Side by side docking of Project & Lower Zone (now Side Zone)

Studio One does this as you describe. It’s freaking awesome!

Actually, if my memory serves me well, when we were asking about docked windows we meant possibility to dock any window to any side of the screen.

Regards

i was asking for the same in C8.5 FR forum,and if im not mistaking,one of the mods mention it might be in Next cubase update (C9), well it didn’t yet !
anyway i like the studio one way of thinking for practical workflow ideas, i amazed every time, that lot FR request we have here,they make it real fast to their DAW. as if they reading our FR :smiley:

No idea what you guys are talking about. Studio One doesn’t let you dock their mixer or piano roll to the side… That’s the subject of this topic, anyway.

Imagine having the tab function of a web browser incorporated into the plugin window in Cubase and being able to switch between the various plugins GUI just like you switch to different browsing windows in your web browser. You can also change from one plugin GUI to another by selecting their respective track. Not only that, but you can also pin a plugin window to a specific GUI while having another plugin window tab to different GUIs (which is useful when you want to do comparisons between EQs on different tracks, etc). It’s very well though out.

Apologies for the slight OT. Noiseboyuk mentioned wanting this feature, which he thought no other DAW had but Studio One does :slight_smile:. It would be nice to have it in Cubase, along with your request (though I feel it wouldn’t be as useful in multiscreen setups. Still a great idea!).

Take care!

I vaguely remember the tabbed thing from Studio One. Wasn’t it for plugins in the same chain? Sony (Magix) Vegas also has a system like that. The analogy with web browser tabs would make more sense if plugin GUI sizes didn’t vary so wildly. Selecting the track and switching between the VSTi’s like how you described is how it works in FL Studio. It’s convenienet but I also like the freedom of deciding for myself what opens and closes.

In my opinion these ideas haven’t all proven themselves to be better yet, and it’s a trap to request every little feature another DAW has without thinking of the big picture.

As for this topic’s request, because they already implemented the zone system, it makes sense to me that they should make it as flexible as possible.

I revised the mockup to show how the Right Zone shouldn’t be replaced and is still useful in the new layout.

Let me know what you think.

As long as it’s all optional (you can show/hide both inspectors whenever), then it looks good!

This layout would work great on wide screen monitors :slight_smile:.

Each Zone can be set up to only have the tabs you want in them, so you can keep the Right Zone as just the VST Racks and MediaBay if you want.

You can already do this, but there’s little to no point.

I guess I should’ve said “show/hide the Right and Left Zones whenever” instead on Inspectors. But yeah, that sounds/looks good too. Options to customize the work environment are always welcome (as long as they make sense, of course). Nice mockups!

+1

Magnetic dockable Windows has been a user request for 20+years. This would mean you could put your windows where you wish. Also the behaviour of always on top is weird tick it and it’s not always on top, untick it and it is not. A on top also seems to disappear to easily, we need a Pin. These two features would maximise flexibility.

Right now you can drag tabs around. If there were enough zones, Left/Right/Top/Bottom/Side split, then we could just drag those tabs into whatever Zone we want and then change the size as we want. This would keep the current window handling structure but make it very flexible.

Yes this would be an improvement, but why not free global dockability - including VSTs?
Z

I don’t understand how docking VSTs would work well. They vary in GUI size so much and most aren’t freely resizeable. Switching them would change the window layout a lot (what would happen when going from a tall to a wide one?)

Technically, the Sampler Track seems to be a plugin (Sampler Track.dll) so in this way it could work, but that one’s fully resizeable.

+1000

It’s a great idea. If Cubase supports customizable magnetic docking, it will be able to crush all DAWs.

@djw, Why you don’t use Workspaces for this?

The workflow like this isn’t impossible right now, just like previously it would have been possible to use multiple workspaces to create a Lower Zone. But it’s neater and more convenient:

  • Less windows means more space for contents and a cleaner look, just like now with the Lower Zone.

  • When the Key Editor is closed and I switch to my Split workspace, the Key Editor isn’t influenced by the switch and will just open maximized.

  • The transition between workspaces is slow and distracting.

  • If I keep my MixConsole maximized, this now becomes the main project window, adding more window borders. If I slightly misclick the top bar I will be sent to the mixer.

I polished the original post a bit and tried to make it more clear.

+1