Steinberg Nuendo 3 Operation Manual

							17
The Audio Part Editor 
						

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17 – 422 The Audio Part Editor
Background
The Audio Part Editor allows you to view and edit the events inside 
audio parts. Essentially, this is the same type of editing that you do in 
the Project window, which means that this chapter contains a lot of 
references to the chapter “The Project window”.
Audio parts are created in the Project window, in one of the following 
ways:
•By selecting one or several audio events on the same track, and se-
lecting “Events to Part” from the Audio menu.
•By gluing together two or more audio events on the same track with 
the Glue Tube tool.
•By drawing an empty part with the Pencil tool.
•By double clicking between the left and right locator on an audio 
track.
With the last two methods, an empty part is created. You can then add events to the 
part by pasting, or by using drag and drop from the Pool.
Opening the Audio Part Editor
You open the Audio Part Editor by selecting one or more audio part(s) 
in the Project window and double clicking on any one of them (or us-
ing the Edit-Open key command, by default [Ctrl]/[Command]-[E]). 
The Audio Part Editor can display several parts at once, and you can 
also have more than one Audio Part Editor open at the same time.
•Note that double clicking on an audio event in the Project window will 
open the Sample Editor (see page 400). 
						

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The Audio Part Editor 17 – 423
Window overview
The toolbar
The tools, settings and icons on the toolbar have the same functional-
ity as in the Project window, with the following differences:
• A Solo button (see page 426).
• Separate tools for audition (Speaker) and scrubbing (see page 427).
• No Line, Glue Tube or Color tool.
• Play and Loop icons and an Audition Volume control (see page 426).
• Independent Track Loop settings (see page 427).
• Part List controls for handling several parts: Activating parts for editing, re-
stricting editing to active parts only and showing part borders (see page 428).
• You can customize the toolbar, hiding or reordering its items.
This is described on page 678.
The ruler and info line
These have the same functionality and appearance as their counter-
parts in the Project window.
•Note that you can select a separate display format for the Audio Part 
Editor ruler by clicking on the arrow button on the right and selecting 
an option from the pop-up menu that appears.
For a list of the available formats, see page 108.  
						

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17 – 424 The Audio Part Editor
About lanes
If you make the editor window larger, this will reveal additional space 
below the edited events. This is because an audio part is divided ver-
tically in lanes. 
Lanes can make it easier to work with several audio events in a part:
In the left figure it is unnecessarily hard to discern, select and edit the 
separate events. In the right figure, some of the events have been 
moved to a lower lane, making selection and editing much easier.
•To move an event to another lane without accidentally moving it hori-
zontally, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and drag it up or down.
This is the default modifier key for this – you can adjust this in the Preferences if you 
like.
Lanes    
						

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Overlapping events
Only one event per track can be played back at the same time! This 
means that if you have overlapping events, on the same lane or differ-
ent lanes, these will cut each other off, according to the following 
rules:
•For events on the same lane, the ones that are on top (visible) will be 
played.
To move overlapping events to the front or back, use the Move to Front and Move to 
Back functions on the Edit menu.
•For events on different lanes, the event on the lowest lane gets play-
back priority.
The “overlapping” sections of the upper event will not be played since the event on 
the lower lane has playback priority.  
						

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17 – 426 The Audio Part Editor
Operations
Zooming, selecting and editing in the Audio Part Editor is done just as in 
the Project window (see page 111).
•Note that if a part is a shared copy (i.e. you have previously copied the 
part by [Alt]/[Option]+[Shift]-dragging), any editing you perform will 
affect all shared copies of this part.
To indicate that it is a shared copy, a symbol is displayed in the right corner of the part 
in the Project window (see page 133).
Auditioning
There are three ways to listen to the events in the Audio Part Editor:
By using the Speaker tool
If you click somewhere in the editor’s event display with the Speaker 
tool and keep the mouse button pressed, the part will be played back 
from the position at which you clicked. Playback will continue until you 
release the mouse button.
By using the Audition icon
The Audition and Audition Loop icons.
Clicking the Audition icon on the toolbar plays back the edited audio, 
according to the following rules:
• If you have selected events in the part, only the section between the first and 
last selected event will be played back.
• If you have made a range selection, only this section will be played back.
• If there is no selection, the whole part will be played back. If the project cursor 
is within the part, playback starts from the current cursor position. If the cursor 
is outside the part, playback starts from the beginning of the part.
• If the Audition Loop icon is activated, playback will continue until you deacti-
vate the Audition icon. Otherwise, the section will be played back once.
• When auditioning with the Speaker tool or Audition icon, audio will be routed 
directly to the Audition bus.  
						

