Very long-time Cubase user here (since the 1990s). I was somewhat disappointed to see that this bug, described below, is still broken in Cubase 14. To me it is the #1 bug in Cubase, as it very negatively impacts my work every day. It has severely mangled too many Projects, requiring hours to clean up, if it’s even possible. It is a huge workflow and productivity killer!!
Bug: Audio clips recorded in Cycle mode end up with some bizarre Tempo, rather than the Project Tempo. This must be manually patched up - for every single recorded clip - or else the clips do not scale correctly if the Project Tempo changes.
Steps to recreate:
- Create a new Project. Make sure that Tempo is fixed. For this example, let’s say 100 BPM. i.e., not using a Tempo Track.
- Set Audio Record Mode to either “Keep History”
- Create an Audio track. Make sure it is set to Musical Mode. i.e., we’re dealing with Bars and Beats.
- Set Left and Right locators to some range, e.g., 4 bars, and enable Cycle mode. i.e., we’re gonna repeat the Project between the Locators.
- Arm the newly-created Audio track to record. i.e., we’re gonna record between Locators, iterating until we get something(s) we like. Each pass will be one Event in the clip, and each of these Events will be on its own Lane.
- Go to Left locator and hit Record, and keep recording through a few cycles and then stop.
- Open Pool and locate clip.
The Bug: Notice that the Tempo for this clip is “???” or something bizarre, like 213.7 BPM, whereas it should be 100, same as the Project at the time of recording.
Secondary Bug, recorded clip is not set to Musical Mode, but it should be, else Events won’t follow Project Tempo changes. Remember, we are purposefully recording “to the grid”, denoted by the Musical Mode of the Track. Thus, each recorded clip should be set to Musical Mode, too, so that any change in the Project Tempo scales appropriately.
- But wait, there’s more: now set Audio Record Mode to “Replace” and record a clip, just like we did above.
- Now, notice in the Pool that the Tempo is set correctly on the clip! Alas, Musical Mode is still not enabled (and should be), but at least we have the correct Tempo info and can manually set it, as a workaround. But you have to start with the correct Tempo!!
- Unfortunately, “Replace” mode does not create a new Lane for each pass, so you can’t easily comp the part. (AFAIK, the only way to get one Lane per pass is to manually drag each Event into the Project, one at a time! Ugh!)
Previously in this Forum, talking about an earlier version of Cubase, Martin indicated that somehow this bizarre & incorrect Tempo setting is supposedly a “feature” - that Cubase is trying to compute Tempo based on the entire length of the clip!! i.e., instead of the length of each Event (Cycle pass), it uses the entire clip, from when you press Record to when you Stop!. I don’t see how that is musically useful in any way; certainly not when recording to the bars/beats grid, aka Musical Mode.
If what Martin says is correct - that there’s some code that gets run after recording clips (but apparently only in Cycle with 2 of 3 Audio Recording Modes) to compute the clip Tempo, then it would seem that instead of running that code, the fix would be to just use the Project’s Tempo, as expected. Sometimes less really is more! (I don’t mean to trivialize; of course, any code changes have to be prioritized, assigned, implemented, tested, documented, and so on.)
Oh, and while you’re in that code, please enable Musical Mode on clips recorded on Tracks with Musical Mode, as well. Only when both of those pieces of clip metadata are set properly will they properly follow Project Tempo changes. (And who hasn’t had to speed up or slow down a Project, partway through tracking? If the clips in the Pool are all to bizarre Tempo, you’re toast.)