Editing Duplicated Audio Track anomoly

Cubase
1

The scenario:
I, and other musicians are remotely working on a project. It’s slowly moving forward and I have been tasked as organiser, engineer, producer… until we come to requiring a studio for mixing.

The guitarist has sent a WAV of a single rhythm guitar track, which is absolutely fine.
However, I want to double the guitar part. Rather than asking him to play it again (which could take some time) I’ve decided to duplicate the track, chop up the various sections using the “split” tool, and drag, for example, the second verse guitar to the first verse and vice versa, to give the guitars a “played” double tracked feel with its minor inconsistencies.

The problem:
If I open the duplicated, chopped up and moved sections in Sample Editor and nudge a couple of notes using “free warp”, the original unedited track also moves, putting it out of time.

I double checked by making the edits to the duplicate, then open the original unedited track in sample editor, then hit the “undo” button several times. I can see the track move back to its correct position.

Is this a known issue? Is there a solution?

2

Duplicating an audio clip by default creates a shared copy, where edits made to one instance affect all instances of the clip.

You may create an independently editable clip of an existing shared copy through Edit > Functions > Convert to Real Copy.

You may also set in Preferences > Audio the expected behaviour of Cubase upon editing a shared copy:

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  • Create New Version: Always creates a new, independent version of the audio clip in the Project Pool when you edit a shared copy. Changes are only made to this new clip.
  • Process Existing Clip: Edits made to the shared copy affect the same shared audio clip and thus all instances of it in the Project
  • Open Options Dialog: Always open a dialog asking which of the above to do when edting a shared copy
1 Like
3

paka, thanks so much. That’s it!
Funny thing is, when I was using CB 6.5 I used to know that. For some reason it just didn’t occur to me. Thanks again