Steinberg should simply make their own plugin chainer or plugin container, which would be fully integrated in Cubase, with right/click for QC and automation. This should be really simple for someone who can code Groove Agent for example. Maybe a few hours work. I have no idea why Steinberg doesn’t do it, as it would easily solve all problems with lack of inserts, and some problems with track presets too.
Otherwise 8 inserts is enough for ordinary mixing. But for creating sounds it is not enough. Like if you make sounds in Ableton or Bitwig, you can see how very quickly you can use more than 8 inserts in chain.
A simple plugin container/chainer would solve the problem easily, and no changes to audio engine would be necessary. They just have to make it stable; not that it crashes all the time like 3rd party solutions often do.
Well, how many users require chord pads. How many even requested them? Still there they are. I think proper plugin container/chainer could potentially be even more useful than chord pads. No?
That depends on your personal needs. You can’t make assumptions like that based on your own interest/needs. Personally, I work just fine with the limited amount of pre fader inserts found in Cubase. But that doesn’t mean I don’t give a crap about other people’s needs. BTW, a channel strip plugin would be a better choice than buying a chainer plugin. I’d personally put my money towards that instead (if I ever needed to use more inserts).
A channel strip plug-in doesn’t make much sense to me (speaking of different peoples’ needs), because Cubase already has one, and a channel strip is usually limited to EQ and compression. When I run out of room on the eight slots, it’s usually from complex sound design with third-party plug-ins, not EQ and compression. For me, a chainer would be a delight.
Obviously, I was speaking from a traditional mixing perspective. For sound design, I can see the chainer plugin as being the better option given the current limitation. And again, I’m totally for it. Perhaps I should’ve been more specific in my earlier post.
One more thing, there are channel strips that have pretty much everything you would need to treat a track, not just an EQ and a Compressor. Have you heard of Alloy 2 from IZotope? Or the several channel strips offered by UAD and Waves (including flexible routing and parallel processing)? I’m sure there are plenty more plugin companies that have similar offerings.
The limitation of these is that Waves Rack let’s you use Waves, same as Slate and UAD. ddmf Metaplugin can’t see Steinberg vst3 plugins, BCPatchwork is glitchy on my system.
Only Steinberg can really develop a chainer that could be smartly integrated into Cubase, be stable, have less limitations, share presets etc.
For example mega-cool feature would be: imagine you’ve used 8 insert slots, press a dedicated button and all 8 slots move to a newly created Chainer, leaving you with 7 free slots. And you could mover plugins from Chainer to track inserts?
Also, 3rd party chainers won’t let you SideChain in Cubase, right?
You really should download a trial of
DDMF Metaplugin
It’s been rock solid in my use of it.
Here’s a screen grab of a different way to mix and parallel process dry and wet MONO Bass DI from one of the Allen Morgan kits included with Cubase Pro 8 in the same channel!
I have the metaplugin and love the idea much, but it’s glitching on my system. Also the problem with metaplugin is that it can do unbeliavable complicated stuff, but can’t do simple things fast - Chaining 8 stereo plugins and their i/o will tak time.
Strange!
It is one of the most stable plugins in my absurdly large database of plugins!
I’ll even use it for wrapping plugins that Cubase has a problem with.
Did you try the Metasynth (on an instrument track) that comes with it?
You can do the very same up to 8channel patchwork with your virtual instruments as your plugins!
8 plugins are plenty enough, though if you must, Waves rackspace is free, works with waves and third party plugins, allows 8 plugins per instance for a total of 64 per channel, and it remembers the settings of each one.
