Audio Snap and Learning.

I've done some crazy searching through the forums to see if there is any help on the Audio Snap 2.0 feature in Sonar X1.  

I've found that many people have trouble with it, including myself.  And the one tutorial in the CakeTV doesn't do justice to the full implementation of AS2.0.  

I did however find the tutorials Craig Anderton very helpful as well as the Groove 3 Tutorials.  These are for purchase only, but, quite worth the investment.  

The main thing that I was struggling with is that after you enable AS2.0 on a track and snap the audio clip to a quantized value the audio was warbled and not very pleasant.  The key thing that the these tutorials share that isn't shared online, is that you need to bounce that track to clip and render a new clip using the Radius Selected options for "Offline" Render Mode.  The "Online" Render Mode is for editing purposes only so you can check the timing of the clip.  

Of course these are most noticeable on chordal or vocal track.  Rhythm tracks are mostly transient audio and work exceptionally in the Audio Snap especially, if you use the Split Beats Into Clips function.  That's tight.  

Now I would still like to learn more on "Time Stretching with in Sonar X1.  I really love the TS feature in Propellerheads Reason6.  Phenomenal results to your whole project for all tracks including audio.  I'd like to see Cakewalk get that kind of feature happening in Sonar X1.  

Just a bit of tid to the bit for those who quit on AS2.0.  :)

Best Wishes. 

Aside from the lower quality of the online algorithm, if you simple enable AS and hit quantise, it doesn't always give good results. It's necessary to physically scan through every single snap and check that AS has correctly located the transient at the right point. Often it will pick up a transient at a section that is not even a transient at all. I typically find the auto transient find options only get you so far. Depending on the source material, there may still be significant manual enable and disabling of transient markers as well as correctly aligning them. I might spend about 30 minutes doing this for a drum overhead track (did it for 10 songs recently). After quantise, I'll spend at least another 30 minutes checking that the quantise has correctly positioned things (as my drum playing wasn't great to begin with). Depending on your source material, these editing times can be significantly less, and significantly more. It all depends on what you got. Just be aware that sometimes it is necessary to get down and dirty and manually fix things if you want it perfect.

I used to also just put audiosnap on maybe every half measure transient in the hope it would just tighten things a little. I have since found this results in less ideal results than if you make sure to get EVERY single significant transient and just use quantise percentage. Again, sometimes manual tweaking is necessary.

If AS screws up the quantise part, you can quite easily get some bad artifacts in the online as well as offline. I usually find that's why online sounds bad, it's cause you screwed the quantise stage up. Fix that, and online sounds pretty good overall, I find.

Sorry for the delay and checking this post.  

Nice tutorials FastBikerBoy.  Great job.  

After seeing your vids, I think I might have not selected "Auto Stretch" on the Clips Follows Project drop down menu.  I will test that this week to see how that works.  

Thank you so much. 

Hey C ONeal.  

I'm not sure what your describing.  When I create loops, I generally, will work them out either as a midi loop and right click the clip and implement the Groove Clip.  

I haven't messed with the Loop Construction for audio yet.  Most of my work has been with live recording or midi, and soft synths controlled via midi.  

I'll play around with the Loop Construction this week and see if I can understand what you are experiencing.  

Best wishes, man. 

Thanks.

I agree Chuck.  

I'd like it to become easier to work with and more flexible.