In Cubase we have Track Delay (ms) in the Inspector, which is great for nudging a track slightly ahead or behind without physically moving events on the timeline.
The problem is how it behaves when you change the tempo:
Track Delay is currently absolute time (milliseconds) only.
As soon as you change the project tempo, the timing relationship between the track that uses Track Delay and the rest of the tracks is no longer the same.
If you haven’t locked in your final tempo yet, Track Delay basically becomes unusable, because any tempo change destroys the carefully dialed-in offsets and you have to redo them.
What I’m asking for:
I’d like Track Delay itself to have a “Musical Mode-style” option, so it behaves like tempo-aware musical data in Cubase:
A tempo-following / musical mode for Track Delay that automatically adjusts when the tempo changes.
When BPM changes, the offset is recalculated so the groove relationship between that track and all the others stays intact, instead of drifting because the ms value stayed fixed.
Put simply, I’d like there to be an option where Track Delay behaves like material that’s in Musical Mode:
It follows tempo changes.
Changing BPM does not mess up the timing relationship between that track and the rest of the project.
In short, please consider adding a Musical Mode-style, tempo-aware option to Track Delay, so it can follow tempo changes and maintain the timing relationship between tracks instead of breaking the groove when BPM changes.
If anyone has any input or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!
I could be missing something, but isn’t attack compensation adjusted in ms as well? If so, wouldn’t it behave the same as Track Delay - i.e a fixed offset that doesn’t follow tempo changes?
Also, Expression Maps are MIDI-only (as far as I know), so this wouldn’t cover audio tracks.
Ah right, I think I misinterpreted your requirement. Effectively the attack compensation in Expression Maps does take tempo into account, as it will apply the millisecond offset consistently independent of the tempo (notes in a track in musical mode are mapped to linear time via the tempo map and then the offset is applied to the linear time).
If I am not mistaken currently the track delay value calls a function to get converted from linear time to samples.
The OP would like to see the parameter calling the function to convert the value from musical time into samples.
The implication is that the sample value for the offset can change dynamically as per the tempo map. Right now it is probably static.
Maybe it would make sense to implement the whole she-bang, ie. allow musical time, linear time, Time Code/frames, and samples as the user input.
Thanks Paul - and thanks Johnny for putting it into technical terms.
Just to be 100% clear about the real-world problem I’m trying to solve:
Typical use case: • I record or program a part, then use Track Delay to “pocket” it - e.g. move a bass or snare track a few ms late so it grooves nicely against the rest of the tracks. I do this for several tracks in a project. • Later on in the production, I decide to change the tempo of the song. • Because Track Delay is stored in milliseconds, all of those little pocket offsets now represent a different fraction of the beat, so the groove, or timing relationship between the tracks, changes. I then have to go through and re-dial all those offsets by ear.
What I’m requesting is a mode where Track Delay is stored in musical time, so that: • when BPM changes, Cubase recalculates the underlying ms automatically, • the musical offset - the way the track sits in the pocket after a tempo-change - stays identical, • and this is available for all track types (Audio/MIDI at the very least).
In other words, a new option for Track Delay to use beats/ticks (musical units), so that pocketing survives tempo changes on every track. Hopefully this makes sense!
Rather than have an extra option to toggle track delay to be tempo-aware, it should be tempo-aware by default unless you don’t want it to be. Opt-out instead of opt-in, especially considering most people using track delays are doing it to achieve some sort of sync or time effect related to the tempo of whatever they’re working at the moment.
In my experience, the great majority of users are using track delay for attack compensation (certainly most people working with orchestral libraries and the track delay database use it in this way – see Negative Track Delay Database / Spreadsheet | VI-CONTROL ). In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone using the track delay for some other purpose. (I’m not saying this isn’t a valid use case, simply that I think it’s a minority position)
Are you sure attack compensation is not tempo aware? Because I do remember people complaining about Expression maps attack compensation being in milliseconds instead of tied to some known value like a musical value.
It depends really on what you mean by ‘tempo aware’. The attack compensation takes tempo into account because a note’s position (in Song Mode) is determined by it’s musical position, and then that is converted to the real time position (which requires the tempo map), and then the attack compensation is added relative to that.
The attack times of patches in orchestral libraries don’t vary with tempo (there are some that do vary with dynamic level though). So if you have a string patch with a 80ms attack then you can have all your notes snapped to the grid and they will all sound in time independent of any tempo changes.
Interesting. For some reason I always thought mixing engineers and post pro people would be the main clientel for this feature. Maybe also sound designers.
But then, I would not be able to base my assumption on actual data.
I know this is just an anecdotal metric, but most of the top youtube videos for ‘Cubase track delay’ are about attack compensation/orchestral samples. There’s only one I can see that is talking about changing the feel of drum parts (which I assume is more the musical mode-style request) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cubase+track+delay
Great ideas here! I think most orchestral composers would prefer it to be in milliseconds (for what is now known as attack compensation with samples!), but I think an option to choose default in musical or ms mode would be great. The track delay feature needs some love, the inability to adjust it for more than one track at a time is a big frustration for me. I would love for it to be addressable via the PLE as well.
Something I would love to get is offset for individual clips/events, so that different sections of MIDI can be offset differently but still display “on the grid”.
Obviously the wonderful new additions to expression maps are a big help, but some improved options for “on the fly” timing adjustments would be great so as to not have to edit the maps themselves. With orchestral samples, sometimes the context can really matter — tempo, phrasing, etc. can make it tricky to lock in a fixed attack compensation value.
Now that there is an Attack Compensation setting in Expression Maps, doesn’t it seem like using Track Delay to achieve the same goal might be obsolete?
With that said, wouldn’t it make sense to revamp Track Delay so it has a “Musical Mode” and can be used for something like adjusting the feel of drum parts in a way that’s non-destructive when tempo changes are introduced? (I’m using drum parts as an example because it’s something you mentioned specifically.) I think this would be a huge step forward.
Without a Musical Mode for Track Delay, people can find themselves in trouble when deciding to change the tempo in the late stages of a project.
Considering people did that before things like PDC existed and some still do it manually for things like time-based effects, that seems like attack compensation is the minority position here.
For me it’s not obsolete for attack compensation. Making an expression map is much more slow and fiddly than changing the offset value — especially when working with synths and sample libraries that aren’t built into a standard template (hence my personal hopes for improvements that I mentioned above, and why it would be so great to be able to adjust multiple tracks or even single notes at once via keyboard shortcuts!)
I love the other ideas people have mentioned as well. Small workflow stuff like this goes so far in my opinion — intelligent ways to deal with those little niggles that irk you 150 times a day are in many ways more welcome than fancy whiz bang features.
Track Delay is definitely still relevant for Attack Compensation then, you’re right. Thanks for correcting me there.
Thankfully, adding a Musical Mode option to Track Delay wouldn’t disrupt anyone’s workflow. The way I envision it, the “ms” option would still be able to be used. The question is which option would be Cubase’s default behavior.
Personally, I feel Musical Mode should be Track Delay’s default behavior, but undoubtedly, leaving the default behavior as “ms” would be less disruptive to the user-base as a whole.
