Now I don’t know how to make that fancy poll system here, where you could just click for your choice, but let’s do it the old way;
SO what would you like Steinberg do MOST in the future;
A) Mostly develop new features in Cubase?
B) Fixing the bugs of the current ones / making the current features even better?
My answer - if I had to choose only either one - would be B. If I could scale the choices, I would say I’m 60% behind the choice B and 40% behind the choice A.
For first, I think that this otherwise EXCELLENT VariAudio feature should be developed. I actually wished that there would be enhancements on that one with the release of C6, but for what I read from this topic, it has pretty much just gone worse. Am I right? For me, personally, it works just fine, but there this ONE THING that I hate about it:
If you use Straighten Pitch on an audio note with VariAudio, it almost certainly does it so that the pitch change from the earlier Segment and/or the pitch change between the edited segment AND the segment after that is processed so that there emerges a JUMP change in the pitch. And that SUCKS to say the least!! Sounds like that one Cher’s song
And don’t try to tell me that “you should separate the sequential segments so that there is ‘empty space’ between them”. Doesn’t solve the problem in ANY WAY; Because the empty ‘un-segmented’ area in the middle doesn’t get the pitch alteration data at all, then when you have for example changed the pitch of the two sequential segments up 5 semi-tones, the area between them will sound like an original audio at that exact ‘empty area’. Thus resulting as a “Cher effect” when playing back through those sequential segments.
OK, I got a little bit cross-tracked here respecting of the thread topic, but I’ll write this here (as an example, that how could Steinberg develop the existing features):
There should be FADE-IN and FADE-OUT handles on the Segments within VariAudio which would apply to Straighten Pitch processing. Those handles of course DO NOT mean the same fade-in/out handles as with the Project/Event window (meaning, NOT a volume handle), but that VariAudio would smooth pitch changes in and out in respect to those handles. And specificly meaning in respect to the Straighten Pitch applying (because without Straighten Pitch, the pitch changes work well).
So if you have a vocal audio event with just one note (like singing ‘AAAAAA’ - backing choirs) and you’d like to change the pitch in the middle of a segment so that you split the segment in two and change the other segment’s pitch up by 5 semi-tones - AND you also have some pretty strong Straighten Picth setting present - one could then use a FADE IN/OUT to the Straighten Pitch.
This might sound all petty, but I’ve been using VariAudio one hell of a lot. I mean for thousands of vocal events (I’m not that good of a singer) and I have come across this problem for so, so, SO many times! Straighten pitch is a NECESSITY and it’s an excellent feature, but I hate it straightening also the segments’ boundary areas so heavily.
I have had to use some pretty laborious work-arounds to prevent this “Cher-effect” when with the Straighten Pitch Fade in/out-handles I could just have selected all the segments with CTRL+A and then apply a maybe 50ms long fade in/out on them.
Think about it for a minute or two. I know by my experience of heavy using of VariAudio, that this really would make a whole lotta dirrerence to the better direction.
OK, this was just an example of making something better. Everyone knows, there are many other features also that need further enhancing. So what do you think about my initial question now?? Was pretty long one, ha?