Track/Channel visibility question

Hey all,

I’ve set up a template with output groups and folders for drums, bass, synths, effects, etc. with each group track in its respective folder. As I write the song, I put each new track in whichever folder it belongs.

In the template, I tried to make use of both the channel visibility in the mixer as well as the track visibility in the arranger functions, with the presets like ‘bass tracks only’ in the arranger or ‘bass channels only’ in the mixer.

The issue I have is - whenever I select a preset, say ‘bass channels only’ in the mixer channel visibility, it shows the bass output group and and folder as I specified in the template just fine, but it also shows every other track/channel I created regardless of which folder they are in. Conversely, when I select ‘bass tracks only’ in the arranger track visibility, it only shows the bass folder itself and output group, hiding any tracks I created and put in the folder.

This is counter-intuitive for me. I’d expect the arranger view ‘bass only’ to show anything I put in the bass folder and ‘bass channels only’ in the mixer to do the same. Am I missing something here??? I’d really like to avoid having manually add tracks/channels to each visibility preset and save it every single time I add a track.

Thanks for any suggestions, this is driving me mad :smiley:

Hi,

Do you mean, it shows tracks/channels which you created after of creating this Visibility preset? This is logical to me. All new tracks/channels should be visible in every Visibility presets, you define before.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean. I guess we just have different ways of thinking :slight_smile:. Care to share your reasoning on why all new tracks/channels should always be visible no matter the preset? Maybe I need to understand that so I can wrap my head around this issue and possibly change my workflow.

In my mind, creating a ‘drums only’ visibility preset that includes the ‘drums’ folder should only and always show the contents of that folder without having to mess around with anything else. If I want to see all tracks, it’s easy enough to select the ‘view all tracks’ preset. To me, there’s a disconnect between a mixer visibility preset showing all new tracks (despite them NOT being a part of the folder specified to be visible) and an arranger visibility preset showing NO new tracks at all (despite them BEING a part of the folder specified to be visible).

I try to keep my projects relatively organized, putting parts in their respective folder types as I add them (bass, drums, etc). I was hoping to use the visibility agents to zero in on specific folders to reduce scrolling and hunting for tracks.

Is there some setting I missed to force this behavior? Any workarounds? Feature request? :confused:

The logic behind is:

  • The default settings is, the track/channel is always visible.
  • Only if you hide it (set the dedicated flag), then the track is hidden.
  • Newely created track has the default settings (no “hidden” flag) always.

That’s it. No more.

It would be danger, to hide newely created tracks in every (or some?) visibility presets. And of course, there is no any kind of logic. So even if you name your preset “Drums only”, Cubase donesn’t know, which tracks are “Drums”.

It’s just the way Cubase handles it at the moment, there’s no way around some manual work.

You could include empty tracks into your template in the first place instead of creating them when needed. Hmmm…

I have assigned some simple shortcuts to show/hide tracks and just do the extra clicking (load config, select the ‘new’ tracks, hide with keycommand, update config).

Another example for a possible option in preferences (I can’t stop asking for such stuff…): “add new tracks to existing visibility configurations” - to be unticked if not desired. As Martin mentioned the current behaviour can feel logical to some people, to others it makes no sense. The user should simply be able to choose!

Aaaah, you are looking at it as a ‘hidden’ flag where I am looking at it as a ‘visible’ flag. Your way is probably the way Steinberg sees it. Glass half empty/full I suppose!

Of course I understand that Cubase wouldn’t know which tracks are ‘drums’ but I’d think if a visibility preset contained a folder, the contents of that folder would automatically be included and inherit whatever flag the folder has.

Yeah, I had a feeling I’d be stuck doing the manual work but figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask in case I missed something.

+1 for the ability to choose and an option in preferences then. Off to feature requests I go!

I simply hate that Cubase hides the new tracks in a folder assigned to a visibility preset.

If I create the visibility preset Bass and I want only the folder “bass” to be visible why Cubase hides the new tracks belonging to “Bass”?

of course in a project with +1000 tracks I should navigate to the right folder “bass” and make a new visibility preset each time I add a new track---------------> creativity completely gone.

I really hope it will be fixed.

I went to a Club Cubase meeting specifically to ask about this. Greg Ondo (hi Greg!) understood my point, said he’d pass the suggestion on, and gave me a workaround:

If you use the ‘shift’ modifier key while clicking on a folder name in the visibility panel, it will select only/all contents of that folder. Then on the Visibility tab in the arranger, there’s a tiny thing next to ‘visibility’ that allows you to sync the project and MixConsole.

It’s still a clickfest and a pain to have to manually update visibility configurations but the ‘shift’ modifier makes it a tiny bit easier. Syncing the project and MixConsole suits my workflow and I don’t have to think about the arranger visibility agents.

Hope this workaround helps and that Steinberg listens to the feature request!

Thanks Jeera for the workaround but in my opinion the visibility feature should be improved in order to be top notch.
There’s a clear lack as all the previous posts have pointed out.