You know I never understand how as soon as you post an issue that you are having, someone pops up to say that they never have this issue. No offence jose7822, but it rarely helps to track down the problem. I understand that not everyone will have the same problem because each of our systems are different, set up differently with different plugins.
However, looking at your specs I think I know why I might be having this drop out. You certainly have a lot more RAM than me. Thinking about it I have BFD3 and Session horns running together as well as a number of sample based instruments. Mmmmm! I guess I have to thank you after all!
A new computer is on the way and I will see then if it sorts the problem.
I have to say that I do prefer the Instrument tracks as it is much easier to do the basic stuff like adjusting the volume etc. rather that going to the mixer.
Another advantage (and the only one for me) is being able to load all the names of the audio outs from the VSTi. This is VERY useful for large orchestral templates and I wish we had the option to save audio track names in the Rack. For instance, I have a template that utilizes 60 stereo VEP tracks and when I built a new template, I had to rename each track (using a “rack” instrument).
I know that saying, “well, mine works just fine”, doesn’t help you directly. But it does provide insight that perhaps there is something going on with the system being used. The same is true when people report having the same issue with a piece of software. That was the intention behind my post
If I use a track instrument; when I change the name of track instrument track on cubase screen, it also changes the name on mixer with the same name
But If I use a rack instrument; when I change the name of the midi track, the name on mixer does not change. So I have to make all changes for mixer too. If there are hundreds of tracks coming from rack instruments, I have to rename tracks twice. Is there a way to change both rack instrument’s track name and related mixer channel’s name at the same time?
No not really. With the Instrument track the MIDI and audio are tightly integrated. But a rack Track just uses a midi channel as an input. And you could if you wanted send 20, 30 or more MIDI Tracks to the same Rack Instrument (why but you can). In that case you wouldn’t want changing the name of one of many MIDI Track also change the name of the Audio Channel in the mixer. The same behavior also also happens if you use the relatively new capability of routing multiple MIDI Tracks to an Instrument Track. In that case changing the MIDI Track name does not change the name of the Audio Channel it is playing on in the mixer - although changing the name of the instrument Track will because of its tight audio/midi integration.
I had this happen recently on one project, but haven’t seen it elsewhere. The project would have been nowhere near pushing the resources of my PC. However I did find after reloading the instrument several times that hitting the ! to restart Kontakt’s audio engine fixed things without the reload.
I was not pointing at you in particular and even thanked you in a roundabout kind of way. However there does seem to be a kind of attitude here that “you have a problem and I don’t so you must be wrong,” which sends out all kinds of signals. (Which of course was not “your intention.”) One of them being that those individuals do not have much empathy or understanding. Steinberg cannot take responsibility for every fault that users report, as it is not possible to test the software on all the varied systems that their clients use. Indeed they cannot take any responsibility for the vendors who create vst plugins that have difficulties. I, like every other user have to negotiate all these pitfalls and make sense of the things that don’t work properly for myself. I have got used to this. However, I would like to feel that other users understand that the simplistic analysis of comparative systems functionality would only work if everyone had exactly the same set-up.
This is an observation and not a criticism.
There is absolutely no reason to have both Rack Instruments and Track Instruments as they currently operate. Steinberg could have automatically “converted” Rack Instruments to Track Instruments in Cubase 7 and been done with it.
OR, Steinberg could have introduced some truly unique functionality with Track instruments that would have made them worth having as a separate track type in Cubase. Specifically, if Steinberg had made it possible to copy a Track Instrument to a new track WITHOUT also copying/duplicating the associated VSTi, this would have been a much better system. That way you could have used Track Instruments with multi-timbral VSTi’s like Kontakt without having to create separate MIDI tracks to address the Kontakt instruments on other MIDI channels (and then “point” these MIDI tracks to the parent Track Instrument). All you would need to do in this case is change the MIDI channel of the copied Track Instrument in order to send MIDI data to a different channel/instrument within the multi-timbral VSTi.
