Clarification on Cubase 6 and ProTools Elastic Audio

Cubase
#1

I come from a protools background. I am just making sure I understand right what Cubase 6 can and can’t do when it comes to elastic audio.

BEAT DETECTIVE

  • With Cubase 6, they have added better hitpoint and quantize features. And from my experimentation, it is really a Beat Detective way of audio editing. Meaning, it quantizes region start times, based on hitpoints that you slice.

In comparison, Pro Tools offers that functionality through Beat Detective.

So, I can conclude that in terms of Beat detective functionality, Cubase is now the same. Great!

ELASTIC AUDIO

  • With Cubase 6, and previous versions, you can create warp tabs, ala’ elastic audio in Pro tools. You can grab audio and move it around.

The main differences are that:

  • Cubase 6 now adds Elastique (a better algorhthym) that will actually make it useable. Great!
  • Pro tools allows you to drag it around the arrange page, however, Cubase only allows it in a separate sample edit window. Bummer!

ELASTIC AUDIO QUANTIZING

  • With Cubase 6, you can’t actually quantize warp tabs. Is this correct?
  • With Pro Tools you can quantize warp tabs!

Does this sound like a fair comparison - am I missing a functionality that I don’t know about in Cubase 6 for Warp tab quantizing???

Some great steps with Cubase 6.

Thanks,

#2
  • With Cubase 6, you can’t actually quantize warp tabs. Is this correct?

I think you can do basically this by setting warp tabs & then setting the audio (at file level) to musical mode.
Sorry my DAW is shut down so not sure exactly how…but you can definitely do this for individual tracks.

One editing trick Protools has that Cubase hasn’t got yet is warping of grouped tracks in unison. I’ve seen in protools you can just group drums & drag warp tabs in the project page…v.nice & I’m sure something similar must be on the drawing board at Steinberg.

#3

Yeah, was a bit disappointed that C6 cannot do this, but on the point of quantizing drums, so far C6 has been very good, the beat detection is excellent, and the quantize panel very convenient. The main trick is in the delete overlaps, close gaps and cross fade button, an all in one solution. Close gaps as far as I can see/hear will time stretch all gaps forward over grouped multi-tracks without introducing timing errors. It seems to work :slight_smile:

#4

I think this could be a new “feature request”.

#5

hi,
you can quantize warp tabs but only on a single track at a time to the best of my knowledge. set up your warp tabs at the places you need then go to the edit menu (audio menu? not in front of C6 at the moment)(one of the drop down menus at the top of the project window) and choose ‘quantize warp tabs’. i think its in one of those side menus in one of the main drop down menus. tried it out on a bass guitar track that was played pretty well to begin with and it did a nice job of tightening things up. only took me a couple of minutes to set up the tabs, quantize and listen to playback to see if things sounded correct. it might need a few manual tweaks here or there but then again, so does elastic audio, beat detective, etc. not being able to warp a group of tracks like drums or multiple mics on a guitar cab kind of sucks. the way the new folder tracks use group editing for C6’s ‘beat detective’ should allow you to setup warp tabs in the same way it does hit points and then have a similar quantize panel but alas, it does not. :cry:
as mentioned, the new ‘beat detective’ like functions in C6 are great.

cheers,
dean

#6

You can also use the Audio Warp Quantize listed on page 110 of the manual under Avanced Quantize Functions. It works really well and you dont need to slice up your audio.

#7

Hi, i have Cubase 6 too.
I finished recording some Bass and GT parts…even though they are very good from scratch,
i would like to make a quantize on them…
I can’t understand quite well the right procedure…

I open the wav, go to the hitpoints… select 1/8 for example. then, i threshold +/-, but most of hitpoints
just don’t start in the right moment the note appears. They start a moment before of after for example.
Even though, i go then to the menu and select Advanced Audio Quantize… and the program really does
an aproximate quantize… but not quite as it should.

I remember the Melodyne… it seems to me that its the best software to do this…

At least…tell me what i’m doing wrong on cubase 6?

#8

If it’s good from scratch, the ideal is to just quantize the problematic parts and cut the notes with the scissor and select those notes and press quantize. Simple.

#9

Not the ideal solution with bass and gt parts… silence between notes isn’t very good.
Anyway…i really would like to know how to effectively quantize audio automatically with cubase 6…
The notes in question have great volume and accentuation, are well defined in pitch…so the program
must have a simple set of commands to stretch and quantize them to grid 1/8 …
In my point of view, that would be simple.

#10

yes but it still has no way to approximate actual bar start’s and ends, nor actual rhythmic events related to tempo. Also, it assumes that EVERYTHING is exactly the same tempo.

ELASTIC AUDIO

  • With Cubase 6, and previous versions, you can create warp tabs, ala’ elastic audio in Pro tools. You can grab audio and move it around.

The main differences are that:

  • Cubase 6 now adds Elastique (a better algorhthym) that will actually make it useable. Great!
  • Pro tools allows you to drag it around the arrange page, however, Cubase only allows it in a separate sample edit window. Bummer!

agree, would love to do arrangement edits in within the arrangement window.

ELASTIC AUDIO QUANTIZING

  • With Cubase 6, you can’t actually quantize warp tabs. Is this correct?
  • With Pro Tools you can quantize warp tabs!

Does this sound like a fair comparison - am I missing a functionality that I don’t know about in Cubase 6 for Warp tab quantizing???

I think it’s really the same as cubase 5, which allows you to quantize events like you want to (using tabs) , but often results in stepped pitch shifting or other side effects that never sound good. The exception is moving parts that are short percussive like sounds and don’t have tails that can get messed up.

still not ‘elastic’ audio.