How to Use Your iPhone as a MIDI Controller in Cubase

What you need

• An iPhone — the controller. Nothing else to buy.
• NueCtrl — free on the App Store. A one-time Pro in-app purchase adds Max Mode (up to 500 Hz motion capture), unlimited faders, per-fader sensitivity and unlimited presets.
• A Mac or Windows PC running Cubase. Which assignment system you get depends on the version rather than the edition: MIDI Remote from Cubase 12 onwards, Generic Remote on 11 and earlier. Quick Controls are present in both eras.
• One connection route — Bluetooth, the same Wi-Fi network as your computer, or a Lightning / USB-C cable. Windows users should plan on Wi-Fi; see Part 1.

Part 1 — Connect your iPhone

This part is the same for every DAW, because it happens at the operating-system level before Cubase is involved. Pick one of the three routes below. If you want the full walkthrough with screenshots of each dialog, see the MIDI connection setup guide.

Option A — Bluetooth LE MIDI

The fastest route, and the only one that needs no cable and no shared network. NueCtrl advertises itself over Bluetooth LE when it launches.

1. On your iPhone, open Settings → Bluetooth and make sure Bluetooth is on.
2. Launch NueCtrl and go to Settings → Connection → Bluetooth MIDI, then tap Advertise so the phone is visible.
3. On your Mac, open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications → Utilities), choose Window → Show MIDI Studio, and click the Bluetooth icon.
4. Find NueCtrl BLE in the device list and click Connect. NueCtrl's status indicator will read Connected.

Option B — Wi-Fi (Network / RTP-MIDI)

Lower latency than Bluetooth, still wireless. Roughly 5 ms in practice.

1. Put the iPhone and the computer on the same Wi-Fi network — 5 GHz if you have the choice.
2. macOS: Network MIDI is built in. Open Audio MIDI Setup → Window → Show MIDI Studio, double-click the Network icon, click + under My Sessions and tick Enabled. Select NueCtrl in the Directory panel and click Connect.
3. Windows: there is no built-in Network MIDI. Install rtpMIDI (the free RTP-MIDI driver from Tobias Erichsen), create a session in it, and connect to NueCtrl from its directory list.
4. In Cubase, the input will appear under the session name (for example Session 1), not under the phone's name.

Option C — USB

The lowest latency and the most reliable route — around 2 ms — and the right choice for a take you intend to keep.

1. Connect the iPhone to the Mac with a Lightning or USB-C cable.
2. First time only: in Audio MIDI Setup, choose Window → Show Audio Devices, select your iPhone and click Enable.
3. NueCtrl detects the cable and switches to USB MIDI automatically. The port appears as NueCtrl.

Part 2 — Cubase setup

Cubase overhauled its remote-control architecture in version 12, so there is no single set of steps that is true for every install. Do the port work first — it is identical everywhere — then follow the section that matches the version in your splash screen.

Step 1 — Activate the port in MIDI Port Setup

1. Open Studio → Studio Setup and select the MIDI Port Setup page in the left-hand list.
2. Find the port carrying NueCtrl: NueCtrl BLE for Bluetooth, the session name for Wi-Fi, or NueCtrl for USB.
3. Confirm the port is visible and active. A port that has been deactivated here does not exist as far as the rest of Cubase is concerned.
4. Check the All MIDI Inputs column for that row. That column is what decides whether a track whose input is set to All MIDI Inputs hears the phone. Leave it ticked while you are testing, and untick it later if you would rather the phone never leaks CC into record-armed tracks.

Step 2a — Cubase 12 and later: MIDI Remote

This is the recommended route on any modern install. Open the MIDI Remote tab in the lower zone of the Project window, or go to Studio → MIDI Remote Manager. Add a surface and point it at the NueCtrl port as its input.

1. Create a control on the surface — a knob or a fader — so there is something to assign.
2. Switch to the Mapping Assistant and select that control.
3. Pick the target: a DAW function, or the parameter of the plug-in that currently has focus.
4. Move the iPhone so NueCtrl transmits its CC. The Assistant learns the incoming controller and writes the assignment into the mapping page.

One detail is worth committing to memory: a surface can hold several mapping pages, but only one page is active at a time. If your assignments suddenly appear to have vanished, the usual explanation is that a different page took focus, not that the mapping was lost. Check which page is active before you rebuild anything.

Step 2b — Cubase 11 and earlier: Generic Remote

Go to Studio → Studio Setup → Remote Devices and add a Generic Remote. Set its MIDI input to the port carrying NueCtrl. What follows is table work: the upper table holds the MIDI address rows — the controller number, the channel, the address type — and the lower table holds the destination rows that say which Cubase parameter each address drives. You fill both in yourself.

It works, and it has driven a great many studios for a great many years, but it is plainly more effort than the Mapping Assistant asks for, and it gives you no learn-by-moving shortcut for plug-in parameters. If you have been putting off the upgrade to Cubase 12 or later, this is the concrete reason to stop putting it off.

