In Cubase Atari up to and including I think VST32 but not in SX1 there was this tremendously useful feature called Group Tracks.
You created groups of Parts in the Project Window by selecting them and hit a command and then they where a Group.
At the far right you had this list of all the Groups you had created and you could drag and drop these groups on one (or more?) Group Track.
This sounds very much like the Arranger Track and there are overlapping functionalities but some parts are just not possible on the Arranger Tracks, which is a cool tool btw.
The greatest difference is that in Group Tracks you could make different selections on the same set of parts.
Say you had four sections of music which we can call A, B, R, and D and each section had 10 Tracks.
Now you could select Track 1, 2, 3, 4 from section A for your first group and then add some to get Track 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 10 for your second Group.
Let’s say you also create a Group from the B section with Track 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10
After that you could drag and drop the three groups on the Group Track in any order like A1, A2, B1, A2.
I’m almost certain you could update the Groups and change the Tracks you had in them if you changed your mind.
An additional feature was that you could have multiple ARR files in an ALL project open (remember, only MIDI on early Atari!) and you could have Groups with content from multiple arrangements.
This probably fits some people better than others and maybe it’s not too easy to do that with the Pool and all that in 2019, but that was how it worked.
But It would be great to have that back in a future Cubase with an added “Flatten Group Track” feature so it works kind of like the Arranger Track in that respect.
Overall I loved the flexibility of being able to make a bunch of selections on the same bunch of Parts and save them as Groups for later use.
You can’t do that with the Arranger Track as cool as it is.
Sometimes I think it would be possible to merge the old style Group Track and “new” style Arranger Track into one but they also look kind of mutually exclusive.
The last thing we need here is a clumsy tool that is neither a good Group Track nor a good Arranger Track just for the sake of it.
There is room on our large screens on the right side for a little list of groups? And oh, we have color screens now so let’s add colors to the groups!!!
It would definitely have a value boost when it arrives and you feel the pain in your wallet grow at the end of November.