Here’s what I mean by that. In Cubase 5, when my projects were set at 96k and I opened Mediabay, all of my loops in my sound libraries would play back in perfect sync with my project while I go through and auditioned them. (and these loops are all either 24 bit or 16 bit/44.1 wav or aiff files). Now, since the beginning of Cubase 6 and even still in 6.5, when I have a project running in 96k, any loops played back in Mediabay are off sync just a slight bit. They start a ms or so behind the project making it incredibly frsutrating to be creative on the fly. However, if I change the project to 44.1k, then the loops play back perfectly in sync. And the ironic thing is, when I load Ableton Live in rewire mode, I can use the audition feature within Live to play loops in PERFECT sync with my 96k project running in Cubase!! How come I can’t anymore within Mediabay?? REALLY REALLY sucks. C’mon Steinberg. I’ve emailed tech support 3 times over the last year asking about this and of course never get any response in return. Anyone else bothered by this?
So, to clarify:
You’re not importing the loops into the project, just previewing them in mediabay?
My train of thoughts (2 of them):
Mediabay behavior changed between 5 and 6 (assumption).
Mediabay has to load the entire file into memory before playing.
The Cubase project, however, is already in memory, therefore, playing first.
OR:
Mediabay behaviour changed between 5 and 6 (assumption).
Cubase project playback is given higher priority than Mediabay previews.
Since your project is at a 96KHz sample rate, it takes more processing time to render than a 44.1 file.
Therefore: When your project is set to 44.1, the processing time is short enough to have a negligible effect on the perception of being in-sync with the loop being previewed.
Either way,
you might try importing your loop into your Cubase project instead. Cubase can’t correct for start time irregularities from Mediabay.
Yes, I’m just trying to play from within Medibay. If I actually load the sample into the project then yes it is perfectly in sync. As I said in my original post, in Cubase 5 this was never an issue. Mediabay loops always auditioned in perfect sync with the project no matter what the sample rate was set to. Can anyone else maybe give this a try to see what I mean? Thanks a lot for the help guys!
Seems that this is actually a problem with any sample rate other than 44.1
It’s NOT a matter of sample rate variances causing the de-syncing.
It’s buffering time vs loading time.
Cubase will only buffer, not fully render, the project.
Mediabay probably loads the entire file.
Buffering is faster (first to play) than loading the entire file.
However, this doesn’t account for the difference in behavior between Cubase 5 and 6.
Hence, my theory of Cubase 6 giving the project buffering higher priority than the file loading. At 44.1, however, processing is less intensive resulting in a less (or not) noticeable de-sync.
It’s like playing the same song from two different systems. If you don’t hit the play buttons at the exact same time, it’ll be out of sync. Here, however, different file processing times are introduced.