Step 2c — Quick Controls: the fast route in every version

If you only want one expressive hand movement rather than a full control surface, skip both remote systems. Studio Setup has a Track Quick Controls page and a VST Quick Controls page, each with a Learn button. Select a Quick Control slot, press Learn, and move the iPhone so NueCtrl's CC is captured into that slot.

The payoff is that Quick Controls are focus-following. Track Quick Controls address whichever track is selected; VST Quick Controls address whichever plug-in has focus. One assignment therefore covers every instrument and every effect in the project, instead of one mapping per device. For a motion controller this is exactly the right shape: you are rarely riding twelve parameters at once, you are riding this one, on whatever is in front of you.

Step 3 — Record the pass as automation

An assigned parameter behaves like any other automatable parameter, so Cubase will capture the movement. Set the track's automation mode away from Read to Touch or the latching mode, start playback, and perform the move. Cubase writes an automation curve you can trim, reshape or copy to another track afterwards. Perform first, edit second — that ordering is the entire reason to use a motion controller instead of the pencil tool.

Part 3 — What to map in Cubase

NueCtrl turns iPhone motion into continuous MIDI CC, so it belongs on parameters that want to travel, not on switches. Cubase offers several targets that repay a moving hand.

VST Quick Control slot 1 on the focused plug-in

The highest-leverage target in the whole program. Assign NueCtrl to the first VST Quick Control slot and you have one gesture that addresses whatever plug-in you are working on at that moment — a synth filter in one window, a delay feedback in the next, without touching the assignment. Set it up once in a template project and it is simply always there.

HALion Sonic, Retrologue and Padshop macro and continuous controls

The instruments bundled with Cubase are unusually generous with sweepable parameters. Retrologue's filter and modulation controls, Padshop's grain and position parameters, and the macro-style knobs across the HALion Sonic front panel all respond well to being performed rather than drawn. These instruments also surface parameters to Quick Controls, so the previous section's single assignment reaches them without extra work.

CC1 and CC11 into orchestral libraries

Cubase carries an enormous share of the world's scoring work, and orchestral libraries receive CC1 (modulation) and CC11 (expression) natively — no remote system, no mapping table, nothing to assign. Send NueCtrl on those controller numbers into the track and you are driving the library's own dynamics and expression layers directly. A sustained string or brass line lives or dies on the shape of its CC11 curve, and a hand shapes that curve better than a mouse ever has.

FX send levels to a reverb or delay return

Pushing a vocal into a reverb tail at the end of a phrase and pulling it back for the next one is a performance, not an edit. Assign the send level to an FX channel and ride it. Cubase's send slots are automatable and Quick-Control-addressable, so either route in Part 2 gets you there.

Frequency EQ bands and compressor threshold rides

A threshold ride through a loud section, or a slow lift of a band in the Frequency EQ across a chorus, are both moves that sound worse when they are quantised into straight lines. Put them on the phone. Channel-strip dynamics and the bundled EQ both expose their continuous parameters to automation and to Quick Controls.

Groove Agent and sampler continuous parameters

Groove Agent's filter, decay and tuning parameters, and the continuous controls in Cubase's sampler, answer well to motion — particularly filter and pitch moves across a fill, where the point is that the gesture is uneven.

Troubleshooting

• The port is missing or greyed out in MIDI Port Setup. Open Studio → Studio Setup → MIDI Port Setup and confirm the row is present and active. If it is present but a track set to All MIDI Inputs still hears nothing, the All MIDI Inputs column for that row is unticked — tick it.
• MIDI Remote mappings appear to have disappeared. Only one mapping page per surface is active at a time. Open the MIDI Remote zone and check which page has focus before you conclude the assignments were lost. This is the single most common MIDI Remote complaint.
• Two systems are fighting over the same port. A Generic Remote and a MIDI Remote surface both pointed at the NueCtrl input will produce doubled or erratic behaviour. Pick one system — on Cubase 12 and later that should be MIDI Remote — and remove the other's claim on the port.
• The port vanished from a track's input list after you set it up as a remote. This is expected Cubase behaviour, not a bug: a MIDI input claimed by a Remote Device is taken out of the normal track input pool so remote traffic cannot also be recorded as performance data. If you need the phone to feed a track and drive assignments, either release the remote claim or use a second port.
• Nothing appears anywhere after connecting. Cubase enumerates MIDI ports when it launches. Finish the connection at the OS level first — pair over Bluetooth, or connect the Network MIDI session in Audio MIDI Setup / rtpMIDI — then restart Cubase.
• The movement arrives late. Check the route before the buffer: Bluetooth runs around 10-15 ms, Wi-Fi around 5 ms, USB around 2 ms. Then lower the ASIO buffer size — the setting lives in Studio → Studio Setup → Audio System and, for most interfaces, in the driver's own control panel reached from that page.
• On Windows there is no USB option. The USB route depends on macOS exposing the iPhone as a MIDI device. Windows users should use Wi-Fi with rtpMIDI, which lands around 5 ms and is the dependable low-latency path on that platform.
• The move is audible but no automation is written. The track's automation mode is still Read. Switch it to Touch or the latching mode and perform the pass again.

FAQ