[Solved] Cubase Writes Incorrect Tempo Definitions in Audio Files

Hi,
This has plagued me forever. I have projects where, when I Export a track to consolodate all the clips (as opposed to rendering in place) Cubase renders the audio file with some, seemingly, arbitrary tempo definition.
It has been a source of great frustration, until recently when I learned about “write tempo definition to track”.
But I should not have to do that!

Below is a screenshot of snare files output via Audio Export, from BFD3. The BFD tempo matches the project. I’m not using a Tempo Track, but I nontheless turned it on, set the tempo to the project and turned it off again, so, theoretically, all the gizmos in the project are at T=102.
Some, however, were written at bizarre tempo.
The play just fine, but you can’t properly change project tempo when they are like this.

Is this a bug or a feature?

Cheers

Martin Jirsak? Anyone? Got any input on this?

Okay, so it seems that, for some mysterious reason, my VST instruments, many of them, don’t write the tempo definition to the file and just “wing it”.
Or something.
I discovered in the Audio Export dialogue there is an option, that I really really new existed before, to write an iXML chunk to the audio file that forces it to contain the tempo definition.
I rendered out some files and they were the correct tempo.
Seems like this might be the answer.

However, Steinberg, et al, I probably shouldn’t have to do this, or at the very least y’all should make it clear that it’s a neccesary step.

Cheers

Hey, good sleuthing. I’d just grown to accept that the tempos weren’t right and needed to be checked and corrected if necessary.

But unless I’m missing something this is only for Audio that is created by exporting? I find that often the file that results from recording inside Cubase (e.g. a vocal on an Audio Track) often has the wrong tempo too.

As Rodger says above, I, too, have noticed this for a long time, but never posted about it. My normal workflow is to go into the Pool and set tempos for any files that don’t match the Project’s tempo. I have no idea what is going on with this so any explanation would be welcome.

This one becomes an issue if I’ve recorded at, say 100 bpm, but later decide I want 103 bpm, then, obviously, the tempo of files in the pool must be correct and tracks placed in Musical Mode.

Maybe someone with more insight will explain this better. For me this is kind of a mystery like “offset” in the info line, which no one seems to understand and I just disregard. :slight_smile:

Yes that would be super useful.

Another thing I wonder about is what tempo should the audio file be set to when it was recorded over a varying tempo. For example if over the course of a verse the tempo ramps from 120BPM to 126BPM - what is the correct tempo for that audio file?

I never considered that and I have no idea how Cubase would process such a file. I don’t think I’ve run into that in any projects I’ve worked on. I’ll try doing a test recording at some point to see what’s going on.

So…I just switched from Mac to PC to get away from the suite of bug’s featured on the Mac side of things, and life was good until I ran into this issue as well.

Doesn’t seem to happen on the Mac side.

My workflow is a little different, but I think I’m encountering the same bug - I work in TV, and would save tempo information in all my audio files so that I could re-use stems in different sessions. Process

1.) Bounce a set of regions
2.) Audio - Set Definition from Tempo - Write to audio files
3.) Now I can copy those as tempo-locked regions into other sessions.

This workflow is not, for whatever reason, working on the PC side.