Feature request:- Middle C = C4

As the standard note naming for orchestral instrument ranges uses C4 as middle C, I find Cubase’s naming middle C as C3 constantly an issue.

Many synth manufacturers and all text books I have on orchestration refer to ranges based on middle C = C4, and my sample libraries refer to C4, but when I play into Cubase, I have to constantly convert C4 to C3 (naming reference only, nothing to do with transpose).

So, can we have a preference option to choose if middle C is C3 or C4.

Is there any support for this option?

This feature may already exist.

Check out the preferences - see page 58 of the manual

James

Aloha Andy and thanks for bringing this up.

@ Jenks
I checked my Operations Manual (pdf) and page 58 is all about ‘Audio handling’.
And in the Quick Start Guide page 58 is all about ‘Exporting a mixdown’

Am I looking in the right place? TIA

{‘-’}

Just checked, this feature doesnt give the option of changing C3 to C4. :frowning:

I’ve been asking for this for as long as I can remember.

The mention here on page 58 of “Note name style” is certainly where the option would be, but we only have MIDI (middle C = C3), Do Re Mi and Classic to choose from, if we only had a middle C = C4 option here, it would be so much easier, and I am sure it must be easy to implement. :bulb:

You’re quite right (now checked in the studio) it’s not there.

I’m pretty sure it used to be. I seem to remember you could select MIDI note names to be what they called “Roland” compatible and this labelled Middle C as C4. But it’s entirely possible I’m thinking of the many, many years ago when I was using Logic.

Sorry for the misdirect.

James

I think the main reason for steinberg not to adapt the middle C into C4 is that it may blow up more than asked for if properly rigged…
personally I prefer to use good old fashioned TNT meself, or even just some old dynamite in rare cases… only problem is that my neighbours going apeshit when I blow my subnotes…
I actually tried C4 once, and that knocked down the walls 3 blocks down the road, some not very happy people came down my house and asked if I please would go back to C3, so I did…



sorry for the OT here :slight_smile:

lol, it took me a while to realise what you were on about :sunglasses:

bump

What confuses me is that the piano roll shows middle C as C3, yet when the resultant MIDI roll using middle C as C3 is then displayed in the SCORE EDITOR is transcribed as C below middle, the real position for C3. I managed to shift this so the score marries with the keyboard roll, but can’t find a way to make the keyboard roll agree with the normal definition of having C4 as middle C.

+1

While we’re on the subject, how about an alternate option just to display/use the MIDI note number rather than “Cn”? That’s unambiguous in the first place. There is no industry standard or consistency on this. I’ve seen everything from C3 to C5 used for middle C.

But if we’re going with “Cn”, I’m partial to C5 being middle C because it’s five octaves above MIDI not zero.

That would also be better- just having ‘60’ instead of C3/60. I could live with that.

But a real solution would be to allow us to to set how the note names are expressed. midi note 60=C4 or C3 or C5.
(And then one day, we can possibly also have flats!)

Helmholtz notation is now too small to see easily on large modern displays.

+4 seems like nothing to an audio person but having to mentally transpose every single note … it can be done, and I suppose we are all doing it. But oh so simple to allow a person to Select what C3 or C4 means. Ahem, the competitors do it.

This is exactly what I meant by this global topic:

SB has not -really- focused on ease of use for at least 5 years. I -think- this is because they used to be so far ahead of ‘the competitors’ that they worked on audio and ‘sexy’. That time is over. Face it, the people who are gonna use Cubase now are people who are INTO it… the casual types have left the building.

There are perhaps 100 (no exaggeration) minor improvements to the basic UI that all seem so ‘trivial’ that they never get done. And stuff like Macros and LE that are not quite ‘finished’ enough to leverage users to do their -own- thing. C8.5 should be that Spring Cleaning. No new ‘features’. Just take the 100 -easiest- and most commonly requested tasks and get 'em done. I’d happily pay $99 to -finally- get 100 little niggles like this sorted once and for all.

I have no hard data to support this, but my -sense- is that Cubase is now -behind- in lots of those areas that one used to just assume they ‘ruled’.

BTW… It is even available in Wavelab, WL has this feature in the Midi Controller Area.

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