# Fundamental Cubase limitation, or my stupidity?



## blaggins (Sep 7, 2021)

I'm running into a frustrating limitation of Cubase (or perhaps of my own understanding of what can be done with Cubase). Hoping for enlightenment, or barring that, commiseration. 

Here's what I'm trying to do.... I'm working on an orchestral template using instrument tracks (aka, not MIDI tracks) where each track is a Kontakt multi that has (usually) two or more instruments loaded routing to different Kontakt outputs. This is so I can have a single instrument for say Piccolo Flute, but I can still split the longs, shorts, and legato patches across different mixer channels. I am of course using articulation maps of top of the single instrument track so I can access all the articulations very easily. This seems to be a pretty common setup, and I'm liking that there is not a proliferations of 100s of extraneous instruments in Cubase per articulation. Plus I can limit my load times and RAM consumption pretty easily since if I don't need any particular instrument, I can just disable it with a key command, and voila. In fact the template opens with everything disabled. All Kontakt multis open purged of course. This is all pretty commonplace, so far as I've been reading.

Here's where it gets tricky. I am also building a simple Open Stage Control (very similar to TouchOSC and Lemur) controller that will show me all the possible articulations of any instrument when I click on the instrument in Cubase. I actually have this working... BUT I can only get it to work with MIDI tracks, not instrument tracks. This is because it relies on a unique MIDI message from Cubase -> OSC anytime an instrument is selected, and getting Cubase to send a unique MIDI message when a track is selected requires that track to have a MIDI Send, which instrument tracks do not have. WTF.

Anyway, not a big deal, I can just make a MIDI track for each instrument track, route it correctly, and everything should work great, right? As it turns out, if you disable an instrument track, the incoming MIDI routing is lost. And when you re-enable it, the routing is NOT restored correctly. I have been screwing around with this for hours and I cannot get the MIDI routing to preserve across track enable/disable. It doesn't work if I disable just the instrument, nor if I disable the instrument and the MIDI input track at the same time, or any other way I've tried... It seems like I've hit on a well-known issue with no apparent fix in the past decade (https://forums.steinberg.net/t/disabling-instrument-tracks-missing-input-1/664289/29).

The only possible solution I can think of is Vienna Ensemble Pro, which would allow me to use only MIDI tracks in my Cubase template and offload all the Kontakt multi hosting to VEP... but that seems like a *really* heavy handed approach just to gain a bit of nice interaction between Cubase instrument track selections and dynamic UI changes in OSC.  

Anyone run into the same conundrum? Is there another way to get a Cubase controller app like OSC to respond to instrument track selections?


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## Smikes77 (Sep 7, 2021)

@jononotbono is working on a massive controller for this. Maybe he has come across this on his travels.


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## mburellmusic (Sep 8, 2021)

Composer Tools Pro does this on Instrument Tracks. They have a plugin that transmits the message through. 









Composer Tools Pro - MIDI Kinetics


Composer Tools Pro The ultimate virtual instrument controller for Lemur The days of bulky, inflexible hardware controllers are over. Composer Tools Pro gives you everything you need to control your virtual instruments. With a touch of a button, recall a track's settings-- directly from your DAW...




www.midikinetics.com








__





Composer Tools Pro Cubase Setup – MIDI Kinetics Support







support.midikinetics.com


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## jononotbono (Sep 8, 2021)

tpoots said:


> It seems like I've hit on a well-known issue with no apparent fix in the past decade


This has apparently been fixed. I had this problem ages ago and the reason I didn't notice the fix is because my template was a template I originally made in an older version of Cubase and with each new version of Cubase, I just carried on adding to it. When this problem existed I found the solution was to completely rebuild my template in the latest version of Cubase where the fix happened. I've lost track of time but it was a while ago this apparently got sorted.

I've not tested it with VEPro for a while so I don't 100% know if its fixed. I am currently using just instrument tracks in Cubase but the only reason why is because I haven't worked on a feature for about 3 years now. As soon as I do, I'll be back with VEPro so I hope it's fixed. Either way, I never lose routing when disabling and enabling Instrument tracks anymore (and I used to) and I believe that was because I completely rebuilt my template. Pain in the ass.


