Can I navigate to 500 milliseconds before a transient?

[Braden Blakley]

Greetings,

I have spent the better part of the day scouring the internet for an answer and I am afraid I might lack the vocabulary to properly express what I am looking to do in Cakewalk.  Here goes...

I have recorded a series of samples I intend to add to a sampler.  I would like to trim each clip so that they all have the same number of seconds before the initial transient so I can properly time-align them in the sampler.  Same thing on the back end of the initial transient.  My intended process would look something like this:

1.  "tab to" transient
2.  backup exactly 500 milliseconds
3.  split the clip
4.  "tab to" transient
5.  move forward exactly 500 milliseconds
6.  split the clip

Anyone ever had any experience with this?  I have seen examples of other DAWs being able to do this (I think Reaper???).  Anything similar in Cakewalk?

Thanks!

Edited May 11, 2020 by Braden Blakley

[David Baay]

See post 23 in this old thread for how to set up CAL files to allow "nudging" the Now Time at any desired tick resolution with keybindings: 
 

http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=1365944

You'll need to calculate how many ticks in 500ms at your current project tempo as 8 x Tempo (e.g. 800 ticks at 100bpm).

[Braden Blakley]

Thanks David!  This is exactly what I need.

[David Baay]

Sure. An old but useful trick I still use it occasionally.

One thing to be aware of in your process: Tab to transient depends on Audiosnap transient detection which can be a bit variable, and the current algorithm usually places markers a couple milliseconds into the attack of the transient.  This works well enough for adjusting musical timing based  on where a listener would hear the transient 'hitting' rhythmically, but I would not depend on it 100% for precise registration of samples.

[Braden Blakley]

@David Baay

Had an idea I was working through the solution.  Looks like CAL is nothing more than scripting functions.  I do SQL development for a living so I'm familiar with the concepts, etc.  Do you know if within the CAL library, we can access global tempo settings, similar to the "Now" function?  My idea was to take the CAL script and "parameterize" it so to speak so I don't have to adjust the ticks for different tempos.  Haven't found anything after a brief Google search, but curious if you have any experience here.  Thanks again!

[David Baay]

I never had occasion to work with tempos in CAL. I glanced briefly though this CAL programming guide, and didn't find anything relevant:

http://members.ziggo.nl/t.valkenburgh/Cakewalk Application Language Programming Guide.pdf

CAL predated the integration of digital audio into Cakewalk, so there wasn't really a need to reference any processing to absolute time.