Studio One 7 is getting - among other things - a clip launcher, which allows a non-linear live performance and for trying out of different clip combinations & order before committing anything to the timeline. Basically a workflow offered by Ableton or Bitwig.
Would you want one in Cubase?
I’d appreciate if you could elaborate on your vote via comment 
If I’d prefer the workflow of Ableton and Bitwig, personally I’d use these products and not Cubase.
What @ASM said.
I don’t get such a position. In both Bitwig and Live you can completely ignore clip launchers & work with linear timelines. Likewise, in Cubase you could never see the clip launcher if you didn’t wanted to.
But thanks, anyway!
Steinberg’s development resources are limited. Clip Launch is not something I’d ever use so I’d rather see the devs spend their time on things that I would want (better Expression Map features, gapless audio, ripple edit, etc.).
As @ASM suggests, there are other tools out there that are better suited to the kinds of workflow you’re talking about.
I think such a function would find a better home in VST Live, rather than Cubase.
Hey, you asked us!
Yeah, my bad 
Problem is that Cubase will now be the only major DAW (apart from Reaper) not having such a feature.
Plus, Cubase already has a scene launcher (in Ableton’s parlance) -arranger track. I don’t see why a generalisation of this non-linar tool would somehow be anti-Cubase workflow.
This is my general view as well. Although I would prefer to see resources spent on hashing out bugs and inconsistencies that has been allowed to remain in places over the course of multiple major versions.
It’s nice, but not even close.
I know it’s not even close. My point is that it is de facto a non-linear workflow kind of similar to session launcher and nobody has problem with it.
But if you ask for a more general and powerful, yet similar in spirit feature that enables non-linear clip launching instead of only section launching, all of a sudden people scream “they are converting Cubase to Ableton, we don’t want that”. I just can’t understand that attitude at all.
Clips are not only useful for loop-based music, DJ-ing and other live performances. They are also useful for composing and arranging and would really be a great fit in Cubase. It doesn’t have to be an exact copy of Live’s session view. Maybe it could be built on the top of the arranger track, I don’t know.
We’ve been through all this before… done it to death.!
Session View or Clip Launcher in Cubase like Bitwig/Ableton - Cubase - Steinberg Forums
And yet it’s still not there
If I want the Ableton workflow, I’ll use Ableton. If I want the Bitwig workflow, I’ll use Bitwig. I have both, and they are great at that. In fact, really great at it. Ableton 12 is very polished. Bitwig 5 is just brilliant with the way they’ve gone modular with it too. I love Bitwig and use it often on certain projects. Knowing how good it is reinforces precisely WHY Steinberg could never and IMO should never try to directly compete with that kind of workflow, and I sure hope they don’t get distracted by it.
I’m also a user of Studio One and I’m saddened by what is happening over there. These latest developments do NOT bode well for its future. I had been optimistic about Studio One but IMO they are losing their way under Fender.
I’m also a long-time user of Steinberg products and at this point in time, Steinberg is one of the few remaining developers that has stayed true to its long-time userbase. For all the ups and downs over the years, Steinberg has stayed mostly focused on their market, and I hope they continue to stick to it, since so many other DAWs are getting distracted and wasting effort on becoming everything to everyone.
Steinberg is good at different things, let them continue the direction they started instead of going down a path that will lead to mediocrity! Face it, Steinberg has limited resources, as do all DAW developers, and chasing the clip launcher crowd will take away from other much needed things.
I’m not opposed to collaborating with Bitwig, though, as I will explain more below, but to try to directly compete with that workflow would be a mistake IMO.
The DAW world does NOT need to become one massive copycat stew of “sameness” – let the DAWs specialize and pursue different trajectories. Steinberg has 1000 other important things to improve before spending precious and limited time on clip launchers. So many refinements they could work on, not to mention bugs to fix!
I (and clearly some other Steinberg users too, but I speak only for myself) do NOT need a distracted Steinberg spending limited energy on something that has been done to the extreme and basically perfected in their own ways by Ableton and Bitwig. It’s like asking Ableton or Bitwig to go into post production. That would be crazy. They’re smart enough not to do it.
