Cycle Recording Workflow and Confusing Results

Cubase
1

I’m trying to resolve a workflow for my audio recordings and could use some help to understand my initial trials with cycle recording. I’m working in Cubase 15 Pro on a Windows computer. Firstly, here is my present workflow and settings:

  1. Left and Right Locators set to frame a short section of the song
  2. Time Cursor set to Left Locator Position
  3. Cycle Mode enabled
  4. “Punch In/Out” enabled under “Common Record Modes”
  5. “Start Recording at Project Cursor Position” enabled under “Common Record Modes”
  6. “Replace” enabled under “Audio Record Modes”
  7. “Pre-Roll” and “Post-Roll” both de-activated
  8. “Click While Recording” checked under Metronome Setup
  9. “Click During Count-In” unchecked under Metronome Setup
  10. Press Record to start recording. Since I’m the one performing, the first loop starts late, the second loop is complete, and then I stop recording in the third loop.

This results in two audio events positioned inside the framing locators. One is named “Take 3 (Bass_01)” and the other is named “Bass_01”. The recorded track name is “Bass”. So it seems that “_01” reflects that this is the first recording, and “Take 3” reflects the 3 loops recorded.

If I move these events to the far right and expand them fully, they appear to have identical audio (all three loops), but the one named “Take 3 (Bass_01)” has a white line near the end which seems to reflect the anchor point for the event when I move it.

I understand the Lanes concept and “comping” but was not interested in that approach since my timing at the edges might be slightly off, I prefer to unwind the loop and cut and paste the best loop. My plan is to use Time Stretch or Musical Mode (not sure about those functions yet) to fit the best audio segment to the looped grid assuming it will be a little long or short.

I’m confused about why Cubase produces two events and how the white line is meant to work. Any other advice about workflow is appreciated. Here are some screen shots of the two events (one screen shot shows how it first looks, the other how it looks after I’ve moved the events to the far right and stretched them out fully to see the full recording of almost 3 loops.

After Recording
After Recording1539×642 60.1 KB

Two Identical Recordings Unwrapped
Two Identical Recordings Unwrapped2482×625 62.9 KB

Its difficult to see but “Take 3 (Bass_01)” seems to be anchored at the start of the 3rd loop at bar 173. The other event, “Bass_01” seems to anchored at the start of the event at bar 181, but that doesn’t line up exactly with bar 54 where the recording was started.

Sorry for such a long post, if anyone has made it this far and can provide some insight then that would be greatly appreciated. I can work with this, but am sure there are better ways to do this.

2

After studying this some more, what I want is for Take 3 to be aborted or hidden since it was stopped before this cycle completed. That way the full Take 2 would fill the loop and if the performance was good enough no edits would be needed. The way its working now, I have to make edits since the last take will always be cut short and would not be wanted.

I believe the “Keep Last” setting for MIDI Record Modes does what I want but I don’t see that option for Audio Record Modes. Is there a setting I am missing?

3

When Cubase records audio in a cycle it creates only one single audio file (from start of recording to end of recording). The individual cycle “takes” are depicted as separate events when the track shows its “lanes”. I assume, this is what you saw.
Since each of these lane events is a reference to the same (long) audio file, when you expand them they will all show the same content.

Yes, the white line is an anchor point. It is called “snap point” in Cubase and it allows you to snap the event to the grid not only to the beginning of an audio event.

4

Thanks, that’s helpful to my understanding. Even after splitting the event and deleting pieces, those deletions can be recovered by expanding the remaining pieces. Each slice has the whole. I need to explore the lanes view.

5

Hi,

first, I would activate the “Show Lanes”
view by clicking on this symbol in the track header:

grafik
grafik641×200 18 KB

This will give you all information that is needed, no need to stretch at this point and easy to manage.

Personally, I prefer to manually delete unwanted lanes before I start another cycle recording instead of having them overwritten. Therefore, I have set Audio Record Mode to “Keep History”.

If you start from scratch with your current settings and “Keep History” then the last take will be kept incomplete. If you delete them and start again the last incompleted cycle will not be kept (TBH, I’ve never noticed that before, odd).

PreRoll is actually quite helpful to get a headstart before the actual cycle recording. It’s easy to set up and activate in project window. This would leave you with complete cycle takes only.

6

Thanks, I appreciate your input and will explore the Lanes and PreRoll features and Keep History mode.