Is there a good workflow for loop based composition in Cubasis 3?loop import/locating so complicated

annahahn

Hello!

I love cubasis~ the sound is great best sounding DAW on iphone imho great built in tools love the master strip etc and every element that gets addressed gets addressed with a lot of care + precision~ 🇩🇪💪💪

Anyone who uses Cubasis knows that the one frustrating thing is that no matter how beautifully implemented many of the features are, common features users have been begging for for years go completely unaddressed (midi learn)

One aspect where Cubasis falls very short of competitors like Zenbeats is in it's sample/loop navigation menus

~ the whole operation of importing and working with loops in the standard way Cubasis recommends is such an insane buzzkill that takes you out of the process of creating such that if you have more than 20 loops in your library, it makes you want to skip working with loops completely~ it's something like if everytime you wanted to use the toilet you had to untie your shoe, take it off to find a toilet key which is split in 2 pieces beneath your foot, so then you have to tape the key back together into a single key, do your business, and afterward take your shoe off again to place the key back beneath your foot~ after a certain amount of this nonsense you just resign yourself to being a person who regularly pees their pants🤷‍♀️

apologies I digress-

but as Cubasis users know, first of all there is no way to import a sample from the files app directly into the timeline at any given location, first it must be loaded into the cubasis media library, this would be completely fine if there were a decent way to navigate the media library such as a search function, but there is not so you must manually wade through an ocean of loop folders, you cannot search 'kick' and have Cubasis display all of the loops containing the word 'kick' as you can in Zenbeats, but instead you are forced to play librarian and remember that you have some kicks in a folder called STB_REGGAETON_BILLYBADASS_MEGA_LOOPS_2057.... but also some other kicks in a folder called UBD_STOMACHACHE_MOMMYSLAP_PROGRESSIVEHOUSE_BOOLEY_DANCE_6101.... and then how are you to audition them against each other, there is not a clear way to experiment, you have to know EXACTLY what loop you want to use and even then you're spending 5 minutes navigating back and forth between FILES App and Cubasis just to track down exactly what sequence of folders the sample you are looking for is nested within, just for a single sample

I have begged and begged @LFS on many occasions to PLEAAAAAASSEE🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 add some sort of simple way of searching the Cubasis media bay even if the implementation is not as slick as Zenbeats loop search/audition interface but the responses I get always seem to hint at this not being seen as important in the eyes of the development team

Do any Cubasis users have more elegant workflows for importing loops into their Cubasis projects? AudioCopy does not seem to do anything that working with the Files App wouldn't accomplish in this context, nor does AudioShare which as far as I can tell has no sort of direct link with Cubasis that would enable anything smoother than the Files App 'share to cubasis' workflow

Are there any other tools that I am overlooking that could make this easier such as other tools similar to AudioCopy OR some sort of AUV3 that has a great loop importing workflow with search functions etc? @Samu ~ I know you've had a long love+frustration relationship with Cubasis, have you ever found a workflow for working with loop libraries that was more elegant than the media library import/organization process?

Samu

Cubasis still needs a LOT of work when it comes to handling audio events (ie. loops) in a project.

One such improvement would be if the Media Bay had a 'tab' that showed all audio & midi events in the current project making it easier to re-use them in other places of the arrangement without duplicating the files. (for example when you drag an audio file from the media bay it gets 'copied' to the project, drag it again and a new copy is made etc. etc.).

To be totally honest I'm mostly back on desktop at the moment (Renoise & Logic Pro) and use my iPad Air 2 as a 'Sound Module' via IDAM.

I've done this to avoid going 'crazy' due to all the glitches and WTFs that most apps still have and it's NOT related to iOS it's just buggy implementations and hosts lacking somewhat basic features that would drive me nuts.

You know basic things like reliably freeze/rendering an AUv3 to audio thru a bunch of effects.
(Not all AUv3's behave the same, some render with timing issues, some add latency that hosts do not compensate for, some plug-ins skip notes, don't work properly at all sample-rates etc. etc.).

And the worst, being 'locked' to the device sample-rate, my iPhone 8 locks to 48k, iPad Air 2 to 44.1 so transferring a project honestly f*cks up the audio due to sub-par sample-rate conversion in Cubasis.

I have to stop here to avoid getting high blood, but you get the point I hope...
Cheers!

rs2000

@samu Funny you say that, 2021 has been mostly desktop OS for me as well, only working with Drambo and a few other beta apps. Things haven't changed much in the last 3 years: Composition and writing down spontaneous ideas on the iPad, then continuing on desktop. Even the experimental generative stuff feels so much more liberating inside Ableton + a number of Max4Live devices than on the iPad, and there are no audio/MIDI/file exchange or file format limits.