Impressed with Cubase- am I crazy? What impresses you?

[headquest]

Something I love with the Track Inspector (you probably know anyway, but it took me a few days to notice this one) is that if you CTR+click the different tabs you can have more than one open at a time to suit your needs. Initially I loved the Track Inspector anyway but wanted to see more than one section at a time - the Ctr+click was the trick I took a while to spot. But now I rarely need to go to the console view at all

And of course you can right click in the Track Inpector area and rearrange which items are available and what order they appear in - something else I quickly customised to suit my personal workflow.

[koolkeys]

I actually saw that feature in a video somewhere when I was doing research. But I forgot all about it! So thanks for the reminder.

It's amazing how customizable Cubase is. Also, and I KNOW this comes down to personal preference, but I hear people talk about workflow and "bloat" in major apps. But with Cubase so far, I just don't see that at all. I think it's mainly people who have never tried it or don't fully know how it really is.

I guess having no demo will do that. But heck, even without a demo, it seems to attract many new users these days, myself included.

I'm talking a lot about the good parts of Cubase. Don't get me wrong though. It's not perfect. Sure there are things I don't like. But what I've seen so far is very refreshing and just what I was hoping it was.

Brent

[LawrenceF]

I'm talking a lot about the good parts of Cubase. Don't get me wrong though. It's not perfect. Sure there are things I don't like. But what I've seen so far is very refreshing and just what I was hoping it was.

Brent

The "can hide" mixer channel paradigm is a pain in the ass... I hate that. A simple PT like show/hide track list would be much better.

Re: Window layouts. Here are mine from the widescreen laptop. You can place this file in (Vista) User/AppData/Roaming/Steinberg/Cubase5

Only 5 here, I have many more in the studio. Alt keypad(#) 1-5 to call them.

http://dawsession.com/pics/Window%Layouts.xml

Replace the % with a space when/if you save the file.

[susiwong]

The big oversight with workspaces (and several other stuff) is that there is no option for a global setting, i.e. not project specific.
I have 5 workspaces, that's all I need, and I don't change them for different projects. There are times however when it's inevitable to change all of them globally, obviously for older projects too, that's where the fun begins.
Those who have changed their monitor setup only once will know what I mean.
Ymmnv,
susiwong

[LawrenceF]

The big oversight with workspaces (and several other stuff) is that there is no option for a global setting, i.e. not project specific.
I have 5 workspaces, that's all I need, and I don't change them for different projects. There are times however when it's inevitable to change all of them, that's where the fun begins.
Those who have changed their monitor setup only once will know what I mean.
Ymmnv,
susiwong

Any time you create or edit a workspace that you want to be global go to "Organize" and send it over to the global workspaces. Or unlock it, change it (move stuff around), and lock it again to modify it.

I may be off base here though. To your point you do have to modify the old workspace, delete the global one and then send the new one to global.

Yeah, a pain in the tush.

[spaceman]

anyone running it in Windows 7? (64bit)

[headquest]

anyone running it in Windows 7? (64bit)

Steinberg are... apparently without any flaws at all. Good news in terms of W7.

But yes, interested to know if anyone here has tried this yet...:

[susiwong]

The big oversight with workspaces (and several other stuff) is that there is no option for a global setting, i.e. not project specific.
I have 5 workspaces, that's all I need, and I don't change them for different projects. There are times however when it's inevitable to change all of them, that's where the fun begins.
Those who have changed their monitor setup only once will know what I mean.
Ymmnv,
susiwong

Any time you create or edit a workspace that you want to be global go to "Organize" and send it over to the global workspaces. Or unlock it, change it (move stuff around), and lock it again to modify it.

I may be off base here though. To your point you do have to modify the old workspace, delete the global one and then send the new one to global.

Yeah, a pain in the tush.

