I am reviving this thread because the same thing happened to me. This problem causes a major disaster and there is no warning from the software. Here is a complete accounting of the issue:
An artist forwarded me all their tracks for mixing. I did not track the song, so the first time I ever heard the song was when I imported all the tracks into a Cubase project and listened back.
What I did not know is that the artist’s software (Studio One) exported the .wav files with embedded tempo information. Cubase interpreted this to mean that these .wav files were ACID loops, which of course was not the case. As a result, Cubase automatically set these files to “musical” mode in the Pool, and then automatically time stretched them to align with whatever tempo I had on the transport bar, which of course, was purely arbitrary.
So I proceed to finish a complete mix of this song, including some extensive editing and time adjustments- without realizing all the tracks had been arbitrarily time stretched. I send the completed mix to the artist. The artist is shocked because the entire song has been sped up to a very fast tempo. Of course, I didn’t know this, because I was not familiar with the song. I just thought that’s how the song was recorded.
A situation like this is extremely embarrassing to the mix engineer, who looks like they have no idea what they are doing. Redoing the mix is also a complete nightmare, because all the tracks had been split and manually edited for various production reasons. So all these edits have to be manually traced back and redone.
You will also find that nowhere does the manual explicitly explain that the little “musical note symbol” means that the source wav file has been automatically imported in “musical mode.” And the little “wave symbol” means that the track is not playing back at the same speed that it was recorded, but it has been automatically time-stretched. The meanings of these symbols are just not mentioned in the manual, that I can find.
In addition, there are no warnings from the software saying something like, “Would you like this imported wav file to be automatically set to musical mode and time-stretched to the project tempo?” A note like that would be EXTREMELY helpful and help prevent a total disaster like this situation. The software just time-stretches the audio automatically. You MUST remember, whenever importing ANY audio, to look and the Pool and confirm that Cubase has not erroneously mistaken the file as an ACID loop, by visually verifying that the “Musical Mode” box has not been checked next to the filename.
Of course this is frustrating, because I bet my life this issue will continue to be ignored by Steinberg (the original thread is 3 years old, so nothing has been done yet.) Anyway I hope this helps someone else who fell into the same trap.