*ISSUE*: Mxdwn w/ ARANGR TRAK coms out short (song included)

Cubase
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EDIT: Please download and extract first the following ZIP-file with the actual downmixed song and the screen capture of my arrangement view!

http://www.rockworksstudio.fi/Arrangement_Track_behavior.zip

I just love Cubase – there’s nothing more adding to that. BUT – what has been bugging me for ages, is the poor functionality of the Arrangement Track – or merely, how it behaves when doing down-mix. Here’s an example:

My customer has ordered a mixing for his song from me. Now he requested that the final chorus be doubled – ie. it coming TWO TIMES instead of the initial single time. So I thought I would use an ARRANGEMENT TRACK property so that I wouldn’t have to CUT/COPY/PASTE + edit all the fade out settings’ edit points etc. etc. of the last chorus.

An the result works fine arrangement-wise, BUT, when I select the song area to be DOWNMIXED (meaning that I select the length of the whole project), the final downmix comes out TOO SHORT, since because of the Arrangement Info, the song (mix) actually gets a bit longer, and Cubase only downmixes the song according to the length of the selected downmix area!! I can’t believe this…

So what I had to do – and is UTTERLY ANNOYING – is that I lengthen the selected mix-down area by the amount of the overlapping Arrangement events. This is the only way I can figure to get the down-mixed song (with Arrangement Track enabled) to be down-mixed ‘til the end. Other wise it would come up too short so that the song ends before it should.

So my very relevant question is: Why doesn’t Cubase comply with the mix-down area settings when the Arrangement Track is used and active? Shouldn’t it do the down-mixing to the end even if I had zillion repeats on the Arranger Track? And don’t just down-mix according to the length of the selected area??

And here’s more: Now that I had to make even ANOTHER arrangement setup for my customer, so that the songs length results even longer, then I have to AGAIN adjust the mix-down area length to match the arranged song length!

And this one is REALLY hilarious:: When I didn’t have patience to calculate the whole mix-towns’ lengths with Arrangement Track enabled, then I just adjusted the right (end point) position of the mix-down to very far towards later position in time so that the song would definitely “fit” into it, and guess what?? CUBASE STARTS THE ARRANGER CHAIN FROM THE START after finishing it!!! :smiley: And so I will have to re-open my down-mixed WAV-file and cut the crap from the end. I mean cut the material that is the same as the beginning of the song.

So I have TWO simple requests:

  1. Please Steinberg, make the selected down-mix area match the actual down-mix when the Arranger Track setup is used!

  2. Please add some kind of a “STOP FUNCTION / PAUSE FUNCTION” to be able to be added to the chain.

Don’t you all agree? Any +1’s for this one???

-Tommi Tiihonen // ROCK WORKS STUDIO

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sorry haven’t looked at your post i couldn’t get past the word “BUG” … :smiling_imp:

why not rename it “ISSUE” like steinberg want you too and post in the right section or are you just going to cry bug all day ?

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My apologies, I didn’t know that. But that’s merely a BUG as far as I can see it. But I will rename the title now.

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Hey Mindastray

I thought when using the arrange track, you just flattened to a new project and just went from there, named the new one ‘extra chorus version’ or something?

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“”“”“”“”“”“”"
Gorsat wrote:+1

I’m in the midst of converting from PT and just ran into this same problem tonight. Of course once I set up an arrangement chain that I liked I wanted to export an mp3 of the piece to listen to in the car and share with others. But of course I also want to keep working on piece, and I really don’t want to have to save a copy of the project then flatten it then export it in order to accomplish this. That’s just a PITA. Why can’t I just export the thing? Since cubase can play back the arrangement just fine, it really can’t be too hard to write it to disc, right? Please fix! “”“”“”“”“”


That’s EXACTLY what I wanted to say also. You see, others? This DOES MAKE sense. AND I also wrote directly to Helge about this issue and he totally agreed.

C’mon guys, think about this: Why would you have to flatten your audio since the Arrangement Chain should do the work automatically?? Without having to manually calculate those ending points for Mixdown - OR - having to manually edit them with an audio editor or whatever (meaning cutting the lackers etc.).

Definitely the AC (Arrangement Chain) should do the work. It does otherwise but the Chain’s lengths just don’t match up.

And like I was talking about also::: What if you have multiple AC’s in use? You folks REALLY want to manually edit the start & ending points of the project? Why should we have to? The playback works fine (just like Gorsat said also) so why can’t you ppl just admit the fact that the AC function is not working like it should?

I mean WHAT GOOD is in how it’s working now (leaving the mixdown short OR adding some music from the beginning of the project to the end of the mixdown)? Please tell & astonish me.

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hoo a second post for the same issue…
well i agree with u. for some one who works a lot with ARR track its a pita to always flatten just to export.
steinberg should add possibility to export the all arrangement as it is with the arr track .
but for now to not mess up you can just flatten the arr track, export to audio and undo flatten to resume working with arr track.