Pre Delay on cubase

Cubase
1

Hi , I started to use spitfire symphony orchestra on cubase but I don’t know How much pre delay set. Do you have any advice ?
Thanks

2

Hi,

Why do you want to use pre delay? Ale the tracks are sample-accurate. They know the latency and Cubase sends the track to process it ahead.

If the sound is delayed, make sure, there is no long attack on the sound. If this is the case, then you have to set the pre delay individually based on the attack time.

3

Here is a spreadsheet with negative delay times for several different orchestra libraries, Spitfire included.
It was put together by David Kudell and shared on the vi-control.net forums.
Virtual Instrument Track Delays - Google Drive

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4

Thank you very much , but How do I change pre Delay for every articulation if i use expression Maps and not a track for every articulation ?

5

Expression Maps in Cubase does not have a method for pre delay. It is a feature that has been requested for years and years.

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6

So How can I do to use expression maps if I can’t apply any sort of pre delay?

7

So setting a pre delay is not useful?
If I don’t set it correctly i can hear that the sounds are not on track .

8

As I see it, you have two options:

  1. Put articulations on separate MIDI/Instrument Tracks and set a negative Track Delay.
  2. Adjust the MIDI Note On message to compensate for slow attacks.

None of these options are ideal. With the first method you basically render Expression Maps useless and end up with a lot of extra tracks.
The second method might require a great deal of onerous work. In addition, converting the MIDI to a score will not be as straight forward.

Every year many Cubendo users hope to see an update of Expression Maps where negative delay per expression is on top of the wish list.
Here’s to hoping Cubase 14 will finally make it happen!

9

I think I will create an expression map for long and one for long and try to find a value of delay that works for each map

10

I’m really hoping for something like this as Dorico and Cubase become more and more integrated.

Dorico has the delay per articulation feature while Cubase does not. This is a challenge for those of us that do a lot of composing in Dorico for orchestral instruments and then port over to Cubase for final audio production and mixing. For instance I like Audio Bro (LASS and MSB) in Dorico because it has easy, built in divisi so its a breeze to write with. So my Dorico articulations are mapped to that.

Then I bring it in to Cubase and then start deciding on the final VST to use - maybe JXL Brass and EW Hollywood Strings. They have different attack times so it would be nice to have the delay times spelled out per articulation than rather have a whole mess of additional tracks to mess with. IMHO.

One other use case: There are different attack times even within the shorts category. Meaning that Marcato (short), Staccato and Staccatissimo/Spiccato all have different attack times. The “pulse” lands a little differently for each articulation. To be accurate you’d need a separate track delay for each. Articulation delay would solve that problem within a single track.