Disclaimer: I’m new to Cubase, so, if there is already a way to do this, please let me know. I haven’t been able to find a setting in either the app or the manual.
With that out of the way, assuming I’m not missing something, the Bars+Beats option in the Time Display and Ruler is too limited, in my opinion, in the way that it displays the sub-division of beats. For example, in 4/4, the sub-division is always 4 (1/16 notes); whereas, if the song is in swing time, it would make more sense for it to be 3 (1/8 triplet).
Possible solutions:
An option to define this manually.
An option to have the sub-division follow the quantize setting (as is already possible for the grid).
An option to disable beat sub-divisions altogether and go straight to ticks.
I’m risking hijacking your thread here but I can’t help myself because you’re raising a point that has me totally confused since jumping to Cubase a month or so ago from Sonar. I’ve been looking everywhere for an answer and I guess I’m just not searching with the right string.
In Sonar, MIDI was generally stored 960 ticks per qtr and the time display was comprised of measure, beat and tick. It was easy to locate the right spot to draw a tuple rhythm or set length on a MIDI note, even if it was an 8th triplet, since you could calc or remember 960/3 = 120.
In Cubase there are these 4 components to the time display, and that third one is the 16th subdivision you mention (which goes from 1-4j, followed by what I guess is ticks, which goes from 0-119.
I agree with you that the 16th subdivision isn’t a good fit for tuples. And the mere presence of that third subdivision makes it more difficult to do calcs like the one I mention above.
Lastly, it seems like the math here also yields the conclusion that Cubase is only using 4*120 = 480 ticks per quarternote. Do you know if that’s true? I can’t find any pref that shows this but of course it could be there.
Thanks I advance for letting me interject these peripheral points. Without a good understanding of what’s going on here, detailed and effective MIDI editing is just impossible.