The new Score Editor in Cubase 14 is a big step backwards. Important functions are missing. Anyone who has worked with the previous editor will miss many excellent functions. The first impression after installation was, what a bummer. The score image is nicer, but you can’t work professionally with it. What was Steinberg thinking? The new Score Editor is nothing more than a toy. The range of functions is only a small part compared to the previous “old” one. That is no progress! If Steinberg is talking about a further development, then it should be one. This editor in its current form is not one of them. From a professional point of view, it is useless.
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…a work in progress. I think, to make it compatible with Dorico.
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If you’ve been following the backstory of the development of the score editor and Dorico over the past several years, you know that the old Cubase score editor’s primary developer at Steinberg (a legendary coder as I understand it) was going to be retiring in the upcoming years, and it was not going to be optimal to properly maintain and improve the score editor going forward. It was an impressive accomplishment spearheaded many years ago largely by one main guru, but moving forward into the future, it needed a massive overhaul for better interoperability with the long-term master plan of Dorico and my guess is, emerging standards like MIDI 2.0, etc. So part of the long-term plan when Steinberg brought on the Dorico team, was that a new score engine would also be developed for Cubase.
This was a massive amount of work and many years in the making, a huge investment on Steinberg’s part, and a collaboration of the old guard and the new guard as I understand it, if I read between the lines correctly, to create an entirely new engine that would take Cubase’s score features well into the next decade. What you’re seeing is version 1.0 of it, from my understanding, with an entirely new foundation with a huge amount of new code.
I’ve pieced this story together from bits from the forum and interviews and anecdotal comments from Steinberg folks over the years. I don’t have direct insider knowledge though. I could have misunderstood some of it!
Personally, I’m thrilled that Steinberg is refactoring and replacing legacy code, which is why Steinberg was able to launch a version of Cubase for Windows on ARM processors, for example, before any other major DAW (no offense to Reaper, but in all fairness, I should give them kudos too). Anyway, it’s a big deal IMO that the team has been able to build out a more modern code base. This bodes well long-term IMO.
However, there will be pain points and inconveniences of missing features compared to replaced code. I totally understand some people’s frustrations, and Steinberg has done this kind of process in the past, as you may or may not have noticed. I’ve personally been impacted by other changes to workflows in the past when they’ve replaced functionality, but eventually, the “new” feature matures and is often (but not always!) better than the legacy code. It seems to be part of their long-term refactoring process to do it this way. In this case, it was a huge amount of code that was replaced from what I understand. It isn’t perfect of course, and hopefully some of the key features you are missing will be added and surpassed in upcoming updates.
But the alternative, as I understand it, is that Cubase would rot on the vine, as the saying goes, and likely end up so filled with legacy code, it would likely stagnate and be incredibly difficult for the developers to add innovative new features. Not to mention the developers would likely have difficulty pivoting when major platforms evolve (or break as OSes occasionally do), and addressing important standards like MIDI 2.0. I believe the new score editor is part of a framework that will enable those kinds of new technologies to be added more easily, instead of “bolted” on to legacy code. And we certainly wouldn’t be seeing the nimble development process with Steinberg being able to release for Windows on ARM, for example. That all may not be important to you, but the fact Steinberg is able to do that is evidence IMO of their modernized coding pipeline, which is something that will benefit every aspect of Cubase IMO.
Anyway, I understand your frustration. In my case, I appreciate the work that was done, and I’m optimistic about the future workflows that will evolve with Dorico. I’m a big fan of Dorico, and I imagine a future workflow in the years to come that will hopefully be seamless between Cubase/Nuendo/Dorico. But yes, it’s still early days, there are going to be some headaches. But I think the decision was wise, and the long term path with Dorico, for example, is worth the headaches. Thumbs up from me!
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Hi Gerold, thanks for your feedback. While I certainly don’t share your overall assessment of the state of the new Score Editor, I’d like to point out that we do in fact have a lot of happy users that are able to incorporate this updated tool into their workflow. We have also received plenty of useful and constructive feedback, and we continue to work on the Score Editor taking all that into account.
If you feel that you can’t work professionally with this new Score Editor, I’d be curious to hear specifically what you are missing.
