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Cinematic studio strings attack delay? Notes not lining up with other libraries on grid.

abeautifulbeing

New Member
I am trying to write a song with CSS. I have seen people having issues with legato delay but I am not referring to that, it is with all articulations (the thing I am writing with is mostly spiccato). When I try to start loading up other instruments from other developers I.E. drums, CSS samples do not align, I have to drag everything in CSS back a few milliseconds.

Is there a fix for this?

Edit: Also to add to this, the same applies to the project metronome. All the CSS strings attack behind the metronome.
 
I usually have my CSS midi channels sitting at a negative track delay of ca -50ms. Most of the time it pretty much lines up with this value. Most DAWs support to enter a negative track delay in the channel settings, which makes it easier to keep the notes "on the grid" while at the same time having them triggered the specified amount of time earlier to "meet the click"
 
I usually have my CSS midi channels sitting at a negative track delay of ca -50ms. Most of the time it pretty much lines up with this value. Most DAWs support to enter a negative track delay in the channel settings, which makes it easier to keep the notes "on the grid" while at the same time having them triggered the specified amount of time earlier to "meet the click"

What DAW do you use? I know Cubase has this functionality but I'm on DP
 
Wow that is such a same. I would have figured there is some sort of setting to adjust the attack onset, seems like a lot of work just to write on the grid. Reaper unfortunately does not have negative track delay for midi, I guess I'm going to try routing the audio out to a different channel, and use the track delay there. Might work..
 
I am trying to write a song with CSS. I have seen people having issues with legato delay but I am not referring to that, it is with all articulations (the thing I am writing with is mostly spiccato). When I try to start loading up other instruments from other developers I.E. drums, CSS samples do not align, I have to drag everything in CSS back a few milliseconds.

Is there a fix for this?

Edit: Also to add to this, the same applies to the project metronome. All the CSS strings attack behind the metronome.

Yes, read the manual:

"Please note that there is a short delay of 60ms from the beginning of the short note
samples to their “rhythmic peak.” We left this in the samples intentionally as we
believe this adds a significant degree of realism, and most importantly, it ensures that
the timing across all short note types is consistent. So make sure you account for this
when quantising short note tracks, either by applying a negative 60ms delay to the
whole track, or moving the the notes back manually."
 
Yes, read the manual:

"Please note that there is a short delay of 60ms from the beginning of the short note
samples to their “rhythmic peak.” We left this in the samples intentionally as we
believe this adds a significant degree of realism, and most importantly, it ensures that
the timing across all short note types is consistent. So make sure you account for this
when quantising short note tracks, either by applying a negative 60ms delay to the
whole track, or moving the the notes back manually."

So is this for only short notes? If I apply a negative track delay to the audio output at 60ms is this going to affect the longs poorly?
 
Besides strings, I use negative track delays on many different types of both instruments and synths with slow attacks. It take just a second or 2 to do it in Cubase, and if DP doesn't have such a basic feature as that, you need to get the heck out of DP. LOL Seriously though, I would think that DP can do that very easily as it is an absolute necessity to use.
 
Besides strings, I use negative track delays on many different types of both instruments and synths with slow attacks. It take just a second or 2 to do it in Cubase, and if DP doesn't have such a basic feature as that, you need to get the heck out of DP. LOL Seriously though, I would think that DP can do that very easily as it is an absolute necessity to use.

I'll need to dig deeper in DP. It's such a deep program I can't imagine the functionality isn't there. A quick select and drag works fine for me (which I have to do for Berlin Brass as well). In the long run I'd rather have better results vs gridlocked cues
 
Just my take: Bearing i mind that I don't have to produce written scores for what I do (music for my own sake), I find that the only way to get the exact performance I want (I use mostly CS2, CSS, and CSSS) is to move note start times by hand. I have become accustomed to this and prefer the workflow as I get precisely what I want.
My favorite aspect of the Cinematic libraries is the single instrument with keyswitched articulations(I hate having to part out lines for separate articulation patch/tracks). In the stuff I write I usually jump around articulations aggressively, so I can't get the response I need with an overall note onset "offset". That might make my legato sing at the right time but then my stacc/spicc/marc would sound early. So I have happily embraced the practice of grabbing chunks of notes and sliding them by eye (with snap off) as needed. (If one uses keyswitching one has to do this anyway to get the KS in front of the phrase that needs it.)
If I had to present a written score I might save a version of the piece for that purpose and go back and quantize to line things up for printing.
But this isn't limited to strings, as others have said. The same problem occurs where "feel" needs to be imparted, a simple example being "swing". There are also lots of cases where urgency is manifested by being ahead of the beat too. So for me it all comes down to hand-crafting for the polish needed for expression.
 
So is this for only short notes? If I apply a negative track delay to the audio output at 60ms is this going to affect the longs poorly?

Move the notes manually or use a macro. But as said you can also try the one-articulation-per-track approach with a negative track delay.

There are also some videos on cinematicstudioseries.com worth checking out if you haven't already.

 
I usually have my CSS midi channels sitting at a negative track delay of ca -50ms. Most of the time it pretty much lines up with this value. Most DAWs support to enter a negative track delay in the channel settings, which makes it easier to keep the notes "on the grid" while at the same time having them triggered the specified amount of time earlier to "meet the click"

I think they actually recommend this in the manual. Although I seem to remember they say -60.
 
Just my take: Bearing i mind that I don't have to produce written scores for what I do (music for my own sake), I find that the only way to get the exact performance I want (I use mostly CS2, CSS, and CSSS) is to move note start times by hand. I have become accustomed to this and prefer the workflow as I get precisely what I want.
My favorite aspect of the Cinematic libraries is the single instrument with keyswitched articulations(I hate having to part out lines for separate articulation patch/tracks). In the stuff I write I usually jump around articulations aggressively, so I can't get the response I need with an overall note onset "offset". That might make my legato sing at the right time but then my stacc/spicc/marc would sound early. So I have happily embraced the practice of grabbing chunks of notes and sliding them by eye (with snap off) as needed. (If one uses keyswitching one has to do this anyway to get the KS in front of the phrase that needs it.)
If I had to present a written score I might save a version of the piece for that purpose and go back and quantize to line things up for printing.
But this isn't limited to strings, as others have said. The same problem occurs where "feel" needs to be imparted, a simple example being "swing". There are also lots of cases where urgency is manifested by being ahead of the beat too. So for me it all comes down to hand-crafting for the polish needed for expression.

This is one of the reasons I wish DAWs would allow us to set a ms offset for a particular group of notes....
 
This is one of the reasons I wish DAWs would allow us to set a ms offset for a particular group of notes....

Right: if each note had an additional property(in addition to velocity, pitch, duration, etc.) called offset, one could leaves the notes, from a scoring perspective, exactly as they would read on the sheet, but the audio engine would know about the actual start time. The UI could "ghost" actual audio note event behind the nominal note so you could see both things at once (i.e. you would see either a pre or post image showing the shift of the offset). But there we run afoul of the midi standard i fear, which for all its awesomeness (think of any other standard that has lasted so long) can be a constraint at times.
 
Are users just slapping a global negative delay at a fixed time, applying it to every articulation in the instrument? Or are people using different negative delays on different tracks with different articulations?
 
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