Hi, I am familiar with many contemporary DAWs, but am new to Cubase, which I bought as a cross-grade to check it out. I have a few transport questions to help speed up the way I work.
I don’t see a back arrow on the transport, so navigation must be with hotkeys and settings.
1.) I’d like the playhead to return to the starting position of whatever section I am working on instead of playing from the current cursor location. For me, this makes it easy to just use the space bar to work on whatever segment I am working on rather than returning to the screen and manually moving the playhead.
2.) How do I setup cue markers so that I can jump around as I work?
I know these are stupid newbie questions, but a new DAW always brings a few process hiccups.
Edit > Preferences> Transport > Return to Start Position on Stop
Insert a marker track into your project. You can then put position or cycle markers into it. Shift + N takes you to the next marker. Shift + B takes you back to the previous marker.
I think you have the answer but one thing working with Cubase is that the left/right locators & markers are at the core (at least with my workflow).
The NUM pad on the keyboard is the centre of this. numbers 1 & 2 instantly go to the left/right locators. They can be set via CTRL + NUMPAD 1 or 2 which will set to wherever the cursor currently is at.
The rest of the numbers on the NUM Pad can be used as markers too which is very handy for setting at various position, so CTRL + NUM to set and then pressing that key will go to that position instantly from then on. There is actually a marker track so you can see them visually & add them via the mouse although I don’t use that myself.
Another handy shortcut to know is that when you have a part on the arranger selected if you press P it will set the left/right locators to the start/end of the selected part.
The NUM Pad also has other very useful key such as ENTER for play, * for Record, / for cycle ON/OFF.
For the last 20+ years using Cubase without a NUM Pad is like having a hand tied behind my back, so even on a MacBook I have to use an external keyboard. It’s worth it though as it’s very quick to work with once you get used to it, especially for the locators & Record shortcuts.
