Click drifts in Musical Mode

Cubase
#1

I imported an audio file into the Cubase LE 5 pool that contains 79 measures and a constant 111 BPM. I enabled the Tempo Track with a constant 111 BPM and turned on Musical Mode for the track using the Mix algorithm. I inserted the track into a new project.

With click off the cursor seems to follow the beat well enough and it maintains synch with the bars in the audio file. When I turn the metronome click on it follows the tempo for about 10 bars and then begins to drift slower behind the beat. After another 30 bars it begins to click faster than the beat. I also created a drum track using the VST instrument track. This has a similar problem and drifts off the project tempo after 10 bars or so. If I solo the VST track it stays aligned with the beat.

I’m running this on Windows 7 with and I7 dual core Lenovo laptop and ASIO Direct X drivers so I don’t think performance should be a problem. I’d really like to be able to record parts while listening to the audio track and have things synch up. As it stands I can’t really use Cubase LE 5 for real-time overdubbing.

#2

Direct X drivers are worthless :wink:
If you have an audio interface, visit the manufacturers website for dedicated ASIO drivers for your device. If you are working with onboard sound, download ASIO4all and try that.

Don’t know if that’ll fix it, but it should improve performance anyway :slight_smile:

#3

I’m actually using my Zoom D24 ASIO drivers that come with the audio I/F. They have a 7.43 ms latency which is better than the 12+ms latency for the Direct X drivers. I tried setting the project time to the audio event using the menu item and that seemed to help with the bar-beat tracking but the audio click still drifts. This seems to also be a problem with any of the VST instruments. If I create a quantized drum pattern and replicate it for the track the first bars seem to stay in sync with the audio track but eventually they fall behind. Interestingly, if I just enter the MIDI data in real-time along with the track and don’t globally quantize it the MIDI and the audio stay aligned over the full length of the piece.

I created my own audio click track by exporting a real time MIDI track as an audio mixdown and importing it as an audio track. This seems to work for now. I’ll just record and correct the VST instruments in real time (no quantization to the bar beat) and export/import them to a real audio track as soon as possible to avoid VST latency issues.