Hi,
I have an idea for the Project window:
It would be great if audio or MIDI events could visually reflect their relative loudness or energy through their color intensity.
For example, when an event or section becomes louder, its event color could appear more saturated or brighter. When it becomes quieter, the color could gradually fade or become darker.
This would create an immediate visual overview of the arrangement and mix:
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Which part is currently dominant?
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Which elements move into the background?
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Where are the loudest or most energetic sections of the song?
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How does the overall energy flow develop across the arrangement?
It would be a visual representation of loudness/energy directly in the Project window—similar in spirit to waveform overviews, but focused on perceived level and mix dominance.
Ideally, this could be based on event gain, volume automation, track volume, or optionally post-fader loudness, with selectable display modes.
This could make large projects much easier to read and help with fast mix decisions.
Hmm well, it could be better, but you get the idea.
… or just a color fade at the top of the part, 5–10 pixels or so.
Hi @Jonas2021,
in a way, I do like the idea of having more “verbose” audio clip visualizations.
An open question would be if this might not lead to too much visual information at once, especially in more crowded arrangements.
And who knows how much a computer and its GPU would be strained by a very complex arrangement while perhaps having to render hundreds of irregular audio clip’s shapes - even if vectorized graphics would be used.
Cheers,
Markus
Hi Markus,
So maybe just for the automations or the gain controls in the inserts… something that can be turned off if needed—due to GPU overload, etc., or if it’s unwanted.
I’d like to have this for longer parts with 8 or 16 takes or more—by then, you’re already in the mixing phase and no longer working on arrangement or sound design. It would be a big help to me, when i am mixing.
Cheers
In the group folder when they’re closed!
My graphics card barely kicks in when I’m working with Cubase, and the latest versions do require slightly more powerful computers anyway. And I think that today’s onboard GPUs are powerful enough to handle something like this, even for larger projects.
Hey @Jonas2021,
yes, true. Most projects up to a certain complexity won’t be the problem.
How large / complex are your Cubase projects usually?
What I was thinking about is this: not everyone has the latest gen. DAW PC. And when it comes to huge (hours long) ADR projects with 400+ tracks and lots of insert/send fx, plus perhaps also masses of pre-loaded orchestra samples, then even more recent machines can get into trouble - mostly in Windows, since all those event handlers within heavily edited projects ain’t “nothing” when it comes to handle them smoothly (real-time calculations in 2D).
Berst,
Markus
It sounds like it’s time for a new computer, or maybe the manufacturers are finally showing what they’re capable of 
I get it, but with projects this big, you might want to look into a different workflow.
I don’t have to deal with projects this big.
Hey @Jonas2021,
I wasn’t saying that this was specifically my problem with it - it’s just that not everyone has access to the latest big studio work capable machines. Also, Steinberg need to be careful about implementing things that might restrict their rather mixed user base much more than currently, in terms of hardware and OS performance requirements.
As I said: I really do like the idea of intelligent visualizations - which (to me) means:
everything that potentially enhances a (flexible, or unusually demanding) workflow and makes all processing layers and their control parameters as transparent as possible.
One good idea is always to make such additional features optional, by introducing a preferences switch or toggle key command - so I also agree to this aspect.
Cheers,
Markus.
