I will say that the most recent upgrade to Cubase (14) is probably one of the most impressive upgrades I’ve seen for any DAW in quite sometime. Typically in the past, I’d vent my frustrations without at first lending appreciation. Well here it is - I appreciate everything Steinberg does and admire the quality and stability of their software.
Cubase for me is the best and I’ve used every single DAW that’s on the market. As I’m not young, but have been using DAW’s since I was 11 years old (1997) I’d like to think my opinion on DAW’s counts for something.
As I’ve been asking for this since Cubase 7 and since I’ve noticed some fairly dismissive comment regarding this topic over the years, I’m going to make a case on why we should have the ability to edit the pitch standard of a project. I don’t believe that many of you are going to expect what I’m going to say, either.
Changing the overall pitch after a project has been produced or composed has negative repercussions on the overall sound due to mix engineering reasons. You can’t simply take a song and lower the pitch and say it sounds better or worse, especially for modern music which has a finely tamed and engineered sub frequency. The track needs to be mixed at the tuned frequency the song is intended to be.
Another reason is creative flexibility. People will buy expensive neve or chandler preamps just to run their audio signals through them in order to get that “sound”, yet when someone attempts to record or produce at a different tune they are labeled as conspiracy theorist and so forth. You could easily say that moving the pitch up or down would be much more relevant than using various preamps for color. One is accepted the other is ignored.
This is my favourite one. We don’t really know the universe as well as we could and we don’t fully understand sound. A hertz is based off a cycle every second yet what is a second? We all understand that the fundamental math of music is the same no matter the frequency as the octaves double and the semitones are relative to the overall standard pitch. What I think many of you are missing is that individual frequencies mean something on their own, not just when arranged musically - meaning that yes, the music theory “algorhythm” will alway “work” no matter what standard frequency you use. But did you know that some frequencies, and this is studied clinically by neurologists and music therapists have a more organizing, soothing and positive affect on the human brain? Were you aware that there are studies and books relating to music therapy, in regards to yes, music, but also, individual frequencies? Proven and verified. Are you aware that every element and object has a natural frequency which is attenuated in the right way can make the object explode or even levitate? Levitation using sound waves is already being done and can be observed by a quick google search. Dementia patients are being treated right now using therapy using certain frequencies and you can search this too.
The entire existence that we know today exists entirely of various frequencies some in which we understand and some that we do not. Our brains operate using frequencies. Your heart and your body has a frequency.
Steinberg, I ask you - In this day and age where digital audio and music creation is easy and flexible and can not only bring enjoyment to people in the traditional way, but also has the potential to give us a way to test theories, discover new sounds and even create a way to cure the sick. Maybe it’s possible, maybe the studies are flawed. But give us the opportunity and maximize the flexibility to truly find this out in this remarkable digital age. Give us the ability to easily tune a project at whatever frequency we want. This request is not based on a 10 minute youtube video but hundreds of hours of research and discussions with neurologists.
You can see what color a light wave is and you would not tell a painter as long as the fundamental algorithm of the piece of art they working on is intact to a certain color frequency standard. Sound waves too, could possibly be grouped into colors, you just can’t see them. What if it did matter? What if tuning a song at 442 instead of 440 made a composition 5% more enjoyable? 1%? 0.5%? It is worth every bit of effort to make this an option as we are limiting our creation capabilities in ways I don’t think we even understand. I don’t understand it completely, but I’m doing my best to try and understand. We don’t know why music theory is what it is. Is it God? Is it evolution? It’s magical. Give us this option I know you can do it.
Your reply to my post was done before I could proof read, so you must be a very fast reader. If you can read that fast, then I’m sure you could probably type and search quickly as well. I’ll provide links even finding the studies yourself is faster than what I just typed.
This seems to be specifically about 40hz alone. It’ll be interesting to see if they can get results from human test subjects, though I realize it’s a bit more difficult to explore amyloid buildup in humans without moral issues.
This one also is solely about 40hz. I find it interesting that there appears to be something about 40hz specifically. The sample size is a bit small, but this is addressed in the study as it being a pilot study. It would be nice to see a much higher sample size with more cognitive testing done.
The PubMed article is a coping review, less useful in this case, but it does suggest there are studies addressing from 20hz to 100hz.
Forbes and New Scientist are, like the first couple, restricted to 40hz.
I used 432 in the title, but in truth 432hz doesn’t enter the field. I care about unlimited flexibility, but in truth what 432 is based on is flawed to a degree. What isn’t flawed is what I posted regarding the potential importance of certain frequencies. If you could change the standard pitch so your music could hit certain desired frequencies (let’s say 40hz) more than you normally would, that would be the benefit.
That’s fair, I was just curious. The 40hz thing is very interesting, and I wonder where the fundamental response to it comes from. Also interesting that it seems to be responsive in both audio and light. Very interesting!
432 is relevant to some people as they are linking this standard pitch to Nikola Tesla’s words regarding importance of 3-6-9. 432 is interesting also, because its divisible by 12, which correlates better which the musical scale as it consists of 12 semitones. The importance this has or relevance, I am not really sure. 432 in my opinion does make more sense, but the simple fact that it is more divisible to the number of semitones in standard western music doesn’t really have a clear benefit based off our basic understanding of frequency. The important thing I was trying to state is that we don’t really know if these things actually matter or not.
It’s very interesting indeed. It should be noted that the 40hz in light is mimicking how we measure frequency in sound and that light frequency is way higher to multiple powers. So light at 40hz is basically a light show at a music festival, following the audio.
Every instrument and plugin in the world comes with a tuning knob. If you really want to play out of tune, learn how to detune your instruments like a whopping 16th of a step down.
Hmmm… I don’t think you need to convince the majority of us that it would be nice to be able to set a different temperature to a project.
I think this has not been done yet for technical reasons. Cubase itself does not have any sound. Sound comes either from audio files or from sound modules (VSTi, hardware synths). Usually Cubase has no control over the temperature of these sound generators. Audio files could be detuned, but that would require pitch shifting and may lead to regression of sound quality.
AFAIK Logic Pro solves this by simply resampling the general audio output, ie. everything gets detuned when leaving Logic. I am not sure if that is what you want.
While things have gotten much better with the process, I don’t think transposition with a finished track is going to be a viable solution for what @Augustus is aiming for.
There might be issues with plugins, since they’re definitely not often going to have the capability, but transposing isn’t identical or without artifacts
I think with some of the newly added modulation options with some creative application it may be possible to create presets or a template which achieves the desired pitch standards. That being said, I don’t think that cubase would able to change the project frequency using the sound but potentially using the MIDI (CC pitch) channels. The beautiful thing about this is that most plugins can be tuned this way. Some plugins, however can not.
I’d think applying such things to audio tracks and vari audio would be fairly simple after that.
Developing this stuff, and having to deal with all the details that many customers don’t even realize to exist, is often much harder than the customer thinks.
