I would suggest new ‘grid snap functionality’ in Cubase track editor. It would be more musical and would enable faster song rearrangement without fear of messing track timings.
I don’t know why is it not already there and working as such by default.
Now:
If you cut beginning of the track unrelated to grid (which you need to for recordings of real instruments, because note can actually begin before bar), or if you move a track once without snap enabled, then you loose relative position to the grid forever.
New behaviour:
I would change snap reference from event start → to relative position of BAR or BEAT for underlying sample.
I suggest that Cubase stores one floating point number (in sample number for audio files), where 1/4 beat lies for that track - when you record that track (or you manually set it for imported files by manually aligning it to grid and storing that grid reference).
That number could be also automatically detected with menu command or set by manually alligning audio track to bar grid.
With storage of that number you would always know relative position of quarter note for that audio sample at any event position, so if you want to move it for 30,5 bars (for example) it could still snap to correct ‘quantize’ grid, regardless of how the track is cut at beginning (it will work even if track was cut without snap enabled) or how many times was track moved previously without grid enabled.
This way you would never loose relative grid position of track and you could snap it on grid at any time if needed. Even resize of events would not destroy that, because that single number is tied to original sample.
This should be default behavior and any other snapping should be accessed with key modifiers.
Too be honest, on first quick glance, it doesn’t really make sense but I don’t really know what you are talking about or describing, or what it’s purpose would be. I would try reducing and simplifying your explanation, or do a quick mock up graphic.
Thank you, this is almost exactly what I meant, I did not use this function yet. The only difference would be, that there would be default ‘snap point’ automatically added to each event on recording, so it would not be possible to mess up track timing if moved without snap enabled.
There would be snap point added which would snap to grid if wanted.
Maybe it is already there and I don’t know it, there are so many features that it is hard to follow all
Why not leave snap on then and use the ctrl modifier to go free when needed?
The other way is to turn Audio events into ‘Parts’ and then stretch the part length to have some extra blank-space where it is quantized to the previous beat or bar (if it doesn’t get in the way of something else)
