Audio drums - fix increasing tempo?

Hi,
 
My buddy and I record drums a bit on the old school side of things.  We use Alesis DM10's with Bluejay and some DM5's and D4's as well.
 
We end up with 8 tracks or so of AUDIO drums.  Kick on track 1, snare on track 2, toms on tracks 3 and 4.... etc....    We don't do Midi or use any of the build in drum modules or synths.
 
Our problem:
 
The drum take is perfect except for its tempo... it speeds up very slowly and very gradually until the end of the song so that the song at the end is faster than the song is at the beginning.  This is only noticeable when you immediately replay the track, after listening to it to the end.  It is so subtle, most people would never notice this anyway, but with Sonar X3 and all that it has, we are thinking there must be a way to fix this easily.
 
I have googled like crazy and watched every youtube video I can find on fixing or "leveling" tempo, and they all come back to "audiosnap", and they make it look ridiculously easy... "just press this and it magically fixes it".
 
We don't record to a click track (obviously), and there must be some pre-setup to the tracks, or the tracks must have to be recorded a certain way for audiosnap to work because every time we have tried every audiosnap procedure we can find... if hoses up the track, leaving drum tracks out of sync with each other and it's a big mess.
 
I can't find any info on HOW audio snap works.  I thought If I learned more about how it works, I could figure out what I'm doing wrong... but All I get is "just do this" suggestions... none of which work for us.
 
I bounced all the clips down to new tracks so I have seamless tracks thinking separate clips was the issue but that didn't work either.
 
I'm at witts end.  We don't want to re-record the drums again... and even if we did... it isn't going to be any better necessarily.  We don't follow a click track for several reasons.... we don't like the "machine" sound with things being so rigid and the drummer has a hard time playing to a click anyway which makes it even more unnatural.
 
Any suggestions or help would be sincerely appreciated.
 
Thanks!!
 
Pat
 

First off, If your using an Electronic kit, why don't you record the MIDI output first? 
Then your dealing with data instead of audio. If you start messing with audio it will degrade in quality.
Data / MIDI does not suffer from heavy abuse and the editing options are much simpler to use. 
So it is always best to record as MIDI, edit so then you'll have a multitude of playback options including using the sounds from the brain or a million samples from Soft Synths.
There is no reason to record the audio output of a Drum Brain first time around.   
 
But to answer your first question. 
Sonar defaults to a project tempo, say 100 BPM. 
If you choose to ignore this you will have difficulty trying to bring a song in line with the clock after the fact. Nothing wrong with playing without a click track if you prefer the results.
If your desire is a song that stays on time the easiest approach is to re do it to a click track. 
 
Audio snap is a huge time suck. A turd polisher with bristles.  It works best with a simple beat that has no background clutter. If you look you will see the option to extract a tempo from the chosen track, Kick is an example. This in theory will create a Tempo map for the song. It works 50% of the time. 
In the case of audio there is some option in there to have the audio follow the tempo. Another tool that works 50% of the time. You'll have to spend a few days mastering audio snap and pulling your hair.
 
Myself, I would sit down at the drums with the headphones on and a click track or some instruments to follow. Try different clicks, try a pre made hi hat groove.
I'll use a basic hi hat/ kick /snare groove and put down a guitar/ scratch vox and sometimes the bass part. Then I sit on the drum kit and record it to midi. I then separate each part into it's own track and start editing. Once I'm happy I assign the tracks to  Session drummer, TTS-1 etc. Sometimes I'll use the MIDI out to the brain and record the audio back to Sonar. I find this gives my songs the "live" drum feel and is a super fast method. Sometimes I get very close in the first take. Careful use of quantizing will keep that live feel. Certain sounds are sensitive to which sample you choose, like open hi hats. So therefore the brain is sometimes what I wanted. SFX samples work best in Session Drummer.
 
The other recording method I use often would be to record with a group of musicians and forget the "grid", just play. A whole band should not drift from the tempo. We found that each take would always end within a few seconds of the last one. If not, fire the drummer. Good drums are the heart of a great Rock and Roll, Country and even Jazz music.  

Try the following to get the steady tempo you need with the least amount of fuss, unpredictability and audio damage. Working with a copy of the project file would be a good idea but the original audio files won't be affected so you can keep it in the same project folder. The basic plan is first to align the timeline to the audio with tempo changes, then enable stretching on the audio and flatten the tempo map:
 
- Slip-edit all the clips to start at the first hit.
- If that first hit is a downbeat, drag them all back to 1:01:000; if it's a pickup note, drag them to align that hit with the corresponding beat in the first measure.
- Also if the first hit is a pick-up note, set the Now time cursor on that beat, hit Ctrl-M (Shift+M in the X series) and enter that Measure and Beat in the Set Measure/Beat At Now dialog. note that partial beats are entered as fractions, not ticks, so the last 8th of a measure is beat 4.500
- With the metronome off, listen to the tracks, count through the first 8 measures and stop the transport near 9:01.
- Disable snap to grid, and set the Now time at the transient(s) corresponding to the beginning of measure 9 and use Shift-M again to tell SONAR that's 9:01. Tab and Shift+Tab can be used to jump from one transient marker ot the next or back, but if the marker is a little off, you may need to relocate the Now time manually.
- Repeat the last step every 8 measures to the end of the song. SONAR will enter tempos as you go to make the timeline conform to the audio without altering the playback in any way.
- If the tempo increase is slight and steady as you described that should be enough to align the timeline to the audio.
- If the first beat wasn't at 1:01:000 set the initial tempo for that first measure to match the tempo at the pick-up beat.
- Listen through the tracks with the metronome running, and make sure the sync is reasonable. If there's still too much variation, you can go back and set beats every 4 measures or more as needed.
- When you're satisfied with the metronome sync, select all the clips and hit Shift+A to open the Audiosnap palette (just A in the X series).
- In the drop-down options to the right of Clip Follows Project, select Autostretch (the default).
- Click Clip follows Project - nothing should happen except possibly a slight redraw of the waveforms.
- Go to Views > Tempo
- Delete all but the initial tempo.
- All the audio tracks will be stretched as necessary to make them conform to the straight tempo.
- Play the project, and see what you think.
- If it sounds reasonable, go through the tracks and Bounce to Clips one at a time using the default Groove Clip algorithm or the Percussion algorithm to render the stretching permanent. Both can be used in real time to see which sounds better in your case. I usually save a copy of the project right before I bounce so I can easily go back and make additional timing changes or try different algorithms.
- Bouncing creates new audio files so the current project won't reference the original files any more, but earlier versions will, so you can always go back to one of them if you end up not liking the stretched version.