APPEAL: C7.X Pro Composers: Voice Your Opinion here![POLL]

Why doesn’t SB implement features with the highest user-demand and/or address top requested fixes?

  • TECHNICAL REASONS: They’re trying but don’t have the capability to execute the features and/or the application limits this.
  • MARKETING REASONS: e.g. They wish to delay the features as much as they can so that the future versions have more selling points.
  • FINANCIAL REASONS: They don’t have enough money to pay people to add the features.
  • PLAIN NEGLIGENCE: They don’t care enough to truly hear the users out.
0 voters

Edit 12/17: This thread has one of the highest amounts of views (relative to it’s age) in this board this week (I sincerely hope it’s the developers :wink: ). Yet only ~40 people voiced their opinions on our last poll.

Please take a moment to vote let us know how you feel on the latest one!

Here’s the result of our first poll ~40 pro users:

60% felt the app was acceptable or better but 40% felt it was flaky, at best.


The following discussion regards a topic that is relevant to Cubase 7 and it’s professional users.

Cubase is an amazing DAW. Like all programs, it has a number of issues that need to be addressed. The amount/severity of issues may differ greatly on a per user-basis, based on their needs from the application:




This thread is written as a query to the professional film/TV composers who use this app as their main DAW: that means, if you’re reading this, you’re a user of Cubase that demands top performance from your DAW.

Your avg. session stats reflect the baseline for modern film/TV composing: hundreds of MIDI tracks, a couple dozen inst. tracks, complex routings, etc.


As a pro-user, you require a robust app for your everyday work. The questions are:

  • 1. Which factor best accounts for the lack of highly-user req. FR (feature request) ports and bug fixes in Cubase 7.X? (Please place your answer in the above poll)
  1. What 3 issues stop Cubase 7 from being a near-perfect solution for you, a modern film/TV composer?

Let’s have it out in the open: nothing more/less than an honest assessment of peoples feelings about this app and those responsible for it’s development. If that’s not relevant to Cubase 7, I don’t know what is. (The last rating thread was moved to the lounge: http://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=51788)


The following are a collection of posts and threads that address some of the most-wanted/ignored features. Feel free to add to this.

Maybe you should offer an option between good and bad? It’s not good and it’s not bad either.

“What 3 issues stop Cubase 7 from being a near-perfect solution for you, a modern film/TV composer?”

  1. Terrible frozen-track management. A frozen track is basically dead in Cubase, unless you export it and re-import it. If you freeze a track and then warp the other tracks, the frozen track will be out of sync. That’s unacceptable.
    In other DAW’s, frozen tracks are treated as audio and they are totally editable. Oh, and you can freeze multiple tracks with a single command.

  2. Obsolete windowing system. It’s kinda hard to believe that in 2013 you STILL can’t take the piano roll and scoring views out of track view and into another monitor. Other DAW’s are completely modular and you can detach and move around your screens virtually anything.

  3. Video is still cumbersome to handle in Cubase. It’s assumed that the music should always be modified to fit the video and not vice-versa. Sometimes the latter is the optimal solution, and if I want to suggest something like that to a director/producer, I’d have to export everything and use another application, like Vegas. To be fair, this is an issue that affects virtually all pro-level DAW’s. But you asked what would make Cubase “perfect”…

Good idea. I revised the titles of each option, to make it more clear.

Agreed!

Yes! Agreed too!!

#1: I would group together all the little workflow issues I have. I’d need a “glue selected notes shortcut”. Also a “glue only adjacent notes” shortcut, supported as an option when gluing regions in the arrange, so basically allow global edits for material not right on the grid without requiring a whole bunch of manual fixing. Change attributes for all selected notes in all active parts. Optionally completely sticky attributes for MIDI input, so repeated starts don’t always require pressing the attribute keyswitch again. Multitrack CC inserting from the arrange. Keyboard shortcuts for variations of “insert CC ramp at cycle”. Split directions with the scissors as well as the range edit tool. Single keyboard shortcut for playing the session at 50-75% tempo for recording harder to play figures. Convert ramp tempos to a number of jumps within the session that ensure the exported tempo map works 1:1 in Pro Tools. Allow MIDI and audio on the same track for multitimbral instrument outputs. Select top notes (can kludge it with a macro with C7 logical editors improvements though). Automation groups. Chord track with more intelligent support for chord and non-chord scale material in the same region, with proper voice leading. Process Tempos with support for multiple jumps, so you can lock start and end timecodes and then only the curve changes. Export to video file by compressing a small H.264 at the same time. Stuff I do in AutoHotkey right now: Marker batch export (I know, it’s Nuendo-only), MIDI-track based batch export i.e. export with each one track or group of tracks soloed. I’m probably still forgetting a lot, because I’ve kind of just given up on collecting these. The amount of time spent writing feature requests for niche stuff like this that will likely never get done is not worth it unfortunately.

#2: DP-style chunks would help so much with managing multiple cues. Although the only positive thing about doing everything in a single session, like I do now, is that with a single tempo map, we also have a single grid-correct session for Pro Tools for the mixing engineer. So I’ll add that chunks with a “consolidate to single session” feature where it adds the needed tempo changes between cues to do automatically what I do manually would be the ideal solution. And a DP-style V-rack for this, albeit with automation supported.

#3: REAPER-style scripting. Again I don’t really expect this to happen anytime soon, since it’s not exactly a surface feature you just throw in. But I feel this is the future of the industry for artists of all kinds, because the use cases are just way too varied for software companies to be able to fill all the workflow styles. I could do most of the stuff in #1 myself if Cubase had this. It’s incredibly frustrating to be missing out on simple features that would take no more than an hour to implement (based on how long it took in ReaScript), yet contribute to the workflow immensely.

