I recently encountered an issue with the sampler track’s behavior when using an external instrument, and I wanted to share my experience and thoughts with the community.
The issue: When dragging MIDI from an external instrument to the sampler track, Cubase does not automatically render the audio, resulting in no sound output. However, when dragging MIDI from a VST instrument to the sampler track, the audio is rendered as expected, and the sampler track plays back the sound.
Steps to reproduce:
- Connect an external MIDI instrument to Cubase.
- Record or create a MIDI part using the external instrument.
- Drag the MIDI part from the external instrument track to the sampler track.
- Attempt to play back the sampler track. No sound is produced.
In contrast, when following the same steps with a VST instrument, the sampler track plays back the audio as expected.
I contacted Yamaha US Support about this issue and received the following response:
“After testing, we can confirm that it is not possible to do this with an external instrument. The reason it works with a VST is because in the background, it is creating an audio file which in turn will allow it to be played in the sampler.”
“With an external instrument the sound is located on the hardware so there is no way for Cubase to convert that MIDI to audio by just dragging to the sampler. This in turn will result in a null output when the keys are played in the sampler.”
Their suggested workaround?
“The only work around is to render the MIDI to audio and then drag the audio file to the sampler. So follow the same steps you are doing but before you drag anything to the sampler, render that midi file to an audio file then drag the audio to the sampler.”
While I understand the technical explanation, I believe this behavior is counterintuitive and inconsistent with how the sampler track handles MIDI from VST instruments. The current workaround of manually rendering the MIDI to audio and then dragging the audio to the sampler track disrupts the workflow and feels more like a bug than an intended feature limitation.
Suggested improvement: I propose that Cubase should automatically render the MIDI to audio when dragging from an external instrument to the sampler track, just as it does with VST instruments. This would provide a more consistent and streamlined experience for users working with a variety of MIDI sources.
I’m curious to hear if other users have encountered this issue and share my perspective. I’d also appreciate any insights or explanations from the Steinberg team regarding the current behavior and the potential for addressing it in future updates.
Thank you for your attention and consideration.