Originally Posted by AjD  I'm hearing lots of good things about Cubase 5. The relative stability so far is most encouraging. Even so, I'll upgrade to it eventually - probably sometime after they release a maintenance fix - as they always do. I'm cautious that way.
One thing that's sticking in my craw though. Why can't I comp multitrack audio with it? (Easily?) Obviously it's a terrible pain when working with a mic'ed up drum kit, but it's a problem even with simple stuff. After all this time, I can't believe that a feature improvement in this area hasn't been implemented.
I'm sure everyone who uses Cubase/Nuendo knows the problem, but I'll offer an example anyway. Yesterday I was doing a simple acoustic guitar overdub. We did five takes - I had a close mic going, a shoulder mic, and a room stereo pair (thus, I recorded three tracks for each take - two mono tracks and one stereo track). After we finished the five different takes, the client and I sat down at the computer to make a comp. As I always do, I converted each of the three tracks to "parts" (for slicing/dicing/ease of comping - one of Steinberg's best features, IMHO), and put the three tracks in a folder. Then I double-clicked the folder track, and started slicing and dicing the perfect comp.
And there's the problem.... if I want to, say, use take 1 for the first chorus, and take 3 for the next verse, I have to make that identical change THREE TIMES (because I recorded three tracks). It's almost comical to watch. Click, repeat. Click, repeat. Click, repeat. Just about every single one of my clients asks why I have to keep repeating the same action over and over, every single time I have to do this. Even the clients who know next-to-nothing about computers notice the problem. It's almost embarrassing - they often ask, "Are you sure there isn't a workaround? There must be. Have you checked the manual?"
My standard answer to this question (I swear, it's asked by almost every client whenever we comp something) had been, "Believe it or not Mr. Client, there aren't any pro audio software programs that offer that feature! They all make you repeat your comping steps on every microphone." But recently, I heard that Pro Tools 8 added just this sort of functionality. So... it's becoming harder to explain why I went with Steinberg over Pro Tools when clients inevitably ask, "What about with Pro Tools?" - which really means, "If I was at that 'other' studio across town that uses Pro Tools, would it be three times faster (and thus, three times cheaper) just to do a simple guitar comp?".
I really hope Steinberg addresses this in the next upgrade. From where I'm sitting, it sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise excellent piece of software.
Aj |