Steinberg Cubase 7 User Manual

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The Sample EditorWa r p i n g  a u d i o
Warping audio
Warping is a term used to describe the realtime time stretching of a selected section 
of audio. Warping is generally used to correct the tempo or timing of audio.
Adjusting loops to the project tempo using Musical Mode
Audio loops are normally short audio files containing a defined number of bars with 
straight beats. These loops can be adjusted to the project tempo by using the Musical 
Mode function. Proceed as follows: 
1.Import an audio loop into a project and double-click it to open the Sample Editor.
If you open the Definition tab and take a look at the rulers, you will see that the 
project tempo grid (upper ruler) and the grid of your audio (lower ruler) do not 
match.
2.From the Algorithm pop-up menu on the toolbar, select the algorithm preset to be 
applied during realtime playback.
For details about the available options on the submenus, see “About time stretch 
and pitch shift algorithms” on page 322.
3.Listen to the loop and, if necessary, correct the Bars and Beats values on the 
toolbar.
4.Activate the Musical Mode button.
Your loop is warped and stretched automatically to adapt it to the project tempo. 
The rulers reflect the change.
In the Project window, the audio event is now shown with a note symbol and a warp 
symbol in the upper right corner to indicate that time stretching has been applied. 
						

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Adjusting complex audio material to the project tempo using Musical Mode
If you want to use an audio file with unknown tempo or if the beat of your audio file is 
not straight, you have to change the “definition” of this audio file first. This is done with 
the Auto Adjust function on the Definition tab of the Sample Editor Inspector.
The Auto Adjust function extracts a “local” definition grid that you can then match with 
the project tempo using Musical Mode.
To extract the definition from an audio file, proceed as follows:
1.Open an audio clip or audio event in the Sample Editor.
2.Open the Definition tab and select a suitable value from the Grid pop-up menu.
This determines the grid resolution for your audio.
3.Select a range that is covering one or several bars.
This selection should cover the section that you want to use in your project. The 
definition grid will be calculated for this section only.
4.Click the Auto Adjust button.
The snap point is moved to the start of the selected range, which is now also the 
start position of the local definition grid. The lower ruler changes to reflect your 
edits. The transients, i.
 e. the bars and beats positions, are marked with vertical 
lines.
5.Activate the Musical Mode button.
Your clip is warped and stretched automatically to adapt it to the project tempo. 
The rulers reflect the change.
!The Auto Adjust function needs to be applied on a section containing complete bars. 
Therefore you first need to define a range in your audio material that starts and ends at 
a bar line. 
						

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ÖYou can also apply Auto Adjust directly on an audio event or a clip. If no range 
selection is defined, the grid is calculated for the audio event. If no range selection 
and no audio event are defined, the grid is calculated for the entire clip. In both cases 
you need to make sure that the event or clip starts and ends on a bar line.
Correcting the local definition grid
In some situations, you might not be able to get satisfying results with the “Auto 
Adjust” function. In this case you can manually modify the grid and tempo of your 
audio file. Proceed as follows:
1.On the Definition tab, activate the Manual Adjust tool.
2.If the grid start does not correspond with the first main beat, move the mouse 
pointer to the beginning of the audio clip until the tooltip “Set Grid Start” is 
displayed.
The mouse pointer turns into a double arrow.
3.Click and drag the mouse to the right until you reach the first downbeat. Release 
the mouse button to move the grid start (and snap point).
The lower ruler (for the local grid) changes to reflect your edits. 
4.Audition the file to determine where the second bar in the sample begins.
5.In the upper part of the waveform, move the mouse pointer to the vertical line 
nearest to the second bar so that the tooltip “Stretch Grid” and a blue vertical line 
are shown.
“Stretch Grid” allows you to correct the tempo by stretching or compressing the 
whole grid.
6.Click and drag the blue vertical line to the left or right to the position of the first 
downbeat in the second bar and release the mouse button.
The beginning of the next bar is set, and all bar positions in the grid are adjusted so 
that the bars have the same length.
7.Check the positions of the following bars. If you find an incorrect bar position, 
move the mouse pointer over the grid lines in the lower part of the waveform so 
that the tooltip “Set Bar Position (Move Following Bars)” and a green vertical line 
are shown.
“Set Bar Position” allows you to adjust a single bar line, thereby changing the 
tempo of one bar only. The bars to the right are moved accordingly, but the area to 
the left remains unaffected. 
						

