Matrix Window Feature Requests

[clonewar]

Hi All,

It's been a little while since I've been active here, a couple of house moves and never ending setting up of a new studio has kept me busy, but I'm up and running with DTouch for Cubase V2 on a new PC and have a couple of feature requests related to the Matrix window.

Right now I'm working on a new large midi orchestral composing template utilizing my main PC, which will run Cubase and DTouch, and several VSL VE Pro slave machines. The template uses VE Pro rack instruments and hundreds of midi tracks and for composing/producing purposes I'm going to use DTouch for track navigation and Expression Map selection on my 27" Acer screen. The Matrix window is perfect for track navigation and selection, much better IMO than the iPad/Lemur templates that a lot of Cubase composers use.

One problem I'm having is that the tracks that I want to select in the Matrix are midi tracks and they are all displayed in a dimmed/dark color. From what I've read in the manual they're dimmed because midi tracks don't have an output bus assigned. Could we have an option to have midi tracks show up in the Matrix as regular colored tracks, not dimmed?

Another issue that affects both the midi template and also my mixing template, especially on my 46" screen, is that most of the tracks in the Matrix are at the top and the Matrix window can't be resized. One of the things I've learned over the years working on the large screen is to keep the majority of touch controls in the lower half of the screen, especially controls that need to be touched and dragged, like volume and pan. It would be nice if the Matrix window could be resized like the floating mixer and integrated Matrix, or even if the integrated Matrix could be detached and used on its own. But then it occurred to me that the current Matrix could be much better with an fairly simple update (I'm assuming it would be simple of course!): How about an option to fill the Matrix tiles from the bottom up, left to right, instead of the top down left to right like it does now? Most of my mixing projects don't fill more than half of the Matrix window, which means that the lower half would be filled instead of the top half. And we could still use track visibility to manage larger track count projects, with the available tracks always filling the lower half.

If the option of filling the tracks from the bottom up was enabled, I think the order of the buttons on the left and right side of the Matrix window should also be reversed. On the right side the lowest button would be Level, then Pan, Fine, etc. On the left the lowest button would be Channel Strip, then Send 1, Send 2, etc. This would be a really big boost to the usability of the Matrix window, especially when using it as a mixing tool on a large touchscreen.

Thanks,
Michael

[clonewar]

I'm attaching a screen pic to illustrate what I'm referring to. There are currently only midi tracks visible here, and even though the tracks are colored in Cubase, the colors are not visible in the Matrix window. The tracks are also all dimmed making the track names much more difficult to see.

Also, there are only 37 tracks visible in this configuration and it would be much more ergonomic if the tracks were on the bottom half of the Matrix window instead of the top. Even on my 27" screen, which is what I'm using with my midi keyboard, it would make a big difference if the tracks would fill from the bottom up.

[DT_bettinzana]

I'm attaching a screen pic to illustrate what I'm referring to. There are currently only midi tracks visible here, and even though the tracks are colored in Cubase, the colors are not visible in the Matrix window. The tracks are also all dimmed making the track names much more difficult to see.

You are right!
We have fixed this (it was an easy task) and it should already be available in the most updated version of DTouch for Cubendo.

Also, there are only 37 tracks visible in this configuration and it would be much more ergonomic if the tracks were on the bottom half of the Matrix window instead of the top. Even on my 27" screen, which is what I'm using with my midi keyboard, it would make a big difference if the tracks would fill from the bottom up.

Yes, you are right, but this is more complex to be programmed. At the moment I keep this in the To-do list.

[clonewar]

I'm attaching a screen pic to illustrate what I'm referring to. There are currently only midi tracks visible here, and even though the tracks are colored in Cubase, the colors are not visible in the Matrix window. The tracks are also all dimmed making the track names much more difficult to see.

You are right!
We have fixed this (it was an easy task) and it should already be available in the most updated version of DTouch for Cubendo.

Wow that was fast! Thanks Silvano, it's much easier working with midi tracks in the Matrix window now. At first the tracks weren't following Cubase track colors, but I realized that I had duplicate track names for some midi and audio tracks in my template. Now that I've updated the track names in the template the midi tracks show up properly colored in the Matrix window. Perfect!

Also, there are only 37 tracks visible in this configuration and it would be much more ergonomic if the tracks were on the bottom half of the Matrix window instead of the top. Even on my 27" screen, which is what I'm using with my midi keyboard, it would make a big difference if the tracks would fill from the bottom up.

Yes, you are right, but this is more complex to be programmed. At the moment I keep this in the To-do list.

Understood, and I'm happy to hear that you're putting this on the to-do list. It'll be a nice improvement, and besides the easier reach another thing it'll let us do is set up a workspace with the Expression Map window at the bottom of the screen under the Matrix window (with empty tracks at the top of the Matrix window moved off the top of the screen).