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The Audio Part Editor 17 – 427
By using regular playback
You can of course use the regular playback controls while in the Au-
dio Part Editor. Furthermore, if you activate the Solo Editor button on 
the toolbar, only the events in the edited part will be played back.
The independent track loop function
The independent track loop is a sort of “mini-cycle”, affecting only the 
edited part. When the loop is activated, the events in the parts that are 
within the loop will be repeated continuously and completely indepen-
dent – other events (on other tracks) are played back as usual. The 
only “interaction” between the loop and the “regular playback” is that 
every time the cycle starts over again, so does the loop.
To set up the independent track loop, proceed as follows:
1.Turn on the loop by clicking on the Loop button on the toolbar.
If it isn’t visible, you need to right-click (Windows) or [Ctrl]-click (Mac) the toolbar and 
add the Independent Track Loop Settings section – see page 678.
When the loop is activated, the cycle isn’t shown in the editor’s ruler. 
Now you need to specify the length of the loop:
2.Either [Ctrl]/[Command]-click and [Alt]/[Option]-click in the ruler to 
set the start and end of the loop, respectively…
3.…or edit the loop start and end positions numerically in the fields next 
to the Loop button.
The loop is indicated in purple in the ruler.
• The events will be looped as long as the Loop button is activated and 
the Audio Part Editor window is open.
Scrubbing
In the Audio Part Editor, the Scrub tool has a separate icon on the 
toolbar. Apart from that, scrubbing works exactly as in the Project win-
dow (see page 129).  
						

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17 – 428 The Audio Part Editor
Handling several parts
When you open the Audio Part Editor with several parts selected – all 
on the same track or on different tracks – they might not all “fit” in the 
editor window, which can make it hard to get an overview of the differ-
ent parts when editing.
Because of this, the toolbar features a few functions to make working 
with multiple parts easier and more comprehensive:
•The Part List menu lists all parts that were selected when you opened 
the editor, and lets you select which part should be active for editing.
When you select a part from the list, it is automatically made active and centered in the 
display.
• Note that it is also possible to activate a part by clicking on it with the 
Arrow tool.
•The button “Edit Active Part Only”, lets you restrict editing operations 
to the active part only.
If you for example select “All” from the Select submenu on the Edit menu with this op-
tion activated, all events in the active part will be selected but not the events in other 
parts.
“Edit Active Part Only” activated on the toolbar.
•You can zoom in on an active part so that it fills the screen by select-
ing “Zoom to Event” from the Zoom submenu on the Edit menu.   
						

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The Audio Part Editor 17 – 429
•The button “Show Part Borders” can be used if you want to see 
clearly defined borders for the active part.
When this is activated, all parts except the active one are grayed out, making the bor-
ders easily discernible. There are also two “markers” in the ruler with the name of the 
active part, marking its beginning and end. These can be moved freely to change the 
part borders.
“Show Part Borders” activated on the toolbar.
•It is possible to cycle between parts, making them active, with key 
commands.
In the Key Commands dialog – Edit category, there are two functions: “Activate Next 
Part” and “Activate Previous Part”. If you assign key commands to these, you can use 
them to cycle between parts. Please refer to page 699 for instructions on how to set 
up key commands.  
						

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17 – 430 The Audio Part Editor
Common methods
Assembling a “perfect take”
When you record audio in Cycle mode, either an event or a region (or 
both) is created for each recorded lap (see page 66). These events 
and regions are named “Take X”, where “X” is the number of the take. 
You can create a perfect take by putting together sections of the dif-
ferent takes in the Audio Part Editor.
• The procedure below will not work if you recorded with “Keep Last” 
mode selected on the Transport panel.
In that case, only the last take will be kept on the track (although the previous takes will 
be available as regions in the Pool)
First, you have to create an audio part from the takes. This procedure 
is slightly different depending on whether you choose to create events 
or regions.
Creating an audio part from events
1.In the Project window, use the Object Selection tool to draw a rectan-
gle around the recorded events.
This is necessary, since clicking on the event may just select the event on top (the last 
take). If in doubt, check the info line – the info text should be yellow.
2.Pull down the Audio menu and select “Events to Part”.
The events are converted to an audio part.
•Note that the events cycle record mode also makes it easy to combine 
different takes in the Project window – see page 67.
Creating an audio part from regions
1.In the Project window, select the event you recorded in Cycle mode.
After recording, this will play the last take.
2.Pull down the Audio menu and select “Events to Part”.
You are asked whether you want to “Create Part using Regions”.
3.Click “Regions”.
The regions are converted to an audio part.