I can’t see real benefits in the new Instrument Track 2.0 versus the old style VST Instruments Rack.
Well ok, what’s new and good about it is that it now supports multiple audio Outputs before it only supported Stereo out.
But often when you need multiple audio outputs you also want to have multiple midi tracks.
And now the concept suffers. Because first you create your Instrument track - fine - then create a second audio output - start creating midi notes on your instrument track. these midi notes correspond to midi channel 1 of that instrument track and the audio is by default routed to audio output 1. now if you want to do something totally different on midi channel 2 and audio output 2 like multitrimbal Instrument do.
how do you do that?
well ok, audio output 2 already exists because we created it with the Instrument track and our audio tracks and all automation data are nice and clean right under our instrument track. That’s the big plus for Instrument tracks versus midi tracks and old VST instruments Rack. But to feed midi data on channel 2 to our Instrument track we now have to create a normal midi track and set it up manually to talk to the Instrument track and our multitrimbal Instrument on it.
It’s not a big deal - create a new midi track set midi channel to 2 and route the output of the midi track to the Input of the instrument track in inspector. but our midi track is totally seperated from the instrument track in the timeline. All automation data which correspond logical to that midi track is shown in the other instrument track.
So in my opinion what is really missing is that this new instruments track does not have the possibility of multiple midi tracks in itself.
The big advantage of instrument tracks is that everything (audio and automation data) is nice and clean in that one track. But if you need seperated midi tracks outside the instrument track to get real multitimbral functionality the whole concept is wrong for me and not well thought through. I think I stay with the old style of midi tracks and the VST Instrument Rack.
Or did I miss something?
Here is a nice Video (but in german language) from Muso Talk with Helge Vogt from Steinberg:
at 22:30 minutes they talk about the new instrumnet track
All my information so far is only from watching videos about Cubase 7.5 I have not tested this by myself because I did not purchased the upgrade yet.