AudioSnap quantization - instructions

OK, i think now maybe I've got a handle on things.  I few days ago I set out to use AudioSnap (henceforth just AS) to tighten up a guitar track I'd played on top of some MIDI drums and synths.  The tempo was a tempo that is hard for me to play in a relaxed steady way, so I thought, hey, sure I'll take a little help from Mr. Computer.
 
It turned out to be surprisingly tricky.  I'm going to try to explain what I did.  I don't pretend to fully understand this feature and I'm sure there are many subtleties, but I'll just hit the high spots.  In general AS seems a lot like V-Vocal and it was hard for me to understand why they shouldn't share a common UI paradigm.  But I'll stay focused on how things are.
 
1. Clone the track you want to apply AS to.  Oddly enough I couldn't see any simple way to disable AS and throw away any prior edits like you can with V-Vocal.  So select the clip, select copy, insert a new audio track, name it something like "Guitar AS", and paste the clip.  Then mute the original.  Now anytime you want to start fresh, just delete the AS audio track and clone the original again.
 
2. Expand the track using the little double arrow icon. That will show a dropdown right under the track name, defaulting to Clips.  Select "Audio Transients".  The track display will shift to show markers everywhere that transients have been detected.  There will also be some little diamonds which are possible transients.
 
3. Bring up the AudioSnap UI by hitting the 'A' key or using the View menu and selecting "Audio Snap Palette."
 
4. Click on the bottom half of the clip to make sure the AS UI is focused on the clip of interest.  Make sure the AS power button show enabled ("white-ish" is enabled, "black-ish" is disabled).
 
5. You can manipulate the threshhold under "Filter" to select the sensitivity for recognizing transients.  Getting your transients right is very important, so this setting can help you find a good place to start from.
 
6. Make sure you leave Resolution set at "All."  I'm frankly not sure what the other granularities do, but best to avoid I think.
 
7.  Now you can go thru you transients making sure they're all where they should be.  What you're going to be trying to tell AS is where the main beats of your track are.  So if you're going to quantize to quarter notes, maybe make sure you have transients on each beat and no extra ones.  You can right click a transient to disable it.  You can also right click on a diamond and "promote" it to being a recognized transient.
 
8. Finally you're ready to listen.  Select the "Quantize" button on the AS UI.  That will bring up a little dialog.  Select the note value you want to quantize to, for example quarter note.  Make sure the "Audio Snap Beats" checkbox is checked.  You probably just want to take defaults, or maybe mess around a tiny bit with the Swing at most, changing to 60 instead of 50.  This will slightly delay the odd intervals.
 
9. Play the track.  It will sound pretty warbly as the live AS engine does a low CPU render of the audio stretching to quantize things using the transients.
 
10. If you don't like it, you'll see an event under Edit where you can undo the quantize.  I was never sure exactly what happened when you did multiple quantize passes.  With MIDI, once you lost resolution you can't  get it back.  Not sure about AS quantize logic.  So I just avoided accreting multiple quantize passes.
 
11. When you're content, use the snowflake button on the track to freeze it.  This will cause an offline render which should in theory be higher fidelity.  The guitar still sounded pretty warbly to me, but I was going to put efffects on it anyhow so I decided it was OK.  I didn't experiment with the several offline render modes to see if any was appreciably better.  I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (and for me).
 
12.  Again, if you get lost, just delete the AS track and re-clone.  That's the easiest way I know to start fresh.
 
You will likely want to spend some quality time getting your transients right.  This is how you cue the AS engine and getting markers in the right places makes sure the AS engine can do the right thing. Fiddle with transients, quantize, audition, undo quantize, rinse, repeat.
 
Feel free to add your knowledge as well or correct me where I've misunderstood things.  I've only spent a couple days with AS and only attempting this one scenario, so I'm certainly not an expect.
 
CAF