Hello there,
I find a bit frustrating that, in 2026, I still need to use free online tools (the website shown in the screenshot is among the first results I get on Google) just to detect the tempo of an audio track. Cubase’s Tempo Detection tool (Steinberg) is not reliable enough to be useful, but is also making changes to my Tempo Track on my project. I don’t want that, I just want Cubase to analyze and tell me the tempo, stop.
This is a feature request I guess.
One really easy fix would be to have a slider to set the “resolution” of the tempo lane. The lowest value would just create one single event based on the average tempo. Higher values would create more tempo points.
Also why the heck did it take 10 minutes for me to find the tempo detection buried in the menu’s? 
BTW the way I approach the tempo of existing tracks is this: I play the track and then hit the tap button in my transport field with the beat. I keep an eye on the tempo track. Add new points if needed. It’s the most complicated way but in a way it’s quicker for me and more hands-on
Ha! I’ve been doing that for ages (hitting the tap button by ear), but it feels like a cheap way to do it. It also is a huge waste of time when dealing with dozens of audio files.
I don’t know if this is too much to ask, I’d expect a professional tool such as Cubase to instantly detect the tempo of a selected audio event and display it directly, something like this:
Already doing it in the background, absolutely! It baffles me this isn’t a part of Cubase’s feature set already 
Cubase can’t reliably interpret the tempo of some of its own generated WAV files.
It the one big frustration I have had with Cubase since moving from Ableton a dozen or so years ago. The Warp feature on Live just works, but placing an audio file into an existing project in Cubase is a long-winded, and not always successful, excercise.
I still hold onto my copy of Live 9 for this alone.
Tempo detection in Cubase has been a disaster for me…It just doesn’t work…
Well, it works, but it works exactly as shown in the screenshot. Measure changes to 1/4, and then you have different tempos for each 1/4 beat/measure.
I still use it in a pinch.
I just did a quick forum search for feature requests about accurate tempo detection. There are many of them but none of them have much votes if any, for example this one:
However, this is a request you’ll find all over the place in wishlists going back many years. Maybe it’s a better strategy to push just one thread in order to gain more attention?
I would leave a vote myself if I had one left because I’m annoyed, too. Such a basic feature shouldn’t work so poorly in a major DAW like Cubase.
@ggmanestraki I think it’s about accuracy. Take the simplest of samples which is pretty much straightforward. Cubase will read all sorts of super weird tempo changes. In other words and yes, this is a bit exaggerated but not that much: Everything beyond 4 simple short beeps on the beats is too much to handle for Cubase.
Also, we are still waiting for an answer why they took away the beat calculator…
Just for laughs, I added the first 16 tempo events and divided by 16, and came up with 120,25.
I think it has to do with hitpoint detection. The gist of it seems to be, here, all the hard transients are smack on the beat, have some ultra-precise tempo with 3 decimals too, and work from there. Maybe it does its job too well? @dreikelvin is onto something with a “resolution” parameter. You take the average, so that the whole event fits exactly (e.g. 64 bars). Now, if you find that it drifts and wobbles somewhere in the middle, you can either increase that resolution setting, or manually warp the grid locally.
Yes, that’s probably part of the problem. But Cubase will also interpret short periodical patterns within bars as new tempo information or time signatures. The algorithm is just far from robust or to put it more friendly it is “over accurate”. At the end of the day, the resulting tempos and signatures are simply nonsensical from a musical point of view. Although I usually don’t join the “other Daws can” choir - in this case I do. It’s a basic feature that literally any free tool does better than Cubase does. It should be the other way round.
It’s a basic feature that literally any free tool does better than Cubase does.
Yep, that was my point. I’m a bit disappointed to discover that my professional DAW can’t perform a basic task that a free online tool handles in a few seconds. It’s something that musicians and composers needs, and feels like functionality that should be built into a music software.
Especially considering that many of the upgrades over the past few years have felt light on new features.
Just so the SB devs have something ‘proven’ they can troubleshoot with, is anyone willing to attach specific files they’ve found Cubase does not handle well, that free online tools (or otherwise) are far superior/faster etc..?
They just need to bring the old tool back. Like, the code was already written. They dont even need to write new code. Just put it back.
Well, that simple tempo detection tool was the old Tempo Detect tool which was heavily gimped for unexplained circumstances, nobody liked it and it stayed that way because companies only change things when they start losing money.
All I’m going to say is, right now, SB believe they’ve done a great job - that they’ve provided perfectly adequate tools. Even Greg Ondo demonstrates during his ‘Cubase Hangouts’ how to use the existing facility to achieve ‘tempo detection’ of files, with never a hint of any ‘problem’… And I take that, to be an indication of the thinking on the matter inside SB towers. i.e. there’s really nothing to ‘fix’.
Thus, it is up to you (the user) to prove it, to dangle it right under their noses, have it right up in their faces that actually, this tool is still quite poor.!
My view is they appreciate concise, straight talking facts…
But it did one thing that cant currently be done… it could simply detect the tempo of a loop based on the length of a loop.
I cant believe that after 30 years of using cubase I have to bring sample loops into ableton to figure out the tempo to use. I actually dont use ableton for anything else.
If I’m not mistaken, this would be a prime example for an AI application. Just teach the damn thing what a groove is… 
Currently, Cubase can’t even reliably create a tempo map of a 120 bpm metronome track. Trust me, I tried.
Well, there still is a pretty fast solution to this problem:
No need to use Ableton for this simple task!
As an alternative method:
Further to my comments above - this is a snippet of a guitar recording made at 72 bpm as per the transport panel, but the Sample Editor shows it to be 119.48 bpm! If I change that clip to musical mode then the project is screwed.
As I said, if Cubase can’t identify the tempo of a recorded clip then there is no hope of accurately identifying external clips. Plus, it renders the Media Bay ability to ‘Link To Project Tempo’ useless.
Of course Steinberg’s own loop collections work seamlessly …