This was actually answered already by Steinberg and I think it is worth a read:
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Hello,
· In Cubase 14 I miss important functions for my daily work:
· Copy with ALT key ( and Ctrl key) and mouse
· Alt key + poopies and click the mouse to position the cursor (playback position)—
· Pitch correction using arrow keys (single step and octave)
· Display jumps from score display to single voice display when Stop key (space) is pressed
· Display jumps from score display to single voice display when position is set in the “Tracks” window
·
· And……
In Cubase 14 vermisse ich für die tägliche Arbeit wichtige Funktionen:
· Kopieren mittels ALT-Taste ( und Strg-Taste) und der Maus
· Alt-Taste + poopies und Klick der Maus um den Cursor zu Positionieren (Abspielposition)—
· Tonhöhen Korrektur mittels Pfeil-Tasten (Einzelschritt und Okatvierung)
· Anzeige springt bei Stop-Taste (Leerschritt) von Partituranzeige in Einzelstimmen-Anzeige
· Anzeige springt bei Positionssetzen im „Spuren“-Fenster von Partituranzeige in Einzelstimmen-Anzeige
· And……
BR
Gerold
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Project cursor that moves smoothly.
Apart from fixing the lyrics bug, the following feature would’ve made the legacy Score Editor perfect:
I’d been meaning to post my comprehensive critique of the new score editor for some time, and I suppose this thread is as good as any. I too was disappointed with the new program but I absolutely see the potential here for this to evolve into something great, and will try and be patient as features I need get re-implemented. With that said, here are my thoughts (some of which I’ve already posted, so apologies for the redundency)
The Good
- Automatic placement of items is generally great and quite helpful in creating clean layouts
- The smart features like slurs, staccatos, etc are a nice touch and useful in some scenarios
- The interface is modern and overall more intuitive than the old editor
Now to the bad. First up, the lack of templates and/or ability to make bulk changes is by far the largest deficiency I’ve encountered, and can be illustrated by outlining the steps I need to take every time I create a part:
1.) Create the new Layout
2.) Open layout settings, choose the default staff and manually type in my instrument names to reflect the track names (the auto-naming is usually either wrong or not helpful in my workflows)
3.) Set the markers to not display
4.) Set signposts to not display (which is not persistent and has to be done every time I open the score editor)
5.) Set the chords to display on individual staves only.
6.) Set the chords to not display (not redundant, this takes two steps)
7.) Setup the default display quantize values I want
That’s 7 steps I need to repeat 4-10 times per session, across 20 separate sessions per tv episode. It’s an unreasonable amount of work, and I hope points to the fact that we need some kind of template system so I can set up defaults once, and only once, and then have a way of importing those settings from one session to the other.
In addition (or perhaps instead of) this template system we need the option of setting default behavior for all layouts, or perhaps the ability to create custom instruments that save these defaults. If I could have, say, an instrument defined as “Treble Staff Default” that had all my settings I wouldn’t necessarily need the template system.
Additional drawbacks/bugs/needed features
- NEEDED: The ability to quickly override the default item placement (especially text)
- NEEDED: The ability to draw portamento and glissando lines (which the devs have noted is to be included in an upcoming update)
- NEEDED: a simple “shape” tool to give us lines, arrows, circles, etc
- NEEDED: the “no overlaps” display quantize setting saved a ton of editing in the old score editor and absolutely needs to be implemented here
- NEEDED: ability to duplicate an item by selecting it and alt-dragging it to a new location, as was possible in the old editor (and in many other pieces of notation software). Very helpful for quickly engraving dynamics.
- NEEDED: ability to select a note and define it as a grace note manually rather than to have to fiddle with note lengths in the key editor until the automatic detection system kicks in
- BUG: Stability issues; if I make a large set of actions in the key editor, with the score view open, I tend to cause a freeze
- BUG: Markers persist when check mark is off if the marker track is in time base mode (bug has been logged)
- BUG: In some cases, adding a note articulation will not work until the score window is closed and re-opened.
I thank the developers here for continuing to read my posts (and those of others) and reacting quickly to consider these new features. I’m excited to see where it goes and hope that it’ll evolve into a system I can use in my professional work.
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Since C14…it’s the first time in my entire 25 year history as a cubase user I’ve been able to use the score editor reliably… so I 100% disagree with he OP.
M
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This was the goal of the devs, to make it simpler and more intuitive - and I’d say they succeeded in this - but as a daily user of the old editor I can assure you that the old editor, while extremely clunky and counter intuitive, had a lot more power under the hood. But you had to read that separate score editor manual cover to cover to wrap your head around it, not to mention all the crashes it tended to cause.
This is always the tradeoff - how to add flexibility for users like myself who need it without adding too much complexity for users who don’t. Flexibility and intuitiveness tend to often be at odds in UI development, unfortunately.
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@GPnicolett sure, however this is the first step in the score editor taking on everything that has been coded for Dorico. So I’d say in a few years time we’ll have the functions Dorico has and the ability to import export from and to either program natively.
So think of this as the first step in that path.
M
I should live so long!
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