In my personal case, SV2 is installed on a Win11 system; the plugin already works as expected inside my DAW Cubase 14 Pro. This applies to the basic setup where SV2 has been only set up as an instrument (loaded on a MIDI track), as well as to the more advanced use case where the ARA bridge has been fired up in addition, involving an additional audio track (with an empty clip loaded which is tied to the SV2 ARA extension). As far as it comes to my own experiences, more precise SV2 timing can only be achieved by using that ARA sync method between SV2 and DAW. So far so good.
Now, depending on the song and its other included audio tracks, it might be necessary to “adjust” the SV2 track’s output a little bit, especially in terms of “sitting in the pocket”. For example, lets assume the SV2 voice only sounds human and accurate when it is shifted back in time for about 20 to 30 milliseconds. Well, I would have expected that the related “delay” track parameter inside a DAW would be applicable to SV2 in the same way as it is for any other MIDI source. But to my surprise, there is no change in SV2’s timing, regardless if a negative or positive delay value is applied to the related MIDI track. Unfortunately, the same seems to apply to the “audio reference track” (in case ARA is also in operation). Adding any delay on the SV2 audio track (or moving its empty audio clip slightly backward or forward) also doesn’t seem to have any effect on SV2’s output. It simply seems that the only solution to overcome that issue is to export (render/freeze/bounce…) each SV2 voice to its individual audio track, re-import it again into the DAW and then apply the desired delay.
However, of course my preferred approach would be to apply (and listen to) any applied delay in real-time. Therefore, my question to the community: Did I miss something important in terms of SV2’s possible delay parameter options? @manassas77: As it seems that you are a goat and you also have exactly the same setup like me, can you eventually give me a hint how to achieve this? Thanks in advance!
I’ve done that using an audio (not MIDI) delay.
In the case of Reaper DAW, you can set a positive or negative delay on some built-in plug-in (I suppose that’s the same in cubase).
A delay set with no feedback (one repetition only) and only wet output.
EDIT : if you play with delay time automation, you may adjust it through the song to fine-tune positioning.
@Arthelion: Thanks a lot for your quick reply and your suggested approach. I guess I will also have to use it, as that will at least work for my use case where the delay has a positive value only.
I fully understand that SV2 is an audio-based application within a MIDI instrument. Nevertheless, other plugins are able to pull off such things without any flaws. From my personal point of view this is still an SV2 design flaw, especially not considering ordinary DAW track parameters like delay or transpose (which would just be a kind of “offset” to SV2’s own internal settings). Instead, currently volume and pan are the two only track parameters evaluated by SV2. That’s not how I would have expected such a modern plugin to work, as this is basic stuff. But okay, I guess I will have to take it for now, unless @Dreamtonics takes some additional efforts to implement such basic features in one of their next SV2 updates.
@manassas77: I’d like to thank you as well for your link reference.
I will take a closer look at that special approach. I haven’t been digging into customized script usage yet, but maybe “my current operating point on the learning curve is still far from saturation”
With or without ARA, to be or not to be… in either case, in Cubase 14, no time shifting was possible to adjust tracks with SynthV 2.
It works well with other VST and audio tracks. I’ve created a Dreamtonics support ticket about this.
In my harmony script, I removed the time shifting because I replaced it with AI retakes (and also because of the removal of the timeoffset property in V2). However, AI retakes can’t be scripted (currently), so I do it manually.
With a script, you can shift individual notes or groups to adjust the track. However, this isn’t a good approch because it alters the correct positioning of each note.
While waiting for an improvement in Dreamtonics, I just wrote a simple script that allows you to shift all selected groups by (± 100 ms by default). Duplicate the track first to keep the initial position of the notes. Only the groups are shifted. If you are interested, you can download it on my GitHub (GroupTimeShift.lua).
You’re welcome! I’ve also added a new script “GroupSize” to expand the group of notes when recording more notes than the displayed group. So with a simple shortcut (like ALT-E), group display the inserted hidden notes.
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