I have thought a lot about this the last few days. We are talking keyswitches, expression maps and negative delay compensation.
For those that do not understand negative delay compensation it’s to be found in Cubase under the volume control in the Inspector. Easily ignored, it’s vital for correct timings of samples. Basically, when samples are recorded, the developer leaves a short gap before the full sound is heard. When a sample is played the gap is the beginning of the playback rather than the sound. This puts out the timing by milleseconds. The exact size of these gaps varies from articulation to arrticulation and developer to developer. Thedelay compensation slider in Cubase is an attempt to compensate for this but…
Getting back to Dorico and Cubase. Many people use Keyswitch instruments. It’s impossible to create the correct delay compensation for keyswitches because the delay is different for each articulation.
The only workaround for this is to have one articulation per track but this is very bad for scoring as the holy grail of one track, per one staff, per instrument is severely breeched. Orchestral Templates are already huge and this multiplies the number of (keyswitch) tracks by a factor of 10.
One might think that one can simply drag the notes back a bit in either Cubase or Dorico and use display quantize to tidy up a score. Firstly this is not good practice, it’s also fiddly and can encounter numerous consequences. in key editors and score editors - its untidy and unsatisfactory.
The Solution is SIMPLE. Steinberg needs to provide a mechanism for providing negative track delay per articulation.
This can be done in various ways. I cannot speak too much for Dorico as I am a Dorico apprentice, but in Cubase, either in the key editor, or in the Expression map editor, provision of delay compensation per articulation would fix this issue. Expression maps are more than ten years without an update, it’s well overdue.
This would be huge for composers and it would be vital for integration between Dorico and Cubase ( which I do accept may not yet be on the horizon). Composers would be able to play back samples in time without the need for proliferation of tracks and the ideal of one track per staff per instrument would be preservable without compromising timing.
I hope Daniel agrees with this and can convey this matter to the development team, it’s really come home to me that these innaccurate timings are frequently unavoidable cvurrently and can be sizable
aurally.
Z
