Floating Mixer additions

[Havoc911]

Hi,

Pablo1980 was talking about the flexibility of the floating mixer vs an overlay solution. Not having used the legacy mode, I can't compare, but I agree that a non-synced, standalone mixer seems to be more elegant and have less problems.

At the moment, I keep at least one Cubase mix window open to get to my racks (Currently, Routing, Pre, Inserts, Sends) and then use the floating mixer to perform fader rides. Why can't we have a floating mixer with these functions too? I'm not a programmer,so maybe it's very difficult, I don't know. We already have a macro that adds inserts. Could we have an "insert" button as a choice when customizing the buttons for the floating mixer? That button would open a window with the 16 slots. Each slot would be a drop down menu with all available inserts similar to how Cubase does it in the mix window now. Once the plugin is selected, a script similar to the macro we have now will run and add whatever is selected.

Alternatively, you could have different floating mix window layouts similar to how Cubase does their lower zone. So you'd have the current mix window with the faders. You'd then have a routing view, a pre-view, a sends view and an insert view which could be toggled like the lower zone is in the project window. You should be able to see at least 2 at any given time (like you can with faders and matrix). For example, faders and inserts or inserts and sends.

I'm very tired, so hopefully this makes sense. I can explain better or even create a little mock-up in photoshop if anything isn't clear.

Cheers!

[DT_bettinzana]

Hi,

Pablo1980 was talking about the flexibility of the floating mixer vs an overlay solution. Not having used the legacy mode, I can't compare, but I agree that a non-synced, standalone mixer seems to be more elegant and have less problems.

At the moment, I keep at least one Cubase mix window open to get to my racks (Currently, Routing, Pre, Inserts, Sends) and then use the floating mixer to perform fader rides. Why can't we have a floating mixer with these functions too? I'm not a programmer,so maybe it's very difficult, I don't know. We already have a macro that adds inserts. Could we have an "insert" button as a choice when customizing the buttons for the floating mixer? That button would open a window with the 16 slots. Each slot would be a drop down menu with all available inserts similar to how Cubase does it in the mix window now. Once the plugin is selected, a script similar to the macro we have now will run and add whatever is selected.

Alternatively, you could have different floating mix window layouts similar to how Cubase does their lower zone. So you'd have the current mix window with the faders. You'd then have a routing view, a pre-view, a sends view and an insert view which could be toggled like the lower zone is in the project window. You should be able to see at least 2 at any given time (like you can with faders and matrix). For example, faders and inserts or inserts and sends.

I'm very tired, so hopefully this makes sense. I can explain better or even create a little mock-up in photoshop if anything isn't clear.

Cheers!

Hello, I will answer in details tomorrow because I need the exact infos from our developers who knows very well what we can/cannot do with the Steinberg Remote Control SDK. The problem is not "programming something"; the real problem is what we can do with the Steinberg SDK.
I want to answer to the following as an example:

Could we have an "insert" button as a choice when customizing the buttons for the floating mixer? That button would open a window with the 16 slots. Each slot would be a drop down menu with all available inserts similar to how Cubase does it in the mix window now.

In this case, I can tell you that the SDK is a crap communicating the list of the "all available inserts". For example we don't have a meaningful list of the names of the available VST Plug-Ins.
Another example is: we don't have a list of some potential destination busses to which route a track.
As I said, it is not a programming issue, it is a limitation of the Steinberg SDK. If we would be the owner of the DAW code, we could do everything, but in the Cubendo case (and Pro Tools is a lot worse) we haven't a complete control on the DAW internals.
Tomorrow I will have a meeting with my guys and I will tell more about your specific request.

PS: if I would develop a new DAW (lets madly say that it would be the best in the world), would you abandon Cubase for it?

[Havoc911]

That's unfortunate about the crappy SDK. I think it can be done somehow, though. My old physical controller (M-audio ProjectMix) would allow you to scroll through the insert list when you hit the "plugin" button. It's could be that it's only acting on slot one. I never used it much because it was so damn hard to work with that tiny LCD readout and scroll through everything. I know you can do this on EUCON, but Avid won't play nice with their protocol.

I guess part of me wants a floating mixer that looks/works like a console.

PS: if I would develop a new DAW (lets madly say that it would be the best in the world), would you abandon Cubase for it?

Yes, I have no loyalty to Steinberg. I'll use any DAW so long as it offers the features I want and doesn't negatively affect my workflow.

[Havoc911]

So I've been doing a bit of digging into how the ProjectMix accomplished the insert effect. There is a controller command within the remote device to send MIDI messages to control the sends, inserts, etc. This is how the ProjectMix was doing it. Once the edit insert command was received, they used the rotary encoder to scroll through the options. The Yamaha NUAGE does a similar thing. We, of course, do not need a physical encoder. Sends would work in a similar way with the added ability to switch between pre and post fader.

I assume you have a remote device set up to send our new MIDI CC data and the expression maps. In those generic remote controls are options to assign insert on/off, bypass and edit commands to a selected channel.

Edit Insert slot 1.PNG (57.55 KiB) Viewed 26430 times

There's a "VST Mixer" and "Mixer" option and I'm not sure which is the correct one to use in this case.

Attached also is one of the many lemur templates I've tried over the years when I was wishing for a solution like Dtouch to give you some more reference.

It would be great if a few sections like this could be attached to the floating mix window as another option like the matrix view, although an additional floating window would work for proof of concept and testing. I think this might be a much more elegant solution to the problem than a macro utilizing the channel editor.

[Tumppi]

Hi!
Big plus for this.
But one exception. I want to keep the option to have room for channel editor. It gives nice overview for the channel.

Bye / Tumppi

[Havoc911]

You guys must be working out something fantastic since we haven't heard it's not possible.

[DT_bettinzana]

You guys must be working out something fantastic since we haven't heard it's not possible.

We are completing the new DTouch workspace and we want to publish an updated manual because the current one is too old.
At the moment I have no news about the requests in this thread. We will return to this subject after the official release of the updated version.

[Havoc911]

Have you had time to look into this any further?

[DT_bettinzana]

Have you had time to look into this any further?

Not yet.

[Havoc911]

Hi,

I hate to nag, but will this be a possibility sometime soon?

Thanks

Jonathan