I agree with @Aulicon, this annoys the crap out of me.
The only way around it that I know of, is to NOT use Instrument Tracks (or Track Instruments if you like) and use Rack Instruments + MIDI tracks. Only then you will get separation between MIDI and audio.
No, it’s not “just” that. It is a merge of both a MIDI track and a stereo audio track.
Having the MIDI data stream interrupted when I press MUTE on my mix console is not only counterintuitive, it is also impractical in many cases. OP has given good examples of such.
Thx for the support @lbstr6502 and @mlib - any idea of how to escalate this as a bug or serious feature request? I don’t think making another useless wiki will be useful. Any lead on how to get this in front of QA or Devs will be super appreciated.
Hi! I’m just here to add another name to the list of people supporting this request. I have never understood why Cubase works this way to be honest.
When I mute a track, I just want to stop hearing it temporarily. When I un-mute, I want it to resume playing like it never stopped. Not re-start and chase.
Think of it like this: I want it to act like I lowered the volume all the way down, then moved it back up. I don’t want it to affect anything else.
I don’t understand the purpose of stopping the MIDI events when muting. If I want to save resources, I’ll freeze or disable the track, not mute it.
Anyway, I hope that this request finds its way in. This is just a little something to help productivity.
Cheers!
Edit: just want to add that the video comparison above between Cubase and Pro Tools showcases very clearly how the behavior is different. If you only have time to watch 1 video, watch only that one. I don’t think further research in other DAWs is necessary.
That is why the Chase functionality exists. If you don’t like the long notes remaining silent when you hit playback until it reaches the next note, this is what you need to enable. MIDI chase has actually been developed for that exact case.
The only drawback is that since it re-triggers the note, this can sound confusing with percussive material.
If the Mute button was only cutting off the Audio part, the instrument would continue receiving data and processing it in the background, in which case the CPU load would not decrease.
Cutting the MIDI along with the audio is an easier way to manage the CPU load than disabling the instruments or the track, or freezing it.
This becomes especially true when your instruments have large polyphony and complex synthesis.
I agree with the fact that we should have an option to only mute the audio - and actually I have never disagreed with that -, this would permit to have seamless transitions upon unmuting tracks, without having to enable Chase.
I am not criticizing anyone, all I did is giving my point of view, although I have perhaps became hostile as some would say, we can all be like that sometimes, but what have triggered me was the “bug” explained in the first post, which I then sorted out with my first answer.
The topic then stated drifting into another discussion, initially it was only exposed as a “MIDI on/off message on solo/mute which produces notes re-triggering”.
It later became a feature request related to only muting the audio.
Alright, we are not here to make war, my sincere apologies if I seemed disagreeable.
@Aulicon Steinberg make livestreams on YouTube on a regular basis, I believe this is the right place to go. They read the chat regularly and answer to users questions.
Apparently on the Support they don’t accept feature requests, and they will ask to post on the forum instead. I had that answer recently, so voilà.
@mlib and @lbstr6502 would you do me a solid and vote for this post if you can? I wonder if this is the way to go to get more visibility…
Thx @philthevoid for voting !
I don’t know any engineers that hits the mute button for the purpose of lowering CPU usage. If you want to save system resources, there are much better routes you can take.
A mute button on a mix console should mute the audio of that channel. It does not make sense that Cubase has this odd exception case that differs from any mix console ever made.
Yeah. This quote is from the official Cubase manual:
“Using Solo and Mute
You can silence one or several channels using Solo and Mute.”
Nowhere in that section does it say anything about saving resources or anything else. It’s all about silence. And that’s it.
I also don’t know anyone who uses the Mute button in order to temporarily save some resources. That is not what this feature is for.
I am really wondering what is the best way to “have steinberg hear us”.
Any idea? Support is crappy, nobody cares, updates are shocking regressions…there is no QA, no testing…
Is anybody in a position of command at steinberg even reading this forum or its just to increment traffic?
So far writing on the forums and hoping that features are fixes has been a waste of time and wishful thinking
Multiple Cubase versions in the past few years have been dedicated almost exclusively to addressing common user requests. Not only that, but most of the recent MIDI editing workflow enhancements and tools can be traced back to feature requests from this forum. Matthias has also provided in-depth responses to many of the most popular feature requests. I think it’s pretty clear that they do listen, even if they can’t always add/change things as quickly as some of us want.
I’ve edited your topic’s title to make your feature request a little clearer.
@Romantique_Tp brand loyalty talk aside, do you know of a way to escalate feature requests like this one within the forum? Is voting the only factor?
Thanks in advance
When i use mute and unmute, say it’s 1 long midi note which triggers a host of drums or say a riser that exists with in a synth. Everything will restart out of sync. THIS ANNOYS THE HELL OUT OF ME! If I’m sat with people cue the long blabble of oh yeah that’s just cubase there.
In my head I’ve always thought, why doesn’t Cubase just MUTE the audio (especially for an instrument track) instead of stopping the midi. It may be a power saving feature but I don’t care about that in this regard.
Cubase please… have Mute on instrument tracks leave the audio playing but in the background, just don’t send it to the routed outputs. Now we wont get no retriggered out of sync nonsense.
Yes, I’d love for solo, specifically unsoloing, to work in this way. We just need the mute/solo functionality of a VSTi track to control the audio part of the track and not the midi part.
Not many people have chimed in so I doubt we’ll see it changed soon. We need to get more VOTES!!!
This seems to be behaviour inherited from a MIDI track, on which there is an external instrument, over which Cubase has no control of the audio output. In this case it is appropriate to mute the instrument by not sending MIDI data. For an instrument track, only the audio should be muted. Mute is never used to reduce CPU load, render, bounce etc are used for this.
This is the case… but someone used it earlier as an argument for why it’s good behaviour, to which I disagree, as for that we have bounce, render etc or simply disable the track (but i’ve never actually done that or know where the setting is).
Yes, exactly… the problem is that’s not how it works. For the instrument rackit does, but not for an instrament track. When cubase combined both the midi and audio to give us VSTi tracks (saving space), they decided to make the mute part mute the midi, where as my argument is, this isn’t a good choice. The mute should mute the audio, not the midi. Or at least give us the preference option to select it be either way.
Track count. Having multiple separate tracks for the same part.
Steinberg have been updating the instrument track for years, there used to be more of a difference. I believe the rack is mostly only kept for backwards compatibility, seen as “the old way” of doing things.
Some time back, we had to use the rack as tracks wouldn’t handle multiple out VSTs. Once we got this upgrade, I started switching all my projects over to using Instrument tracks.
There’s been quite a lot of debate between the 2 over the years.