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8.Click and drag the green vertical line to the left or right to the position of the first 
downbeat of the following bar and release the mouse button.
Repeat the last two steps for all bar lines that need to be corrected.
9.Now have a look at the single beats in between the bars. If you find an incorrect 
beat position, move the mouse pointer over the corresponding grid line so that the 
tooltip “Set Beat Position” and a blue vertical line are shown.
10.Click and drag the grid line to align the single beat position with the waveform, and 
release the mouse button.
•To remove a misplaced beat edit, press any modifier key so that the Erase tool is 
shown and click on the adjusted grid line.
ÖIf you want to hear your changes immediately, you can activate Musical Mode for this 
procedure. The warping will be recalculated after each edit.
Applying swing
If you find that your audio sounds too straight, for example, after having used the “Auto 
Adjust” function, you can add swing. Proceed as follows:
1.Activate Musical Mode.
2.On the Algorithm pop-up menu on the toolbar, select the algorithm preset that fits 
the audio material best.
For details about the available options, see “About time stretch and pitch shift 
algorithms” on page 322. 
						

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3.On the AudioWarp tab, select a suitable grid resolution from the Resolution pop-
up menu.
This defines the positions that the swing is applied to. For example, if you select 
1/2, the swing is applied in steps of half notes.
4.Move the Swing fader to the right to offset every second position in the grid.
This creates a swing or shuffle feel. 
Depending on how far you move the fader to the right and what grid resolution you 
chose, this function offers everything from half-note swing to 64th-note swing. 
Free Warp
The Free Warp tool allows you to change the timing of individual positions in the audio 
material. The Free Warp tool snaps to hitpoint positions and/or warp markers.
The Free Warp tool creates warp markers. Warp markers are a kind of marker or 
anchor that can be attached to musically relevant time positions in an audio event, for 
example, the first beat of every bar. Warp markers can be dragged to the 
corresponding time positions in the project, and the audio will be stretched 
accordingly.
Warp markers are typically used for creative tempo editing or further tweaking after 
having activated Musical Mode.
ÖWarp markers can also be created from hitpoints, see “Create Warp Markers” on 
page 352.
!When you activate or deactivate Musical Mode or select a different Resolution value, 
all your warp modifications are lost. 
						

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To correct the timing using the Free Warp tool, proceed as follows:
1.Open the audio file that you want to process in the Sample Editor.
2.Activate the “Snap to Zero Crossing” button on the Sample Editor toolbar.
When this button is activated, warp markers will snap to zero crossings.
3.If you want to use the Free Warp tool for selective timing corrections, you can 
define the local definition grid and activate Musical Mode.
The next step is to find out where a warp marker needs to be added.
4.On the Transport panel, activate the Click button, and play back your audio clip to 
determine positions where the beat is not on time with the click.
If you find it difficult to pinpoint an exact position in the audio event, you can use 
the Scrub tool and/or zoom in the view.
5.On the AudioWarp tab, select the Free Warp tool, place the pointer at the position 
of the beat that you want to adjust, click, and hold.
The mouse pointer changes to a clock with arrows on either side and a vertical line 
in the middle. A new warp marker is inserted.
6.With the mouse button still pressed, drag the warp marker to the new position and 
release the mouse button.
The beat should now be perfectly aligned with the corresponding position in the 
project. You can also first add warp markers at the relevant musical positions and 
change their positions later, see 
“Editing Warp markers” on page 363.
Next to the warp marker handle in the ruler, a number is shown. This number indicates 
the warp factor, that is the amount of stretch. Warp factors higher than 1.0 indicate 
that the audio region preceding the warp marker is expanded and will play back 
slower. Warp factors lower than 1.0 indicate that the audio region preceding the warp 
marker is compressed and will play back faster.
Editing warp markers
•To stretch or compress the audio using a warp marker, select the Free Warp tool 
and position the pointer on the warp line in the waveform, click and drag.
•To change the position of a warp marker in the audio, click and drag the warp 
marker handle in the ruler.
This will change the warping.
•To disable all warp modifications, click the “Disable Warp Changes” button on the 
AudioWarp tab.
•To delete a warp marker, hold down [Alt]/[Option] so that the pointer becomes an 
eraser, and click on the warp marker. To delete several warp markers, hold down 
[Alt]/[Option] while drawing a selection rectangle.
Resetting warp modifications
•To reset your Free Warp edits, click the Reset button on the AudioWarp tab.
This also resets the “Disable Warp Changes” button on the same tab.
ÖIf Musical Mode is activated, only Free Warp edits are reset. 
						

