Very good question stevec

stevec


How does Cubase handle the attack portion when it picks up a note mid-stream?

I strongly suspect the answer is "not very well", which is why I would still opt for freezing/recording tracks with long notes as soon as possible in the composition process. There's no way re-triggering a note in the middle of its duration is going to sound right, except in the specific case that it's playing a low-volume pad with a soft attack and timbre and amplitude that do not evolve significantly over time.


I'm guessing the Bakers have looked into it, and decided it's not worth the programming effort given that it will sound wrong more often than right, and will probably generate more support calls and bug reports from users who don't understand the function's limitations, and why it so often gives bad results. 

How does Cubase handle the attack portion when it picks up a note mid-stream?   
 

Cubase retriggers the note or arp from where you start playback. If you've got a really slow attack it will sound out of context. But if you've got a note 4 bars long or more triggering a synth arp and you want to work on a drum fill in bar 4 of that note it saves time to have the arp trigger from bar 3 or 4 so you don't always have to rewind to the beginning of the note. It's not helpful in every situation which is why it would be good to implement it as an option if you are going to have it.

Freezing plugins is a good strategy in many circumstances but not when you are still tweaking the track (modulating an arp to work with a drum fill for example). Furthermore if you are working with hardware synths you've got to record the part to freeze it.

In the situation you're describing Martin, I would be inclined to insert separate whole measure length notes instead of one long note.

If all you're doing is triggering an Arp then the attack portion of the note should pretty much contain all the useful audio data, unless of course I'm totally missing what you're doing.

Bear in mind I haven't had any coffee yet this morning.

[quote}In the situation you're describing Martin, I would be inclined to insert separate whole measure length notes instead of one long note.

Good point. 

But what about when you're using LFOs at 2/1 or longer for example. Of course they'll be triggered out of context in the situation we're discussing and that could be a problem.

Guess it just depends on what is going to help in any given situation. :)