Cubase, are you? (hint: Rewire is only supported in 32 bit mode)

Also - Rewire is useless when dealing with VST instruments, which requires routing within Cubase. It’s a matter of convenience and a very simple one at that.

I fully support all your proposed fixes (apart from the wysighxyx story which I simply don’t understand )

WYSIWYG means What You See Is What You Get, implying a visual way of doing things :slight_smile:

For a second there I thought Tony got reincarnated. :open_mouth: :mrgreen:

Jeff uses slaves to run VSTs. :wink:

My understanding of the VST3 standard is that achieves this automatically - passages in music not being played do not consume (or consume less)CPU and memory. However the activate/do not activate (bypass) button is on the VST Instruments window which I have as a ‘permanent window’ in my workspaces… :bulb:

If you’re referring to ON/OFF button within a multitimbral instrument like HALion - not sure if the VST standard captures any communications with it - as far as I could tell, its not even possible to automate the parameter, as it does not appear within the available list?


I absolutely agree with you here - the cable style approach simply wouldn’t work in Cubase as Cubase is an MDI application. That doesn’t mean routing cannot be made simple. The simple routing scheme I’m asking for is being able to access 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, etc stereo out pairs from an instrument and use them for individual freezing or adding effects to individual signals. This could even be done as a graph in a separate routing editor. Like I also mentioned in the OP, this is essentially supported if you don’t use the instrument slot, but rather open your instrument in a VST slot.

Since its possible by using the VST instrument slot… mmm… why not just use it? :wink:



As for mixing desks - you’re talking about a true studio setup, which is not what the majority of people have access to. Routing is an essential part of making music no matter what you’re working with.

As for Rewire - you’re not using 64 bit Cubase, are you? (hint: Rewire is only supported in 32 bit mode)

Also - Rewire is useless when dealing with VST instruments, which requires routing within Cubase. It’s a matter of convenience and a very simple one at that.

Actually I was referring to the existing routing within Cubase as simple and suitable, as it fulfills the requirements from a traditional mixer point of view (& then some). At least for the way I work - and yes 32bit rocks!

Simple is an interesting choice of words, being a long time user I thought the routing was simple… go figure :sunglasses:

Something which does surprise me, is that one is not able to simply drag and drop the frozen file back into the arrangement or pool. The sync is completely out of whack… this is puzzling, as one would assume it would be a 1 for 1 copy of the data in the original track.
(I tested this with a midi file, freezing only the instrument portion)

My humble request, dear Chris, would be that this ability be investigated further, as it appears to be the quickest way of working with rendered files?

Isn’t Freeze intended as something of a stopgap? In the sense that it allows you
to continue to work on a big project and mitigate performance issues. It’s still
expected that you render the audio (into the pool) when you’ve got your sequencing
how you wanted it.

(although… I’ve had numerous projects where I had used Freeze in order to free up
resources, and then at some point moved on to other projects… and then later lost
some of the VSTi’s I had been using. When I came back to the old projects, it was nice to have the audio intact via Freeze)