Align Audio to measures and tempo?

Hi . . . I’ve dragged an old analog tape recording into Cubase 12, and used SpectraLayers to separate to stems. Now I want to somehow align the audio to measures and tempo . . . I recall an “align to measures” function, but can’t find it in the manual, or any where in the menus . . . anybody know how to accomplish this ?

This?

I’ve never seen that before, @fese , very interesting, thanks for posting!

I think for the same problem I use a different approach … but TBH I’m not quite sure if it is addressing the same problem:

  1. Freely played audio or MIDI that doesn’t match any specific tempo grid.

  2. In the Project Window: I activate Time Warp up at the top. I generally choose the option “Musical events follow”, but that is case specific, and occasionally the other option is better.

  3. I can then grab the bars for each measure (or each beat, quarter beat, etc.) and, starting at the beginning of the Project and working my way to the end, I drag them (the bars, or beats, etc) to the correct point in the audio/MIDI that was actually played so the beats in the grid match the beats that were played.

This is easier to do than it sounds!

This process generates a tempo map that matches the audio/MIDI we are working with. Now any grid-need VSTi will be exactly on time with the music (such as drums, etc).

It’s nice, because if I want to change the tempo of the audio/MIDI, i can just adjust the tempo map. Woo hoo.

*Lesson learned the hard way here: back up the original project and work on a copy before using Time Warp and doing the subsequent steps! It’s easy, especially when starting out, to wind up with a mess, and I’ve learned it’s very hard to CTRL-Z back to safety in these cases!

I’ve started using Track Versions more, I think that’s allowed me to not have to back up the whole project before using Time Warp, but I can’t quite remember.

Well, thank you for pointing out your method which I’ve never really got into yet :wink: (never needed it much, though)
Bit different purposes, one is for better matching the audio to the tempo and grid of the track, the other for getting the project tempo to follow the track.
Your method is definitely better if you want to avoid time stretching the audio and just add stuff to it.

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Thanks, @fese ! Actually it works fine for time stretching the audio as well. IIRC, doing a “Set definition from tempo” function to the audio, then adjusting the tempo map*, will do the trick …

Correction please if that’s not right, it’s been a while since I’ve done it!

*Typo before editing: I inadvertently and incorrectly wrote " … then Time Stretching", instead of " … then adjusting the tempo map", sorry!

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@fese
@alexis
Thank you for the ideas . . . I played around with this tonight, but could not get anything to work, I’ll keep trying next few days . . . your ideas have pointed me in a good direction !

Maybe this will help!

I think the new version 12 audio warp is the best, right from the Arrange window. It’s multi-track, too.

Hey everybody . . . thanks for some really great and useful information, with the video and audio warp . . . tonight I found something that worked for my situation, really appreciate the inputs, very helpful !

Hello popitup, do you mind sharing the steps you took that worked for your situation?
Thanks