Why on earth chase the clip launcher crowd and the Ableton market when that would actually serve to diminish the resources needed to make Cubase and Nuendo better at what it already does? It’s a distraction. Let the other DAWs that are jumping on that bandwagon lately go down that slippery path, which I consider folly for most of them.
I don’t think it’s beneficial to anyone for Cubase to be everything to everyone. That is the approach that many DAWs are taking lately, but it’s a long-term negative “master of none” approach that will lead to loss of marketshare IMO. There’s a reason why Studio One has been faltering lately and can’t even figure out their sales model, switching several times in recent years. They are coming to grips with being part of Fender now, losing their way a bit IMO and this latest clip launcher approach is driven by Fender to appeal to a different market than where they had been going before. I think it’s a mistake. Either that, or Presonus just surrendered to Cubase and Nuendo. Studio One had been one of the few serious direct alternatives to Cubase/Nuendo in recent years… and Presonus did a good job with Studio One 6.5 taking a direct jab at Cubase and Nuendo with good immersive features. But now, this clip launcher approach with Studio One 7 and yet another new pricing strategy, show that things are not all well at Presonus… it’s a complete flip of direction, and doesn’t bode well IMO.
Moreover, there is NO way that Steinberg could meaningfully compete with the Ableton workflow if they spent many years and millions of dollars trying to do it… Ableton and Bitwig have refined the workflow massively over many many years. To compete on that would be folly. And I predict the strategy of Studio One pursuing this direction will lead to its eventual slipping from a market position and even potentially lead to its downfall in the future. Just compare what’s happening with Studio One under Fender to what happened with Cakewalk under Gibson, which lead to disaster for Cakewalk. It’s a sad story, and Steinberg would be wise to review the story and avoid its pitfalls. Presonus is sadly mirroring some of the same mistakes Cakewalk made.
I really hope Steinberg is reading this thread, and I really hope Steinberg is paying attention to the market right now. Obviously I’m passionate about this issue since I’m writing an essay here, lol. I believe that trying to directly chase after the Ableton crowd will have negative consequences for the rest of Cubase’s and Nuendo’s feature set and would be a mistake long term.
As a user of Ableton Live and actually a fan of Bitwig Studio, I propose a different way forward for Cubase than trying to copy the clip launcher approach. Keeping with the idea of focusing on STRENGTHs instead of making a mediocre attempt at copying features, if anything, I think it would be useful for Steinberg to collaborate with Bitwig, and create some kind of new, highly performant sync/rewire feature that would then allow Cubase and Bitwig to work together really well, synced beautifully and routing audio back and forth. Now THAT would be an efficient use of development resources IMO, compared to trying to copy mature features in the other DAW. It allows Cubase to work WITH a first-class companion DAW that has the features that the clip launching crowd wants, without the years of wasted duplicated efforts reinventing the wheel. Let the two DAWs talk to each other really well, and then we can have the best of both worlds. Way, way better path forward.
At the very least, Steinberg should support the DAWproject file format, so that projects can be more easily exchanged with Bitwig. Ironically, it was Presonus and Bitwig that introduced the DAWproject file format, and it would be a welcome feature here too. Again, it allows some degree of interoperability, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
In any case, in summary, I strongly hope that Steinberg does NOT pursue the Ableton market but rather focuses on the core users, the core features, and enhancing/refining the existing workflows, taking them to the next level, rather than wasting limited resources on features like clip launchers. I’m obviously passionate about this topic, I don’t want to see Cubase descend into the “me too” mediocre crowd like some other DAWs.
Cheers to all. Just my opinion.
EDIT: Edited to more accurately express that this is my opinion, and I’m not trying to speak for other folks. People have different opinions, of course. Best to all.
I don’t want to argue anything at all what you wrote, except: “we”.
Nobody here should use the word “we” as you did. Just replace it with “I” or “I and some others”.
