Aligning different audio tracks: is there a better technique?

If you turn off the Snap-To-Grid and zoom in, you can drag until the two tracks line up visually.
Unfortunately that's the best option i can think of.

If they were created in 2 different software packages, there is a chance they will drift out of sync as you play them together.

Here's how I do it: a few beats prior to the start of the tracks, I go into the PRV and insert a short MIDI note with grid snap enabled so that I can precisely duplicate it in all tracks. Then I go to the audio file and zoom in until I can see the first sample of the first note and line it up with that MIDI note. This is more precise than lining up transients and works even if the tracks you're aligning are drastically different in terms of instrumentation.

PS, Rothchild: the 'slugbaby technique' is something totally different, and involves a lot of 'CTRL-Z'...

That sentence ended up much more palatable than I feared it might when I started reading it!

I thought I'd add a couple of words about how I arrange things to make aligning audio easier.

Obviously the first thing is having the tracks adjacent to each other and expanded in hight so you've got a good view of both of them. You might also like to adjust the 'gain zoom' (sorry don't know what this is called! When you grab the meter that separates the track header and the clips pane you can zoom the hight of the wave in the clip).

If possible zoom your project so you can see the point you want to align and the point you want to align to it. Place the 'now time' marker on the transient you're going to be aligning to, then (with snap turned off) grab the clip you're aligning but grab it on the transient, you can then just move the mouse to where the play head is and you're going to be really close already.

Because the playhead is already at that point it's easy to start zooming in and checking how well you've done. If you've got the same noise across the tracks that your aligning it makes it easier as you can just pick a recognisable feature (the first upwards peak, or an obvious little glitch or other recognisable shape and make sure their aligned. Again, I'll just put the play head on the feature in the reference track and grab the track to be aligned at that feature and move it to the play head. 

When I'm really cooking with gas I can get a transient aligned to sample accuracy in about 4 moves and zooms.

Child

okshaw


Many thanks for all the info.

I'm afraid I must ask:  what's the "slugbaby technique"?

Try something, fail, undo (ctrl-z).  Try something else, fail but hopefully better than the first time, undo (ctrl-z), try something else, fail but hopefully better than the second time, undo (ctrl-z) ...
lol