Inaccurate visual representation of waveforms transients/velocity/dynamic range when zoomed out

Cubase
,
1

This has always sort of been a thing in Cubase, does it need to be this way?

edit - just to be clear, once I bounced the gain editing, the waveforms adjusted, so it’s just a thing with having edited gain, still kind of annoying though… because you keep zooming back in to parts you’ve already edited.

Waveforms sort of get squeezed and smushed outwards vertically giving the presentation of a waveform clipping when in reality, it isn’t.

Even using the entire width of my ultra wide,

ultrawide
ultrawide3439×1382 144 KB

It must be some sort of contention between screen resolution and Cubendos set waveform resolution… probably not the simplest fix because you’re dealing with so many consumers with so many different resolutions.

Anyone know why? And at what point of zoom does one know when the waveform is an accurate representation?

Could the resolution be a user set variable?

1 Like
2

Can’t say I ever noticed such behavior, and I can’t seem to reproduce it (C14, Win11). Which Cubase version and OS are you on?

Strictly speaking, when the zoom level is so high that one sample can be displayed with one pixel :wink: Everything else will be an interpolation/approximation of some kind.

3

Just to clarify, at least in this case, it only occurred when editing event line gain.

Some conditions needed to probably recreate,

  • Source material with wide dynamic range with sharp peaks
  • Peaks are close to max, gain overall event if not (cant remember if I bounced prior to do line gain)
  • Peaks reduced a significant amount with fairly narrow event-line-gain closer to average RMS
  • zoom out