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The Sample EditorWorking with hitpoints and slices
Working with hitpoints and slices
Cubase can detect hitpoints, musically relevant positions, by analyzing onsets and 
melodic changes. At these positions a type of marker is added. Hitpoints allow you to 
create slices, where each slice ideally represents each individual sound or “beat”. 
Drum or other rhythmic recordings or loops work best with this feature. 
Purpose and preparation
Hitpoints are useful to slice up audio to make it fit the project tempo or to create a 
situation that allows the song tempo to be changed while retaining the timing of a 
rhythmic audio loop.
When you have successfully detected the hitpoints for an audio file, you can do a 
number of useful things:
- Change the tempo of the audio material without affecting the pitch and audio 
quality.
- Extract the timing (a groove map) from a drum loop. The groove map can then be 
used to quantize other events, see 
“Creating Groove Quantize Presets” on page 
142.
- Use slices to replace individual sounds in a drum loop.
- Extract sounds from loops.
You can further edit these slices in the Audio Part Editor. You can, for example:
- Remove or mute slices.
- Change the loop by reordering, replacing, or quantizing slices. 
- Apply processing or effects to individual slices.
- Create new files from individual slices using the “Bounce Selection” function on 
the Audio menu.
- Transpose in realtime and stretch slices.
- Edit slice envelopes.
Hitpoints can also be used to quantize audio material without creating slices. For 
details about the quantizing functions, see the chapter 
“Quantizing MIDI and Audio” 
on page 134.
Which audio files can be used?
Here are some guidelines as to what type of audio files are suited for slicing using 
hitpoints:
•Each individual sound should have a noticeable attack.
Slow attacks, legato playing, etc. may not produce the expected result.
•Poorly recorded audio might be difficult to slice correctly.
In these cases, try to normalize the files or to remove DC Offset.
•The recorded audio should contain as little crosstalk signals as possible.
Crosstalk refers to the “bleeding” of a sound into a microphone placed before 
another instrument during recording.
•There may be problems with sounds drowned in smearing effects, like short 
delays.
Adjusting the tempo: warping vs. hitpoints and slices
Both the warping features and the hitpoint detection can be used to alter the tempo 
and timing of audio material. Warping is very useful for continuous audio material 
without noticeable gaps between the individual sounds, for example, piano or vocal 
recordings.  
						

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The Sample EditorWorking with hitpoints and slices
Using hitpoints has the advantage that the quality of the sound is not affected and no 
artifacts are being introduced. The audio is cut up into slices that are then moved on 
the timeline, making this method especially suited for drums, which contain silence 
between the individual sounds. Furthermore, hitpoint detection is useful for multi-track 
drum recordings, because the phase alignment is kept stable. Using hitpoints and 
slices for continuous audio material is not recommended, as it is difficult to fill the 
gaps caused by moving the slices.
Detecting and filtering hitpoints
Hitpoints are calculated when you activate the “Edit Hitpoints” option on the Hitpoints 
tab. The audio event is analyzed and the hitpoints are shown as vertical lines.
Depending on the quality and type of the analyzed audio material, you may have to 
fine-tune the hitpoint detection using the Threshold slider and the Beats pop-up 
menu. Furthermore you can manually add, edit, or remove hitpoints.
•To filter out hitpoints based on their peaks in dB, use the Threshold slider. The 
threshold is indicated by horizontal lines on the waveform.
This can be used to eliminate hitpoints in crosstalk signals, for example, by keeping 
the louder bass drum hits and ignoring the quieter crosstalk signals of the snare 
drum.
•To filter out hitpoints by their musical position, use the Beats pop-up menu. Only 
hitpoints within a certain range of a defined beat value are allowed. The following 
options are available:
ÖWhen hitpoints have been calculated, they are also visible in the Project window for 
selected events (provided that the zoom factor is high enough). In the Sample Editor, 
hitpoints are displayed in the waveform when the Hitpoints tab is open. When the 
AudioWarp tab is open, hitpoint positions are indicated with small triangles at the top 
of the waveform display and the Range Selection and Free Warp tools snap to them.
Auditioning and hitpoints
•You can audition the hitpoint slices, that is the area between two hitpoints, by 
pointing and clicking in any slice area.
The pointer changes to a speaker icon and the corresponding slice is played back 
from the beginning to the end.
Navigating between hitpoints
•You can navigate between the slices using the arrow keys or by pressing the [Tab] 
key.
•You can select the next or previous hitpoint marker using the “Locate 
Next/Previous Hitpoint” commands.
The default key commands for this are [Alt]/[Option]-[N] and [Alt]/[Option]-[B].
OptionDescription
AllAll hitpoints are shown taking the Threshold slider into account.
1/4, 1/8, 
1/16, 1/32
Only hitpoints that are close to the selected note value positions within 
the loop are shown.
A second ruler displaying the local definition of the audio file is shown 
below the ordinary ruler. 
						

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The Sample EditorWorking with hitpoints and slices
Editing hitpoints
You can change the state of a hitpoint, insert new hitpoints manually, and move 
existing hitpoints.
Hitpoints can have three different states: enabled, locked, and disabled. “Enabled” is 
the normal state a hitpoint has immediately after the detection. Hitpoints can be 
“disabled” so that they are still visible as gray triangles on the timeline, but will not be 
taken into account for further operations. “Locking” hitpoints is an easy way to make 
sure that hitpoints are not accidentally filtered out. Locked hitpoints are not affected 
by the Threshold slider and Beats pop-up menu.
An enabled, a 
disabled, and 
a locked 
hitpoint
Disabling and locking hitpoints
After applying the different hitpoint filters, you may find that you want to keep 
individual hitpoints that were filtered out or disable hitpoints that you do not need. 
Furthermore, you may want to lock certain hitpoints.
•To lock a hitpoint, move the mouse pointer over the gray triangle on the timeline so 
that the tooltip “Lock Hitpoint” is shown. Click on the triangle.
This way, enabled and disabled hitpoints can be locked.
•To lock a disabled hitpoint, you can also press [Alt]/[Option] and move the mouse 
over the waveform. At positions where a disabled hitpoint can be locked, a gray 
hitpoint line and the tooltip “Lock Hitpoint” are shown. Click to lock the hitpoint.
•To lock multiple hitpoints, press [Shift]-[Alt]/[Option] so that the tooltip “Lock 
multiple hitpoints” is shown and drag a rectangle over the hitpoints.
All enabled and disabled hitpoints within the area defined by the rectangle become 
locked.
•To disable hitpoints, press [Shift] so that the tooltip “Disable Hitpoints” is shown 
and click on the line of a single hitpoint or drag a rectangle over all the hitpoints 
that you want to disable.
This way, enabled and locked hitpoints can be disabled. 
•To disable a locked hitpoint, you can also point the mouse at the blue hitpoint 
triangle on the timeline so that the tooltip “Disable Hitpoint” is shown. Click on the 
triangle.
Resetting hitpoints
Sometimes it can be useful to reset hitpoints to their original state, e. g. because you 
still want them to be affected by the Threshold slider.
•To reset hitpoints to their original state, press [Ctrl]/[Command]-[Alt]/[Option] so 
that the tooltip “Enable/Unlock Hitpoints” is shown and drag a rectangle over the 
hitpoints.
All disabled and locked hitpoints within the area defined by the rectangle are reset. 
Note that some of the hitpoints may still appear as disabled due to the Threshold 
slider and Beats pop-up menu settings.
Inserting hitpoints
If you get too few hitpoints using the filter options, you can insert hitpoints manually. 
						

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The Sample EditorWorking with hitpoints and slices
•To insert a new hitpoint, press [Alt]/[Option] and click at the position where you 
want to enter the new hitpoint (i.
 e. at the start of the sound).
Manually added hitpoints are locked by default.
Moving hitpoints
If a hitpoint was either placed too far away from the start of the sound or too far into 
the sound, you can move it.
•To move a hitpoint, press [Alt]/[Option] and point the mouse at the vertical line of 
the hitpoint. The mouse pointer changes to a double arrow and the tooltip “Move 
Hitpoint” is shown. You can now drag the hitpoint to its new position.
Moved hitpoints are locked by default.
Slicing audio
Once you have set up the hitpoints as needed, you can slice the audio by clicking the 
Create Slices button on the Hitpoints tab. Alternatively, you can select the “Create 
Audio Slices from Hitpoints” command from the Hitpoints submenu of the Audio 
menu.
The following happens:
•The Sample Editor closes.
•The audio event is “sliced” so that the sections between the hitpoints become 
separate events, all referring to the same original file.
•The audio event is replaced by an audio part, containing the slices (double-click 
the part to view the slices in the Audio Part Editor).
•The audio is automatically adapted to the project tempo, taking the specified 
tempo or bars and beats values into account: if the event was one bar long, the 
part is resized to fit exactly one bar in the Cubase tempo, and the slices are moved 
accordingly, keeping their relative positions within the part.
•In the Pool, the sliced clip is shown with a different icon. Dragging the sliced clip 
from the Pool to an audio track creates an audio part with the slices adapted to the 
project tempo, just as above.
The audio should now play back seamlessly at the tempo set in the project!
Slices and the project tempo
The musical time base setting and the project tempo affect how the sliced audio is 
played back. Make sure that the “Toggle Time Base” button in the track list or 
Inspector is set to a musical time base (the button shows a note symbol – see 
“Defining the track time base” on page 90). This way the loop will follow any further 
tempo changes.
If the project tempo is slower than the tempo of the original audio event, there may be 
audible gaps between the slice events in the part. To remedy this, you can apply the 
“Close Gaps (Timestretch)” function from the Advanced submenu of the Audio menu 
on the parts containing the slice events. Time stretch is applied to each slice to close 
the gaps. Depending on the length of the part and the algorithm set in the Preferences 
dialog (Editing–Audio page), this can take a while.
ÖIf you open the Pool, you will see that new clips were created, one for each slice.
If you decide to change the tempo again after using the “Close Gaps (Timestretch)” 
function, undo the Close Gaps operation or start over again, using the original, 
unstretched file.
!When you create slices, all events referring to the edited clip are also replaced.