How do I variaudio a comp?

I don’t normally use Variaudio as I’m already comfortable with both Auto-Tune and Melodyne, however I felt like giving it a try today and I can’t for the life of me figure out how I’m suppose to variaudio a comp. I can’t find much on this topic either so here I am. Whenever I select the full comp and open the editor, it appears to overlap every single take from the comp rather than just showing the active takes (picture below). Is there any way to have variaudio behave similarly to Melodyne ARA, where you only edit the active takes and you have clear divisions between the active takes?

Disclaimer: I’m sure someone will suggest that I bounce the comp to a new audio file and I’ll just say now that I’m not interested in that option. I like to keep my editing as flexible as possible.

Well since that is the way to do it, then I guess you won’t be using Variaudio on that material.

Not sure how bouncing reduces your flexibility in any manner unless you are deleting stuff you’ll later want.

I don’t like having multiple tracks for the various stages of vocal editing as it becomes cumbersome down the line when you have a large vocal production and you want to change things. I was hoping variaudio would just look at the active clips but if no such functionality exists then I guess I won’t be using it after all.

A good suggestion is hiding all source tracks after bounce, this will clean a lot of your session (and can always be reverted if you need).

Yeah I used to do this, but when you have a lot of tracks I spend more time than I’d like just looking for the source track, which is why I opt for doing it all on one track if possible.

Duplicate track version. Bounce and replace events. Tune with varaudio. Duplicate track version. Bounce and replace events.
Just use track versions to consolidate down to a tuned/timed single audio event.

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track versions are the way to go, but I do wish there was a possibility in Cubase to select only the active events on a track. Or to create a new track version from only the active events.

Good call, I hadn’t thought to try track versions yet. Will give it a go and see how it feels.

I think you could do this using a Macro that creates a Duplicate Version and then runs a PLE to delete the un-active Events (he suggests without actually checking)

The way I work around the track clutter problem is to create a ‘Side Project’ to contain the clutter. Say I have a Project named “CoolSong.cpr” and want to track & comp some guitars. I’ll use “Save As…” to create a new Project named “CoolSong - Guitars.cpr” for recording and comping the guitars. When that’s done I’ll Render In Place the comped Track so I have both a sliced up and continuous versions of the finished Audio plus all the unused takes if I ever need them later. Then Back in “CoolSong.cpr” I’ll use “File> Import>Tracks From Project…” to bring in the rendered guitar comp as a single clean and clutter free Track. Meanwhile if the guitars later need to be changed, there is version of the Project created precisely to do that.

Besides doing this for guitars, vocals & other instruments I’ll often create a side Project for Audio Effects and ear candy.

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Ah, that’s a good workflow idea, I might have to try that :slight_smile: