Why can't you drag and drop samples from Cubase SX 3 to Kontakt's Mapping Editor?

Why can't you drag and drop audio samples directly from a Cubase SX 3 project directly onto the Mapping Editor in Kontakt, when Kontakt is being used as a VST inside of Cubase?

Because this doesn't work, you have to bounce the part of the sample that you want to use out of Cubase as a new audio file, then you have to go to Kontakt's File Browser, find the audio file on the hard drive, then drag from the browser to the key editor. This takes way more time than just simply dragging from Cubase would take, and it interrupts workflow.

A much better system would automatically bounce the audio that's selected in the Cubase event to a new audio file and load it up in the selected instrument's key editor. This would DRAMATICALLY increase workflow. As it stands, the "Bounce, Find in the browser, Drag" process is a NARROW, narrow bottleneck in the workflow process, and it's a bottleneck that must be passed through many, many times during the writing of a song for many producers.

In future updates of Kontakt, this would be a good feature to integrate. I don't know if this type of functionality is standard for any other soft samplers, but if NI were to implement this feature in a future update of Kontakt, this would give Kontakt a HUGE functionality/ease of use advantage over the other soft samplers on the market (Or if most other VST soft samplers have this feature, it would bring Konakt up to speed, where without this feature Kontakt would be seriously slagging.)

 

You will have to blame steinberg for this one, SX doesn't do standard drag-drop, and to my knowledge they never documented the procedure to do so.
Off course, this works with halion.
Same for MIDI, you can't drag/drop a part to a plug or to the desktop.

 

"A much better system would automatically bounce the audio that's selected in the Cubase event"

That would be nice and it would save me a lot of time too.

I can't even seem to drag and drop wavs from an explorer window into the vst plugin.

 

Yep, you can't do this either. The only way to load into Kontakt is by using Kontakt's browser.

And you know, having thought about it for a second, I totally understand why it's like this.

Steinberg of course wants to sell as many copies of Halion as possible, so Steinberg programs its DAW (Cubase SX) in such a way that other companies' VST Samplers will be a pain to use inside of it.

Simple business principles... monopolize whatever is possible to monopolize, who cares about negative effects on people. Damn do I hate capitalism.

 

This isnt actually true.

Mach V allows drag and drop from Cubase SX.
Of course HALion works too very well, HALion is an instrument designers dream, but it also works with HALion in Sonar.

This cant be blamed on Steinberg, Mach V confirms this.

Kontakt just doesent have drag and drop to the mapping view unless you do it from K2's browser or a location in the OS (PC works), which is pretty lame, It means samples must be organised and labeled first, whereas this process could be bypassed if drag and drop from VST/DXi/Rewire Host etc to K2's mapping view was an option.

K2 simply doesent support this

 

> This isnt actually true

Well, speaking PC here.

Sonar does standard windows drag/drop with midi and audio
SX doesn't

With k2 standalone and vst, I can drag/drop a file directly from an explorer window to the mapping editor.

In Sonar I can also drag/drop a file into k2's mapping editor (sonar part -> k2).
This is not possible with SX, I cannot drag/drop an audio or midi part into a vst or midi plug, except for halion (audio) and
arpache sx (midi).
It could be that the guys at motu hacked the cubase protocol, or is it part of the vst spec ?

 

> by 'sonar part' do you mean audio files?
yes

> how many at a time?
I don't know if there is a limit, tried with 5, no problem, the 'width' of the zone will depend on where you drop the files.


>you can drag and drop audio to xphrase in cubase sx as well.
Isn't xphrase a steinberg product ?

 

Well, I was wrong, k2 should be able to receive an audio file from cubase.

On drop, the vst receives an IDataObject that has text in it. the text is just plain xml:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>.	<vst
-xml version="1.0">.		<regi
on id="222796728">.			<file
name>S:\PrimeSounds\Crime_S
ounds\JAZZ_GUITAR\Guitar_Ch
ords_Series_-_Jazzguitar_Ch
ords_A\PC059_Jazzgit_Aadd9_
01a01L.wav</filename>.			<s
tart>0</start>.			<end>1788
50</end>.		</region>.	</vst
-xml>[code]

As you see, you have the original file name, start and end of the part (if you change the start and/or length of the audio part in sx)

So yes, it's a k2 limitation, 
again :(

 

Bogus!

Well, sorry to call out Steinberg in this case on something specific that they shouldn't be called out on. However, if they aren't doing it in this specific instance, you can bet your ass they're doing it somewhere else... it's just the nature of big business and capitalism, "planned obscelescence" type things, etc.


Anyway, NI ARE YOU LISTENING OUT THERE? GET DRAG AND DROP WORKING WITH KONTAKT AND CUBASE SX!!! WITHOUT THIS FUNCTIONALITY KONTACT IS PRACTICALLY USELESS IN CUBASE SX!!!!!

 

To be fair, it's a bit of steinbergs fault too, they could add the standard filedrop format, so an app can decide to just drop the file as is or read the xml info.
Off course the xml info is more interesting as it gives you the loop start and end. To bad there is no info about fade in/out, volume and finetune, something that can be already set in SX.