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## blaggins (Sep 8, 2021)

jononotbono said:


> This has apparently been fixed. I had this problem ages ago and the reason I didn't notice the fix is because my template was a template I originally made in an older version of Cubase and with each new version of Cubase, I just carried on adding to it. When this problem existed I found the solution was to completely rebuild my template in the latest version of Cubase where the fix happened. I've lost track of time but it was a while ago this apparently got sorted.


Very interesting! This might very well be what is going on in my case. I'm on the latest version of Cubase but the template I'm working on is based on Alex Watson's BBCSO Pro template from here https://www.spitfireaudiothepage.com/posts/pro-templates (although really I ended up just keeping the FX sends and grouping so I probably would have been better off starting from scratch). I bet that template might have been built using an older version of Cubase...

Seems like folks over on the Steinberg forums are having the issue even with new projects built from scratch on Cubase 11 Pro though, so maybe it's a bug that happens nondeterministically? I have noticed that mixer routing is not lost when I enable/disable, it's only MIDI routing between MIDI tracks and Instrument tracks that seems to get lost.


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## jononotbono (Sep 8, 2021)

tpoots said:


> Very interesting! This might very well be what is going on in my case. I'm on the latest version of Cubase but the template I'm working on is based on Alex Watson's BBCSO Pro template from here https://www.spitfireaudiothepage.com/posts/pro-templates (although really I ended up just keeping the FX sends and grouping so I probably would have been better off starting from scratch). I bet that template might have been built using an older version of Cubase...
> 
> Seems like folks over on the Steinberg forums are having the issue even with new projects built from scratch on Cubase 11 Pro though, so maybe it's a bug that happens nondeterministically? I have noticed that mixer routing is not lost when I enable/disable, it's only MIDI routing between MIDI tracks and Instrument tracks that seems to get lost.


If I use VEPro, I usually only use MIDI tracks with rack instruments and not Instrument tracks. Have you tried that to see if routing still gets lost?


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## blaggins (Sep 10, 2021)

jononotbono said:


> If I use VEPro, I usually only use MIDI tracks with rack instruments and not Instrument tracks. Have you tried that to see if routing still gets lost?


Nope I haven't tried rack instruments. I also discovered that for *some* of my MIDI -> Instruments routes I can disable/enable fine, just not for others. And this is all in the same project. It is totally bizarre and makes me feel like a crazy person. 

I got frustrated enough that I just went and bought VEP7. I'm crazy, yes, I know. I have to say though, I'm really liking it more than I thought I would. For one it lays out the Kontakt UI in *exactly the same place every time*. This already feels like a game changer since I wrote some convenience scripts in AutoHotKey that set outputs, minimize, and purge multis, etc. etc and it's much faster to scroll through stuff with the up/down keys in VEP than to do anything like this in Cubase or in the standalone Kontakt instance. For two the size of the Kontakt UI is reasonable on a 4k screen (not so in Cubase). For three, it has excellent shortcuts for numbering and assigning midi channels and outputs (Alt and Shift clicks for the win!). Almost makes it a pleasure to set up the VEP frames. Nice piece of software.


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## jononotbono (Sep 10, 2021)

tpoots said:


> I got frustrated enough that I just went and bought VEP7. I'm crazy, yes, I know.


Nothing crazy about that. I initially bought VEPro to use with a single machine because I was getting horrific pops and cracks in Cubase and VEPro sorted those issues out. If you are using VEPro I would highly advise using Rack Instruments connected to Midi Tracks.


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## blaggins (Sep 10, 2021)

jononotbono said:


> If you are using VEPro I would highly advise using Rack Instruments connected to Midi Tracks.


Interesting. I hadn't really explored the Rack Instrument possibility at all yet. Right now I have a couple of instance (frames I've seen them called?) in VEP and each is connected to a Track Instrument. Seems to work ok, although I'm not loving that the audio outputs from VEP have to be nested underneath the Track Instrument. I'd guess that this is one of the main advantages of using Racks instead? (i.e. free to move the audio outputs around however you like?)


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## Freudon33 (Oct 7, 2021)

Hello
I use the instruments directly in cubase
but without vep
with version 11 of cubase everything works fine
and I am using the Sherlock plugin from 14bitMidi with
a touch screen
more than 4000 tracks accessible at your fingertips
with tracks with articulations only
or with expressions maps


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## Freudon33 (Oct 7, 2021)

I have vep but I find it easier to use cubase
provided you have a sufficiently powerful configuration


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