What to do if you want a few beats of silence at clip start

[Bainesy]

Hey all,

I'm working on a DJ set at the moment and I have a few songs where they start with vocals, say, 2 beats before the first beat of the first bar of music.

I want to have my 1.1.1 position 2 beats BEFORE the start of the actual MP3 file - so there will be 2 beats silence, then 2 beats vocal, then on the start of the next bar the music kicks in.

Is this possible? I always just right click the time-ruler to set 1.1.1 position but if there is a way to set it to "jump back 2 beats" so that I can push it back PAST the start of the mp3 I'd really love to know it! Can't seem to figure out a solution aside from manually editing the mp3 file to have silence at the beginning (which in turn would lower the quality a bit after re-encoding.)

If anyone else has conquered this - please let me know! Cheers!

[interpolate]

I had a hard time following the explanation. Are you planning on triggering this live or will it already be premixed?

If it can be premixed, you can obviously push the start position to where you want it, and automate the volume to be silent via envelope.

If you want to trigger this live, your best bet is to adjust the loop so it includes all the audio you want, and then have the loop start 2 beats before the end of the loop and automate those two beats to be silent via the volume envelope so it wraps around into the correct position.

There are a few other ways of doing this, like adjusting the launch quantization so that you can launch the loop before it "starts."

Hope this helps