Question about quantizing

Cubase
1

I record a melody on an instrument track with a strings patch (HALion One, for example).
When I look at the MIDI editor, the notes are “ahead” of the beat, but sound on the beat.
I can think of two reasons.

  1. Cubase is compensating for latency and initiating the note early.
    OR
  2. Because of the attack time of the instrument, I actually play the note slightly early, perhaps without consiously realizing it because I want the peak to occur on beat.

Question 1: In the MIDI editor does Cubase show you where it ACTUALLY sends the “note on” signal to the VSTi or is it showing you where the “note on” would finally actually be heard after the VSTi processes the “note on”?

Questions 2: Is there a way to quantize some fixed number of ticks “ahead” of the beat? If I quantize in the case described above, of course, all the notes are now slightly late (either due to latency, attack time or both).

Thanks for any help. :slight_smile:
J.L.

2

It would be normal to play slightly ahead of the beat when using a slow attack sound like a slow string sample.

Try playing with a drum sample and see if your playing is any tighter.

There is an option to use “system time stamp” if it’s not your playing, that may help.

Check out the logical editor, this is a powerful way of manipulating midi and can do what you want.

Midi should be recorded where you play it, pre VSTi.

1 Like
3

Thanks Split,
So the notes being shown ahead of the beat in the editor is because I played them early, NOT because Cubase is compensating for latency.
If I wanted to quantize them without having everything end up ahead of the beat, I could quantize them and THEN use the logical editor to have them all moved ahead in time by X number of ticks to compensate for the attack time.
Will give it a try.
I typically just turn off the snap and tweak them by hand because I don’t want them all to be EXACTLY on the beat anyway but this seems like a way to quantize with a small random offset and then move them so they peak on the beat (or on time anyway).
Thanks,
J.L.

4

Not necessarily, that’s why I suggested you try playing with a fast attack sound like drums. This way you could be more confident that it’s you and not the computer!

5

What I usually do for a group adjustment is select all notes and use the “note start” display at the top of the note editor to manually move the notes to where they sound best. It will give you a finer adjustment than trying to move them by hand. The scroll wheel is handy for this. Your random offset could be your natural timing without quantizing.