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[quote=“uarte, post:16, topic:938113”] Bitwig 5 is just brilliant with the way they’ve gone modular with it too. I love Bitwig and use it often on certain projects. Knowing how good it is reinforces precisely WHY Steinberg could never and IMO should never try to directly compete with that kind of workflow, and I sure hope they don’t get distracted by it.
[/quote]
Steinberg already has a decent modulation system in HALion 7. They don’t have to try to compete with Bitwig or Live workflow. They could, for example, open the HALion box and allow it to be a MIDI or audio effect inside Cubase. That would probably be more than enough. Bitwig would still be better if someone spends most of the time doing crazy modulations, but I don’t want to buy Bitwig to do what HALion can already do within its internal engines. And do you really think that the company that invented VST standard shouldn’t have a better way to modulate and script VST parameters in its DAW?
What I don’t understand about Steinberg is that they build the most powerful tools in the industry, but some are only in Dorico, some only in VST Live, some only in Cubase, some only in HALion etc. As if those tools are built by different companies. Steinberg should copy Steinberg more.
Good point, I’ll see if I can edit my post to remove “we”!!! I should have put “I” since I’m just sharing my own opinion.
EDIT: Okay, I think I got most of them. Cheers, appreciate the comment.
Very interesting point, and it’s very true that there are some amazing features in some Steinberg apps or plugins that are conspicuously missing in others. Another example that I’ve mentioned many times is that WaveLab now has a great click-and-drag ripple editing mode in the WaveLab montage. Why isn’t that in Cubase yet?
Well, I’ve asked that question many times, and my understanding now is that the answer is the various ways that Steinberg has been organized around different teams and projects over time. And in some cases the teams use different development pipelines and frameworks, for a variety of historical reasons over time, depending on how the product evolved in the past.
This is an inherited structure from years of how teams were brought on board in different ways. For example, the primary SpectraLayers developer, Robin Lobel (a brilliant guy), started SpectraLayers outside of Steinberg many years ago, and it was in more recent years that SpectraLayers has been a part of Steinberg. His contractual relationship is most likely different than, say, the Cubase team or the Dorico team, or even Philippe Goutier of WaveLab. In Robin’s case it appears to be more like a publication/distribution agreement compared to an in-house product development team like Cubase. This is from what I can tell reading between the lines and observing this for many years. But I have not read the agreements so I can’t say exactly what the specific differences are, but I can assure you, there are differences.
Also, these products have evolved over many many years and there’s a massive stack of legacy code and institutional knowledge tied up with some of them. A lot of that would be incompatible between development processes in the different teams. For example, the frameworks behind the legacy score editing in Cubase are different than the much more recent development stack that Dorico is using, so it will be some time before the teams can work that out and better integrate them. I am confident they are working on this now, and we’ll likely see the fruits of this in Cubase 14 or 15. I know that they brought the Dorico team on (who are former Sibelius developers, it’s a long story!), in part for the long term plans for the Cubase score editor too. In other words, there’s a lot behind the scenes of the origins of each of the products.
So there’s the overarching reason WHY there are seeming inconsistencies between the products. But if you watch the evolution year after year, you’ll see the progression to common standards. SpeactraLayers and WaveLab both work really well as ARA plugins inside Cubase now, for example, and you may have noticed that some of the neat modulation envelopes in the Sampler Track in Cubase look similar to some of the envelopes in HALion 7.
So it’s happening, but perhaps not at the rate you (or I) might want.
I consider Steinberg to be a very “conservative” developer in this sense. They work on projects in a deliberate, evolutionary, incremental, long-term approach, rather than sweeping re-imaginings and restructuring of their apps, plugins, frameworks, and even legacy codebase. Understanding this approach is IMO WHY the situation is the way it is, for good or bad. And I’m not saying this is good or bad. It may have some disadvantages, but it also may have advantages. Personally I think it lends itself to a kind of incremental stable growth pattern over years, but unfortunately it may carry some institutional baggage on its back too.
That’s my understanding. Hope it makes sense.