Completely agree. And if they added midi sends to instrument tracks, we would bascially have this. Midi sends are the best thing since sliced bread, and, for some, reason they still only exist in the rack/on stand-alone midi tracks. I also think, like someone stated before, that the rack remains for backwards compatibility only…so give us midi sends on instrument tracks already
When using a Sampler, be it Kontakt or Halion or EW or even VSL I like to think of it basically as a container for 8 or 16 separate Instruments. An Instrument ‘Track’ is completely counter-intuitive. I have 8 MIDI tracks and 8 matching audio outs. So even if they work out the details better, conceptually it’s a mismatch. The paradigm just doesn’t work.
Two letters: B3. If you -really- play organ, it’s a mess using an instrument track. In this case, (1 stereo out with 3 MIDI ins), it’s a kludge. The ‘Instrument Track’ is, I guess your ‘main’ track, then the other 2 MIDI tracks have no real linkage. If it was a ‘Real’ B3, you could have 3 MIDI tracks… which were -all- part of the Instrument Track… ie. they would -all- be able to control the same audio channel.
And BTW: the SKINNY SCROLLBARS are a right PITA… and since they came on board with ‘the rack’ that’s all the more reason for me to LOATHE Instrument Tracks.
IMO, Instruments tracks were added because it was too hard for a certain group of users to understand MIDI and Audio. So they made a super simple version of a track. Then they actually added useful features to that simplified track type that should have been applied to Rack Instruments (track presets, autoassign etc). Then they started adding features to instrument tracks to give them the power of rack instruments … which only confused the people that wanted the simplified version to begin with. BY the time it is finished Instrument Tracks and Rack Instruments will have identical feature sets with the possible exception of Track Presets. It’s been a strange dumb trip.
I shouldn’t think so, if that was the case why would they go to all the trouble of making it it dockable with the media bay?
Having both of them make it altogether far more versatile. But I do think they should reduce the height of the racks when the quick controls knobs are hidden, it’s a tad ugly as it is…
Different strokes?..
If thy feature offend thee - ignore it.
Cubase is used by different people for different ends.
It might be possible that Instrument racks are much handier for playing live for instance.
When a company implements features that have a “distinction without a difference” this only serves to confuse users and results in unnecessary software bloat. Steinberg should have just gone all the way and deprecated Rack Instruments if the plan was to make Track Instruments behave in a nearly identical manner. Of course it might have been hard architecturally to convert Rack Instruments to Track Instruments (even if the feature set was the same). But so what? You either go big or go home.
No, unfortunately, midi sends were not added to cubase 8 for instrument tracks (add a free standing midi track to a project, make sure “midi sends” are enabled in the track control settings - compare to an an instrument track). Midi sends are kinda of like Direct Routing for midi - they’re useful for things like plug-ins which receive midi input (e.g., a filter plug-in on an audio track, which can, via a midi send, be triggered by same midi track that is running a vst synth), or just running several vst’s off one midi track, or triggering other sequencers inside cubase, etc. Seems like a simple thing - but incredibly useful.
9 times out of 10 I would agree with this. I have no problem with a bit of suffering for a better design.
‘More choices!’ is usually what some lazy engineer would shout at design meetings when someone complained about ‘confusing’ or ‘inconsistent’.
However: Instrument Tracks are so half-baked at this point that simply removing ‘the old way’ might be a deal-breaker for me. When they make them more robust, I’m totally on board. Until then? I’m all Charlton Heston about it.
On a broader point: One notices that virtually ALL the improvements in Cubase are now on the -audio- side. … basically borrowings from Nuendo? MIDI has gotten shorter and shorter shrift. There are fewer and fewer people doing the kinds of things that merit improving ‘the rack’ (as there are people using notation.) It’s a not so subtle hint that (ironically) SB is getting sick of the stuff that ‘composers’ use: advanced MIDI and large sample libs. They would -much- prefer that everyone do EDM and audio… with a sprinkling of ‘Instrument Tracks’.
but you can). In that case you wouldn’t want changing the name of one of many MIDI Track also change the name of the Audio Channel in the mixer. The same behavior also also happens if you use the relatively new capability of routing multiple MIDI Tracks to an Instrument Track. In that case changing the MIDI Track name does not change the name of the Audio Channel it is playing on in the mixer - although changing the name of the instrument Track will because of its tight audio/midi integration.
