Why is this SIMPLE MIDI Remote so HARD Steinberg?

Cubase
1

I have a simple 8 fader MIDI Controller. All there is is eight faders and a button to assist in assigning CCs - that’s it.

It was set up in Mackie, but after latest update this device routing at first dissappeared but still worked, then today it failed for reasons unkown.

I decided to try to use the new MIDI remote manager. ALL I want to do with these faders is two simple things:

1] Whenthe physical device has an assigned MIDI CC (such as CC7) for Cubase to recognise this.

2] To load up a VST and then, if I require, right click on a VST’s knob and assign it to a fader.

You think that such a common task, used every day by composers, is SIMPLE in the new “Easy” method. Well having just spent five hours trying to do this. I disagree.

In the new editor it is possibly IMPOSSIBLE, at the very least it is totally obscure and not described in the manual.

I can draw in the faders, I can get it so that when I move a fader in the real world, the MIDI Remote editor moves, but in a track in the sequencer, nothing happens, with all the VSTs I have tried, when I try to assign using the above two methods.

There is no help I can find for MIDI CC Control via hardwire devices. The help in the operational manual does not seem to be designed for this.

I may be missing something but I find the whole new MIDI remote “easy method” to be obscure and even downright misleading. It’s often very confusing about which of the screens you should be in to do what. Doing things like deleting a remote map, or editing a fader, cannot be accomplished where, intuitively one might think it could.
You are claiming that things are much easier now, but they are not. Compare it to Mackie (which you are threatening to delete from Studio Setup.

Using a Mackie device, there is one screen and merely by selecting the inputs there I have managed to get things working again as a Mackie device.

5 hours his morning with your new flagship product achieved failure.

Please Steinberg, either explain where I have gone wrong, or address this important issue

2

Hi,

It is super-simple. Right.click on VSTæs knob and choose either:

  • Add parameter_name to Focus Quick Control Slot… and choose the Focus Quick Control slot.
    or
  • Pick for MIDI Remote Mapping and choose the controller in the MIDI Remote Mapping Assistant.
4 Likes
3

To have MIDI messages go through to Cubase, you have to NOT “use” the MIDI Remote. With your next cup of coffee, if you’re not still too aggravated from the experience that is, try this.

The fader of your device that sends out CC7, leave it alone. Don’t assign a function to it, leave the assignment blank. Now, on an instrument or MIDI track, if you have All midi inputs enabled, your fader will register CC7. Record enable the track, press record, move the fader. You should see CC7 being recorded on the track as you move it.

Continue now, without doing anything else and load a VST. I tried it with Pianoteq, Halion Sonic SE and CS80V 4.

Right click on the parameter you wish to assign to the fader, when the plug-in prompts you to move the control, move your fader. Now this same fader is assigned to that parameter. It doesn’t work you say? Make sure the Record Enable button of the track is pressed, and the In All Midi inputs is also selected.

1 Like
4

Thank you guys I will try this - would it not be nice if the manual explained this.

5

But the manual never explains how to do things! It only explains what each thing does. “A compass is a tool used to draw circles”. “How do I use it?” “You draw circles”.

3 Likes
6

You rule!

This problem has been driving me nuts all day. Thanks - and well explained.

1 Like
7

No it does not “Only explains what each thing does.”
In many cases it only declare that it exist and you are supposed to deduce it’s function based on what you known about cubase and it’s name. And many of them are not used in any of the examples so it is a guessing game.

Im trying to figure out if you can get vumeter data out of the script, but I think
it is only parameters for setting vumeter parameters in mixer views.

8

That’s true unfortunately. And it’s still 1.500+ pages!

9

Hi,

Yes, you can.

Be aware, there is quite some MIDI data traffic, if you are going to use it.

1 Like
10

Do you know an example? A lot of midi data is usually not much for USB. But it is a very interesting topic for the manual to cover: How to handle flow control in remote script to avoid flooding the system.

11

It depends what data you are sending to the controller and at what frequency. You can filter out below a certain threshold so only data is being sent for channels with activity too… That saves a lot of un-necessary comms.

If you’re spitting out data to the debug console within MIDI Remote it can cause a lag when doing continual update messages such as VU meters so be sure to test with that closed for real-world performance.

The massive bottle neck is the MIDI Remote and (I presume?) it’s old JS implementation, not the USB/MIDI connection, once you have continual data being sent it can degrade the performance of MR.

I guess this could be also deliberate and that each MR instance has a limit on resources, i’ve not compared to see if using a second MR affects the performance of the first - that would be an indicator.

12

It does not really matter how much it need to handle flow control even if it is mostly done in OS level. The other end might not read out data in the speed you send and it need to be handled. For application that tries to be realtime it is very important. And I have not seen any thing about how cubase will throttle or if there is anything the script can do to know about that it is queueing up data and what happen with the system when we get a blocking write.

13

Who knows. I don’t know if it’s just Steinberg being overly safe with the amount of resources it can take, or if it is just really inefficient. You only have to send Sysex data for 8 chans of VU Meter data, open the console and it lags crazy.

You’d hope it’s being deliberately limited as to not negatively affect the DAW as a whole. Like I said before though, I don’t know if each MR instance has the same limit or if it’s limited as a whole. ES5 has limitations itself, I just don’t know why they used such an old JS version to build something modern.

14

I can not understand why they use JS at all. The only way to make sense of that is they plan to make all of Cubase GUI to be a JS application. But that does not make sense…

15

MCU encode their meters in a very efficient way. (And they have to since it originate back in the days with midi speeds)

16

Hi,

With the MIDI Remote, we are still limited by the same speed.

I agree, MCU optimization is great here.

17

I’m not joining in with this Scriptors Joy toy , but to answer your OP
image

Because it’s a bloody mess

18

It seems to be working for mixerchannels but no way to get it to work for controlroom vumeters. And how do you get the separate values for left-right (or any other channel configurations) ?