Since Cubase 8, the drag-to-zoom function on the timeline ruler has been laggy, clunky and generally horrible to use. I wish this would get fixed. I used to use it all the time. It’s one of those small things that I loved about Cubase – you could click in the timeline and zoom into different areas in your project with ease. Yes you can use zoom keys, but this method was so useful and novel. But when I use it now, there’s a nasty lag before anything actually happens, and the timeline cursor doesn’t bind properly to the mouse cursor, so they end up on opposite sides of the screen from each other.
With each new version of Cubase, I’m barely interested in any new features, plugins, jibbles and flibbles. The first thing I do is see if this issue has finally been fixed, and I’m always disheartened when it hasn’t been.
Please, Steinberg. Please. Can you make this work properly again? I want the mouse cursor and the timeline cursor to work in perfect synchronicity with each other, like they used to in the glory days of Cubase 7.
Thank you.
You are not the only one experiencing a lag there. Other people reported it, too.
For me it is always a bit weird as I don’t have any lag on my install when using this zoom method.
So, it is not a general problem and therefore probably hard to “fix” for Steinberg.
Are you on Mac?
That’s odd, because I’ve experienced it on every installation on every machine since Cubase 8, including PC and Mac. Are you sure you’re not having the same problem? Did you use that function prior to Cubase 8? It was super smooth and really lovely to use up until then. It was so useful for quickly zooming in and having a detailed look at different areas of the project in one fluid motion. Here’s a video I made 9 years ago demonstrating the problem:
Sorry, I just talked about the lag.
All the other stuff is the same on my side. The playhead cursor disalligns from the mouse cursor especially when doing diagonal movements. If one carefully moves only vertically or horizontally it’s ok. Diagonal movement seems to be not handled well.
Okay, right. How has this not been picked up by now? It’s crazy! It’s really hard to defend Cubase against Logic twats when there are such blatant bugs in the interface. It’s got so many powerful features, but when basic UI responsiveness is janky, it makes the whole experience feel less polished.
How hard can it be to fix this? The fact that it occurs on Mac and PC suggests that it’s not some back end quirk of Windows. It’s weird that such a core UI function—something that was once smooth and intuitive—has been left in a broken state for so long. It makes no sense why they wouldn’t prioritise fixing a basic usability issue, especially when workflow efficiency is key in a DAW.
It’s incredibly frustrating, especially since it’s been an issue for nearly a decade. Given that it’s happening on both Mac and PC across multiple versions, it suggests something fundamentally wrong in the way Steinberg handles mouse input for zooming.
I don’t understand why they don’t just fix it.
