Please improve the Hitpoint recognition feature and give us options! Other DAW’s have this. Why no Cubase?
Please also allow me to convert then export all sliced audio as separate audio files.
What I am doing (not exactly uncommon):
1 - Recording or editing existing VST instruments I’ve mixed/altered
2 - Now I have one long track with 32-100 audio samples (sometimes more)
3 - I slice the events and trip out the silence.
4 - I export them as audio files.
5 - I rename them one by one
6 - I import them into a sampler
Does Steinberg know how much of a pain it is to build sampled instruments using Cubase? Removing silence, splitting events, exporting multiple events as different files. It seems like Cubase can’t do any of these things automatically. Am I wrong? I find it ironic that the tool I use to make music can’t be used to make a digital instrument in this day and age. I suppose you can. But if it takes 5 years to do it I can’t really say it falls within “current functionality” as it stands. As much as that sounds like a complaint… it’s not… yet. lol I’m just surprised. Am I missing a feature here? Or can we see some improved tools for music creation?
Features needed:
Auto-slice & trim events to remove silence
Export those events to separate audio files
This is more important than a shiny new mixer in Cubase 8.5 or 9. It’s 2015, the words “manual edit” really need to disappear.
+1 on the sampler. If I could auto-slice/trim my brass samples then drag them straight into a simple sampler that would be great. Anytime you create a new articulation in this sampler, an expression map gets updated automatically. Okay, now I’m dreaming for a bit too much to ask for!
You should try Groove Agent 4 SE as a sampler. It’s great. Very easy to use. I recommend Korg PadKontrol with that. It does automatically create drum maps but not automatically update them.
That sampler would never work for me. It seems to be based solely on creating beats. I’m talking about building multi-articulation instruments. Stuff like VSL, Spitfire, 8dio, etc. for film scoring. A simple sampler would be great, but that’s a bit too simple. Not bad, just not enough for what I need. I use multi-articulation instruments with round robins and Expression Maps (another Cubase feature). The more seemless that workflow is, the better. If all of it could be auto-mapped, I’d be in heaven. That said…
While a sampler would be great- the fact is, we already have capable samplers. So one built in is a plus, but that’s it… just a plus for me. We don’t have good enough tools to edit the audio in the first place before ever getting it into the sampler. I’d rather tackle that problem first. Then if Steinberg wants to compete with Kontakt, go for it. But for now, I can’t even get a recording out of Cubase INTO a sampler without insane and very unnecessary amounts of effort. Why Steinberg, why!?
I found exactly what I’m looking for, in Audacity. I just tested it and it works.
1 - Under “Analyse” use the “Silence Finder”
2 - Under “File” use “Export Multiple”
Works like a champ! I would still rather do this all in Cubase without having to use another DAW. But in case anyone else needs a solution, this works. So now if Cubase adds this, adds a multi-articulation sampler with drag/drop functionality then I’ll be set!
Halion 5 looks to be great. However, how many 3rd Party sample libraries use it? That’s not a pretty pie chart. If one already owns Kontakt then why am I paying $350 more? Just for drag-and-drop functionality that should be supported between these two companies that both “support” it already?
Halion 5 looks really interesting. I’d love to try it out and if it’s useful I wouldn’t mind using it to sample all my private stuff. But can I write custom scripts for it? Cubase doesn’t have real scripting abilities in it, so why would Halion? Like some of Halion’s feature. Trust me, it wouldn’t take much to get me on board with it. But all I really want is a sampler that supports drag and drop to easily create multi-articulation & Round Robin instruments. Right now it just sounds like I’d be paying $350 for something I already have. Is that not true?
Another concern I have with Halion is from watching this:
This guy had to do the following:
Trim each event… manually
Create a new track for each event… manually
Move each event to the right position… manually
Rename each event… manually
AGH!!!
In Cubase, I record my samples so I have one track to start with. Same exact scenario. Here are the steps:
Export 60 minutes of audio in one track
Use Audacity to auto-detect silence to find “start points” for each sample
Use Audacity to export each labeled start point as an individual file
Rename files for import into Kontakt via midi note number, 051, 052, etc.
