Steinberg Nuendo 4 Operation Manual

281
The Sample Editor
The “Use” pop-up menu in Hitpoints tab of the Sample 
Editor Inspector affects which hitpoints are shown and is 
a useful tool for removing unwanted hitpoints. The options 
on the pop-up menu are:
If your main reason for slicing the loop is to change the 
tempo, you generally need as many slices as you can get, 
but never more than one per individual “hit” in the loop.
If you want to create a groove (see “Creating groove 
quantize maps” on page 283), you should try to get ap-...

282
The Sample Editor
6.Click on the handle to lock the new slice.
Locked hitpoints are displayed in a darker color.
7.Drag the sensitivity slider to the original setting.
The locked hitpoint will remain shown.
You can unlock a locked hitpoint by clicking it again 
with the Edit Hitpoints tool.
Setting hitpoints manually
If you cannot get the desired result by adjusting sensitivity, 
disabling or locking, you can add, move and delete hit-
points manually.
Manually adding hitpoints can be done in...

283
The Sample Editor
To activate Q-points, open the Preferences (Editing–
Audio page) and activate the option “Hitpoints have Q-
Points”.
Next time you use the Calculate Hitpoints function, the hitpoints will have 
Q-points.
To offset the position of a Q-point in relation to the hit-
point, simply click on the “Q” icon and drag it to the right 
to the desired position.
Creating slices
When you have specified the correct loop length and time 
signature and worked on the hitpoints in the Sample Edi-
tor...

284
The Sample Editor
4.If you now pull down the Quantize Type pop-up menu 
in the Project window you will find an additional item at the 
bottom of the list, with the same name as the file from 
which you extracted the groove.
This groove can now be selected as a base for quantizing, just like any 
other quantize value. See “The Quantizing functions” on page 352.
5.If you want to save this Groove, open the Quantize 
Setup dialog and store it as a preset.
ÖYou can also create grooves from a MIDI part by...

285
The Sample Editor
Free Warp
Warp tabs are a kind of marker or anchor that can be 
attached to musically relevant time positions in an audio 
event, e.g. the first beat of every bar. Warp tabs can be 
dragged to the corresponding time positions in the 
project, and the audio will be stretched accordingly. 
A typical application of warp tabs is to use them to synchro-
nize audio to video, i.e. manipulate audio that is not musical.
You can also use warp tabs for further tweaking after hav-
ing applied...

286
The Sample Editor
8.In our example, the first beat of the third bar in the au-
dio event is slightly offset from the corresponding grid po-
sition and thus needs to be moved back a bit.
9.Place the pointer at the position of the first beat of the 
third bar in the audio event and click and hold.
When you click, a warp tab is added. If the position where you clicked 
was off, you can adjust it by dragging the tab in the ruler.
10.With the mouse button still pressed, drag the warp tab 
so that the...

287
The Sample Editor
This example illustrates the general methods of using 
warp tabs and the Free Warp tool. But you can of course 
use warp tabs for other operations than aligning down-
beats to grid positions. With the Free Warp tool, you can 
literally stretch any region within a sample to any position!
Editing warp tabs
Moving the destination position of existing warp tabs
To move a destination position of a warp tab (and thus 
stretch the audio), select the Free Warp tool and position 
the pointer...

288
The Sample Editor
Realtime pitch-shifting of audio 
events
Audio events can be pitch-shifted in realtime just like MIDI 
events. The process is very simple:
1.Open the audio event in the Sample Editor and open 
the Playback tab.
2.Set a value in the corresponding field in the Transpose 
section.
The value range is up/down two octaves in semitone steps. 
3.Press [Enter].
The audio event is now transposed to the set value using pitch-shift.
4.If a root key is specified or if the Transpose track has...

289
The Sample Editor
The MPEX3 algorithm allows you to select one of seven 
different quality settings:
ÖNote that you can only select the MPEX 3 algorithm if 
the time-stretching factor is between 0.5 and 2 through-
out the whole event. For audio that has been stretched 
with a factor outside this range, only the Realtime algo-
rithm can be used.
If the audio has been transposed, the dialog also con-
tains the option “Formant Correction”. Activate this if you 
want to e.g. avoid a “chipmunk voice”...

19
The Audio Part Editor