(Off-topic posts were removed)

Even if I’m not a pro film/TV composer, I voted FLAKY. The quote of the previous post explains extensively why, I guess…

I quote every single word. The frozen-track management, in particular, is incredibly poor in Cubase even though it’s a very important thing in many professional environments, where the track count is very high. In addition to the previous list, I would also add that the media import/export is also quite obsolete: to export mono tracks in batch requires a PhD, to export many midi parts to different files is virtually impossible, etc…

cubic13 contributed a good post (THANK YOU STEINBERG!! Cubase 7 and Cubase 7.5 are amazing!!! - #4 by cubic13 - Cubase - Steinberg Forums) that outlines some the issues present in Cubase 7.5:

(Moved it to the OP)

I’m a film and tv composer, unfortunately i’ve lost 2 works working under cubase 7.0.6 with crash and impossible to reopen the song project. I usually work with almost 100 MIDI tracks connected with Kontakt and other vsti instruments, then 60-70 audio tracks with samples and voice, interments etc recorded with their own sub mix and relative bus mixing and ffx. Somethimes routed with external FFX like compressors, Elysia and Maselec real not plugs. At end of story i’ve back to 6.5.5 because it’s stable and guarantee the ending of my projects, the tons of C7 issue is annoying and distractive for that kind of job. Im so sorry to say that but i’ve trash my money with C7. :confused:

Booked

Rocked

Film/TV composer here. Honestly, I have been loving C7 since jumping over six months ago from 20+ years on Cakewalk (most recently, X2). No complaints. If I had one suggestion, it would be for the ability to export a Quicktime file, complete with sound cues, that I could send to a director for reference.

Agreed, and that was implicitly included in my #3 point. Also I would like to have basic video editing functions, including time compression/expansion. There are $30 shareware products that include such features, it shouldn’t be too complicated for Steinberg to add those (or maybe just buy out one of those products? Hint hint…) Sometimes the best solution is not to adjust the music but to adjust the images. And trust me, as much as it may pain a director/producer to be told that and admit you’re right, they’re usually receptive to good ideas…

the time spent shuffling video formats around to find one cubase accepts (dare i say ‘likes’) is time not well spent, so i’d say the video handling issues first and foremost. plus all the usual workflow issues, bugs, the mixconsole, …

Could be my imagination but it feels like C7 is better in this regard. I used to have to convert video formats quite often with C5 to make it work but haven’t had to do this as much (possibly not at all) with C7. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

  1. Audio engine, audio engine, audio engine. (On Mac especially).
  • I have spent hundreds of hours benchmarking the top DAWs over the years for plug-in load and Logic X now wins by a landslide. I can load 200+ Kontakt plug-ins into Logic X all playing simultaneously and they don’t break, crackle or pop even once. On a suped-up 12-core Mac Pro I can barely load 40-50 before Cubase goes thermonuclear. This is unacceptable. If this is supposed to be a professional DAW, it needs to meet or exceed the competition - not pitifully get trounced by it. I have seriously contemplated jumping ship to Logic X for this reason alone.
  • If a session gets unstable because of this, MTC sync output is affected and jitters like mad. Also, retrospective record for MIDI data works maybe 1 in 10 times. Most of the time it’s a jumbled mess of MIDI data. I am almost certain this is due to the instability of the MIDI buffer.
  • ASIO Guard is a total non-starter. It doesn’t reduce the ASIO meter, doesn’t improve performance, and in fact introduces more problems - not the least of which is unreliable initial playback.
  • Sessions take forever to load and I can clearly see as each instrument is loaded one at a time, Cubase is maxing out one CPU core at a time even though I have 12 at its disposal. Implementing a multi-core loading scheme that loads multiple instruments/plug-ins simultaneously could speed up session load times dramatically. When opening dozens of sessions a day, this adds up fast. In film/TV, time is money.
  1. Random crashes. Long-standing issue for years.
  • Guaranteed, several times a day Cubase will just seize up and have to be force-quit. Not traceable to any plug-in or reproducible process.
  • Enabling EuCon remote devices causes Cubase to crash constantly, most notably when deleting instrument tracks. This has been an issue from 7.0 thru 7.5 and possibly back to 6.x if my memory serves.
  • At least once a day the Video Service will stop functioning for no reason, and Cubase (and my active session) has to be restarted/reloaded.
  • Inconsistent preference commitment to disk: Some preferences get saved only at the time Cubase is gracefully quit. With the number of times that Cubase crashes, I often find tweaks and preferences/settings are not remembered on next launch because there was no chance for them to be saved. Please, make all prefs save to disk immediately when changed.
  1. MixConsole shortcomings. I love the new mixer, but it’s killing me…
  • On a large resolution screen like 27" Thunderbolt Display, zooming or scrolling is so slow it’s turned me off of using MixConsole for all but the most critical functions.
  • In 7.5, still no import/export global layout presets for import into other projects.

Orchetect, have you considered VEPro? It would substantially speed up your load times, and handle all of your VI’s…and even better if you host them on a slave. For example, it keeps huge templates loaded in the backgorund, so everything is already loaded for multple projects.

I have 6 licenses and have used it since it was first released. I retired it a year ago when I dissolved my 6 rack PCs and I’m just working in-the-box on a single Mac Pro now. I prefer to work entirely with instrument tracks (one Kontakt per track) so the VEPro route no longer works for me.

ASIO Guard is a baffling thing. There was clearly an opportunity to do something like Logic’s hybrid buffering that works incredibly well, but Cubase’s version doesn’t even support multitimbral instruments, and regardless it seems to cause performance issues with supported plugins. Goes in the same “so close, yet so far” category with the new instrument track. Steinberg has an opportunity here with both features to do a truly cool thing, but unfortunately it’s going to take some more time to truly get there.