Coming from Reaper and using both Studio One and Cubase recently I have been dismayed/baffled that both Studio One and Cubase have such a clunky and poorly thought out approach to folders. To be fair, Studio One's approach is still slightly better than Cubase's, although that's not saying a whole lot.
I appreciate that, unlike Cubase, the developers of Studio One seem to understand that most people would want continuity/congruity between the arrange window and mix console windows where folder tracks are concerned. What I mean to say is that folder tracks are a tool intended to keep session bloat manageable, making it possible to navigate a bigger session more efficiently. Cubase only seems to see that as a concern in the arrange window, which makes little sense, but the I will give credit to the Studio One developers for realizing that the concept should extend to the console as well. Bravo for that.
Now, having said that, why take a tool intended to increase effiency, and then needlessly saddle the use of that tool with extra steps that need not be added into the process. Case in point: having to add a bus (or group channel - whatever the nomenclature) every time I create a folder that I wish to act as bus to pass signal onwards from.
In Reaper, if you nest any track inside another track, it's automatically made into a folder that also acts as a bus. If you don't want to use it as an audio bus, so be it - you just don't route audio or midi from it - simple and convenient. In Reaper you can also just use the folder store midi tracks or audio tracks without routing audio out of said folder or you can sort of use the folder as a collective bus for individiual midi tracks to be routed from the folder into an instrument track of your choosing.
Now I understand that Reaper's way of doing things isn't applicable to Studio One directly because Reaper's approach is "A track, is a track, is a track" while Studio One does differentiates track "types", but you could just as easily take a cue from Logic's approach of having two types of "folder tracks" - Folder Stacks (the old school Logic and Cubase approach of just being a tool for organizing things in the arrange view only) and Summing Stacks (their attempt to modernize by adding the option of folders that also act as group or summing busses).
All you have to do is one of three things:
- Create a "Folder Buses" or maybe "Folder Channel" category of folder as an alternative to the current model.
- Make a preference that allows users to choose an option of a buss always being created and appropriately named for each instance of a folder being created.
- Have a right click or immediate query/prompt asking whether one would to create a buss for folder track just created, so it's just one additional mouse click.
I personally would much prefer either of the first two options. Thanks!
