Plug-in is out of sync in Native mode in Cubase

Synchronization problem with Cubase is unfortunately not a bug, but a result of the way how play and edit modes are designed in Classic Boxes plug-ins. When Native mode is active and you hit Play, everything is playing smoothly and synced perfectly, until you start playing not from beginning, but one of subsequently located bars. Plug-in will play the pattern slightly out of sync then (with a bit of a time offset). It's caused by manner in which Cubase notifies third party plug-ins about moment when it starts playing.

A plug-in initiates playing pattern as soon as it receives notification from Cubase's transport panel, but Cubase in fact starts playing a bit earlier comparing to the actual cursor position (and the difference varies each time when you click Play button). We assume that Cubase, to prevent some notes from not being played, creates some sort of "leader", small time gap before it starts playing. As the result the actual start sequence looks this way:

  1. You click Play
  2. Drumazon starts playing immediately
  3. Cubase adds little delay; "leader"
  4. The remaining tracks in the project start to play causing they are out of sync with Drumazon

Older version of Classic Boxes plug-ins show similar behavior, but the offset seems to be way smaller, however the other type of symptoms appears like missing steps in drum patterns - this in turn is a result of the changes we had to make within the syncing procedures to catch up with current versions of DAWs (few years had passed from version 1.5 to 1.6),

D16 plug-ins aren't synchronized with project position, but only to host's tempo, which is the reason this issue appears at all. Unfortunately it's impossible to add that type of tight synchronization without changing whole design of the plug-in (affecting on play and edit modes). Classic Boxes plug-ins offer whole variety of functionalities that couldn't exists if tight synchronization were implemented; like different time scales, on-fly pattern queueing, on-fly pattern switching.

To work around this problem we propose following solutions:

Host mode
Native mode was created as some sort of play mode for editing patterns and live performance; when one pattern or more are looped. For creating song arrangements Host mode is recommended to be used instead.
The lowest C sync
You can also alternatively use the lowest C synchronization method along with Native mode as an alternative to syncing with Tranposrt Change codes - It is described in manual how to use it.

As for the issue there's not a simple fix we could do and release an update, because this would imply breaking compatibility with previous versions. Fixing it would require redesigning play and edit modes in our sequencer-based plug-in, so we left it for 2.x upgrades.

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