Lawrence, I do use the various management options all the time - that's not what I'm talking about. I want to have non project specific workspaces.
Example:
Last winter I gave up my 3 19" CRTs and ordered a 26" TFT for testing.
Everytime I opened a project I had to delete the workspaces, move the new ones over, ca. 1 min lost. Open any other project, even a different version, same crap. This gets old quickly.
After I knew that 26" was a keeper I ordered a 2nd, no need to elaborate further.
A simple preference for "make current set of workspaces system default", overriding project specific settings, would have saved me hours and hours of stupid clicking.
I can only imagine what folks who regularly go from PC to laptop are experiencing.
The same applies for VST Connections, too, btw.
Cheers,
susiwong

[LawrenceF]

Ahh... got it. Yep. Pain in the ass.

If you work from the global workspaces to start with I think this...

If the Auto Instantiate Presets checkbox is activated when you create a new project or open a project, all global workspace presets are automatically converted to workspaces.

... may help a little with the other problem, always using the globals for projects, not with changing monitors though. I don't know if that overrides the project workspaces or not.

Thanks man. Good point. I'm gonna test that auto thing to see if it overrides. Probably not.

[susiwong]

Ahh... got it. Yep. Pain in the ass.

If you work from the global workspaces to start with I think this...

If the Auto Instantiate Presets checkbox is activated when you create a new project or open a project, all global workspace presets are automatically converted to workspaces.

... may help a little with the other problem, always using the globals for projects, not with changing monitors though. I don't know if that overrides the project workspaces or not.

Thanks man. Good point. I'm gonna test that auto thing to see if it overrides. Probably not.

Unfortunately it does not.
At least, using the globals > Auto Instantiate makes new projects come up correctly.
Cheers,
susiwong

[LawrenceF]

Unfortunately it does not.
At least, using the globals > Auto Instantiate makes new projects come up correctly.
Cheers,
susiwong

Yeah. It duplicates. So, if you had a workspace called "Mixing" and you changed the global workspace to fit your new monitor and had that "Auto_Instantiate" option checked... what would happen when you open the old project is you would have two "Mixing" workspaces listed in the menu, the old and the new.

Yup. Either way you have to go in to clean it up and/or make a new one. That could use some improvement for sure.

[susiwong]

Thanks for confirmation.
Same principle applies to VST connections. No issue for the 2 I/O interface users, all others suffer.
At least you only have to load two (!) presets here, one for inputs and one for outs.
One little "default" checkbox ...
Cheers,
susiwong

[LawrenceF]

Oh yeah... the VST Connections paradigm needs some re-thinking. Once you set it up for your particular mulit-out setup it's fine (cough) except for old projects that you saved with multi-outs *before* then.

Been there done that with my d8b. There needs to be a software layer between the I/O numbering in the daw and the actual hardware layer so changing hardware doesn't screw that up.

Yup. There's also been an FR for a global preset system to store I/O, External FX I/O, External Midi Hardware I/O and all of that stuff in the dialog in ONE preset.

Here's hoping.

[susiwong]

Oh yeah... the VST Connections paradigm needs some re-thinking. Once you set it up for your particular mulit-out setup it's fine (cough) except for old projects that you saved with multi-outs *before* then.

Been there done that with my d8b. There needs to be a software layer between the I/O numbering in the daw and the actual hardware layer so changing hardware doesn't screw that up.

Yup. There's also been an FR for a global preset system to store I/O, External FX I/O, External Midi Hardware I/O and all of that stuff in the dialog in ONE preset.

Here's hoping.

Here's been hoping for years and years ...
But the fact that I'm complaining about those comparatively little things speaks volumes about current Cubase quality in general.
Cheers,
susiwong

[LawrenceF]

The adventure continues for Brent. Let's make his head explode.

Independent Track Looping in the midi editor. As long as the key editor is open this custom range will loop independent of the project.



In Place Midi has a tool bar that can be called temporarily or made static using the CTL modifier. Click (or CTL-Click) the little blue triangle on midi tracks. Also to close in place editing, double click the solid bar at the bottom of the item.



- Splitting items. Hold Alt and click anywhere to split.

- Glue: Make a single-key key command for "Events To Part" so you don't have to call the glue tool.

A few handy key commands:

- Move Loop Range to Selection: P
- Split Selection: Shift-X splits the in and out points of a selection.
- Insert Silence (in selection): CTL-Shift-E Be careful with this one as it will insert silence only on the tracks where the selection range is, shifting everything else down the timeline on those tracks.