Hi, iterative ( soft ) and normal quantizing ( hard ) do not work as in Cubase VST32, anymore.
In the early days, we had two options :
Hard Quantize all notes
Iterative quantize those notes, that are outside a user specified range ( non quantize )
This was well thought out and worked great.
Then it was broken in SX1 and later. It was half fixed since SX3.
Today ( 5.5.2 ) we still have two options, but slightly different :
Hard Quantize those notes, that are outside a user specified range ( non quantize )
Iterative quantize those notes, that are outside a user specified range ( non quantize )
This forces me to open the Quantize Settings, for nearly every quantize action,
cause I need hard quantize to affect all notes and iterative, to affect only ‘way off’ notes.
It would make my daily work a lot easier, if we could have the old system back !
AFAIK, Steinberg knows about this issue.
Is it changed in V6 ?
You may be pleasantly surprised. Look for all the 3rd party Cubase 6 demos on YouTube. There’s an explanation of the new “on the fly” quantisation which also moves the gridlines as well as the notes.
Whether you have to do it every time I’m not sure.
I’ll see if I can find the link for you tomorrow but you’ll probably get there first. No! Yes, got it.
I generally set my Quantise for a section. Select the notes needed and hit “Q”.
Can you give a couple concrete examples of how you have to adjust the iterative q settings? I’m not getting my head around what the problem is. I don’t know about C6…
In Cubase 6 Iterative Quantize is set with the new iQ section… I didn’t include it on the video on that course as it’s designed for beginners but it works the same as before - you choose a percentage, ie 20% and the notes will move 20% closer to the grid you have selected. This just tightens the timing up as much as you want instead of being ‘hard’ quantized.
Dada, are you saying that to “hard” quantize everything to the beat (not just stuff within the user set area) you have re-adjust the non quantize settings to include “everything”?
Yes, I think having the ability to hard quantize and circumvent the non quantize would be a good thing.
If you want to do hard quantizing, you don’t want to exclude notes that are ‘fairly’ well played.
You just want all notes on the grid.
And it has worked like this, for years.
Iterative Quantize now works as expected, again, after the ‘half’-fix around SX3.
There’s no problem with iterative, in 5.5.
But having to set non quantize to 0, each time You want to do a hard quantize on every note
and then readjust it, when you need iterative quantize, is …
… well, it could be enhanced.
It really looks like they’re going with using the window and not shortcut keys… I hope I’m wrong. It’s not even on the MIDI menu anymore. (Iterative Quantize… MISSING!)
How about letting us select presets from the key command menu? A shortcut key to any saved quantize preset would be a brilliant way to overcome this. Should be pretty easy to add them to the already huge list of available things on the key command list…
BTW dada, how do you like the ProFire 2626? I just bought one for my self but haven’t had a chance to hook it up yet as I’m on the road.
And i7 860 @ 3.8??? OC? Stable? HOT? Lots of headroom?
If you quantize your audio or MIDI with the iQ option acti- vated, a “loose” quantization is applied. This means that your audio or MIDI moves only part of the way to the clos- est quantize grid position. You can specify an Iterative Strength value to the right of the iQ option. This lets you specify how close your audio or MIDI moves towards the grid.
␣ Iterative quantizing is based on the current, quantized positions and not on the original event positions. This makes it possible to repeatedly use Iterative Quantize, gradually moving your audio or MIDI closer to the quantize grid until you have found the desired timing.
NO offense curteye, but you’re sorta missing the point here.
What we want to do is have a command that lets you instantly “hard” quantize or “iterative” quantize. Opening the menu and fiddling with settings every time really slows down the work flow.
In Cubase 6 there is indeed no separate “Iterative Quantize” command (anymore) BUT instead the common Quantize command can work in two different modes which can be toggled back and forth: Hard Q and Iterative Q. Dependent which mode you use, the current Quantize settings are applied (you can set the Iterative Strength in the Quantize Panel). You can toggle between these modes by clicking on the Q (or iQ) icon in the toolbar and of course you can toggle the mode by key command. Btw, Iterative Quantize can be applied to Audio Events in Cubase 6 (new).
I have very little use for the Iterative quantise but I thnk the idea of it is that you fiddle with settings until you get the right feel. For most who work this way it wouldn’t be a one-shot deal as each piece of music that needs it, by the nature of music, would be different although I can see the reasoning.
Sometimes “workflow” is as long as it needs to be. How fast do you need to make a cup of coffee?
It’s the Accessing that is the problem. I sometimes want to quantize something to the beat, sometimes close to the beat. Having to open up the interface is another step that hinders work flow. In the past I had one key set to hard quantize, another set to Iterative (I usually have the Iterative settings set and don’t touch them much).
After recording a part, depending on which type of quantizing I want to apply, I just quickly press the button and I’m on to the next one. I just don’t like having to check or uncheck a box every time I want to toggle between the 2. It’s an extra step (2 if you count having to open the quantize dialog) that wasn’t there before.
However, if you can toggle with a key command and make a macro, well… I guess we still have our one key press for both then don’t we?
Thanks Christian for chiming in.
We discussed the settings for hard and iterative quantizing, many years ago.
Which led to a ‘half’ - fix of the broken ‘non quantize’, in SX1/2.
In Your post is no mentioning of ‘non quantize’, while this thread is actually about a still lingering ‘non quantize’ problem.
You wrote :
Dependent which mode you use, the current Quantize settings are applied
This does not tell me, if normal / hard quantize always quantizes all notes,
or if it is still ( wrongly ) affected by ‘non quantize’, in V6.
In other words :
do I still have to set non quantize to 0, to hard quantize all notes ??