Each of these can be automated by using tools outside of Cubase and Halion. I’ve wasted boat loads of time doing it manually. I write music. That’s the end goal. Sampling instruments is a means to that end. The more work it takes to do the thing I’m really not wanting to spend time doing, the less happy I am about it. Call me an overly simple guy, but I think that’s a pretty fair case! lol
If Steinberg can smooth that out, I’d buy Halion in a midi tic. Then I’d sample everything in it and tell the world to do the same. I’d practically be a Halion fanboy.
Although it was designed for beats, I don’t use it for beats. It’s great for long ambient tones with the midi delay set to 8/4 and 32 repeats at a slow tempo. The mixer adds a lot to it too. There is your film score music!
On the topic of Cubase Expression Maps with VSL, it’s so frustrating that you can’t view large maps and that large maps are so tedious to create.
I watched the Halion video and it looks way too complex for me plus too small a screen. Why do they make the windows small?
Record 2,400 notes to build a sampled instrument, then:
Audacity: Automatic - 5 seconds to detect a silence threshold and auto-trim each note upon export
Cubase: Trim the start/end times of each note- manually. Taking hours, days, and even weeks to refine an instrument.
Why would any sane person use Cubase to do this? I love Cubase, but for building a sampled instrument each note multiplies how long it takes to build. And I’ve recorded well over 2,400 notes to sample in my time. I plan to do much, much more than that. Believe me, Cubase needs better sampling features. Maybe if you are only sampling 10 notes it’s not a problem. But multi-articulation instruments with round robins? No way!
I agree about the expression maps. VSL’s sampler lets you change the ‘root note’ of the key-switches and it will auto update all following notes. It’s brilliant! If only Expression Maps could be created with such ease. I’ve toyed with the idea of creating an excel file and a macro that would create Expression Maps for me. If you’re into that kind of thing I could send it your way once I get around to it.
And yes yes yes! I really want the expression map list to be more manageable. You can’t put them in order, or even alphabetical order. They go in the order that you added them to the file, which is nonsense! Navigation is a pain.
Well, you’re certainly not a wealth of information… but thank you for pointing me back cause I finally found it!
Before I posted, I looked in the Cubase manual to find it without any luck. I googled without any luck. Then I posted here. This thread made me think to search “Detect Silence” so I finally found it. Previously, I was looking with terms like “trim” “audio” “event” and plenty other tags.
Anyway, in case anyone else ever reads this, here’s how to do what I’ve been after:
Removing all the silence:
1 - Record your track.
2 - Select the event
3 - Under the Audio menu, under Advanced, click “Detect Silence”
4 - Play with the threshold until it finds the points you want to trim off
Exporting the events as separate audio files:
1 - Select the events
2 - Under the Media menu, to go Open Pool Window
3 - You’ll find your audio nested in the menu tree, expand it and right-click “Bounce Selection”
These feel a bit more “tucked away” than I think they should be. It’d be nice if I could make a macro to do this automatically, but the key command window doesn’t support these features. At least I can do it all within Cubase though. That I’m very pleased with. Now just to convince Steinberg to add a more powerful macro suite!
Actually Expression maps, like drum maps can be automatically generated in Cubase but only if the third party implements this feature. Boo to VSL for not doing this! I can only speculate it’s because of Steinberg’s very poor decision to make the labels in the map lanes disappear when there are too many rather than the obvious solution of giving users a scroll bar. These two companies it seems do not play well together and users suffer.
But does it belong in Cubase ? I would rather expect a sample creator to be something you would find in Wavelab or Halion. Don’t get me wrong I would love a easy way to create sample sets, that take advantage of Expression maps. That could further the interest and widespread use of expression maps. I just don’t know if belongs in a DAW
One might ask if video playback belongs in a DAW instead of running the video out to something else. I believe this is far more essential to a DAW than a pretty new mixer.
Waveland is a mastering tool.
Halion is a proprietary sampler that has a niche market.
Cubase is a DAW built to host multiple samplers.
Wanting workflow to improve between cubase and samplers (including a far more popular sampler) applies much more to Cubase than the other two. The DAW as a mere sequencer and the sampler that actually produces the sound, should be more closely connected. Driving them apart only burdens users… To what end? Centralized solutions are better for users and in the long run they always sell better.
