I cut an event exactly in half based on sample rate, but it's not exactly halved,wtf?

M

MistaMash'dup

New member
In Cubase SX 2, I cut an event exactly in half based on sample rate. (I looked at the "Length" value of the event, divided it by two, then moved the scissors to cut at this value.)

However, the event is not exactly halved. It's very close, and the difference between it being cut exactly in half and the way that it actually was cut is imperceptible... But, since I'm looping one of these halves, the difference doubles each time the loop is repeated. Over time, the looped event's timing diverges from what it would be if the event had been cut exactly in half.

I can tell this by doing the following: I place both the original event and one supposed "half" of this event so that they start at the same point in time in the project. I repeat the half many times in the project, and repeat the original event many times. Over time, the start points of the original event and every other repeat of the supposed "half" diverge.

This would not be a problem, except that I am compiling a heavily edited DJ mix in Cubase (sort of an Ableton Live type of concept), and was counting on the ability to be able to cut an event exactly in half, loop it, and be able to know that it will stay in time with the tempo of the original event that it was cut from.

Does anyone know how to cut an event exactly in half?
 
Just keep your scissors cutting at the grid "turn snap on and set it to Grid". Now make sure the tempo of the project, or part of the project, is the same as the tempo of the sample, and cut it in half. If you do that, it doesn't matter if it's "exactly" the same tempo, or if you cut it in half for that matter, because the sample starts exactly on the beat every time anyway. Don't ever cound on something to have a pure tempo buy just looping it untill the song ends. Always use some kind of snap to keep the sample beginnings locked at a sertain point every bar or beat or whatever.

Somewhat followed that? :)
 
I would have done that, but since this is a DJ mix being compiled in Cubase, the project tempo is not matched up to the tempo of the songs. I could try to match it up using the 'time warp' and 'tempo track' features, but I've spent many hours trying to find a way to match the tempo of a electronic music songs (jungle, hiphop, etc, presumably made using quantization to a regular tempo) to the project tempo, and it just can't be done, as far as I can tell. You can get it pretty close, but as time passes in the project, any discrepancy between the imported song and the project tempo compounds on itself, and eventually this discrepancy becomes noticeable. I know that I could use the 'tempo track' to make adjustments to the project tempo in order to keep it pretty much in time with the imported songs, but the two tempos would never be exactly matched.

However, I did figure out a way to solve my problem. I first resampled each adjacent song in the mix such that each one of them would match tempo with all adjacent songs. Then I "atomized" all of the songs in the DJ mix, meaning that I cut loops from all of the songs, and cut them to all be exactly the same length using snap. Having cut the loops to be only one bar long, I can use these loops and snap as a sort of improvised grid to snap to when cutting other material (after this material has been resampled to be roughly in time with all adjacent song.)

Thanks for the help :)
 
Make sure that you don't have the 'cut only at a zero crossing' feature set. That is what, most likely, moved the cut you tried to make.
 
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