AudioSnapping multitrack drums

That used to be quite easy and you could keep it in phase but I've spent hours and I don't think it can be done in 8.5.3
Here's how you could do it in 8.5.2
1. Bounce all tracks to be quantized to a guide track.
2. Enable Asnap on guide track only. ( Process / Audio snap palette )then click the power button
3. Pick “show transients” (on guide track) and set threshold.( so all major hits are picked up) Note*
4. Right click (guide track) and choose “Audio snap” / “add transients to pool“.
5. Mute guide track ( leave asnap on ) but close the asnap window
6. Highlight all drum tracks ( except guide track )
7. Enable asnap pallet ( Process / Audio snap palette )then click the power button and choose “show transients”
8. Set “ threshold “ to 100% (so no transients are picked up )
9. Right click on any highlighted clip and choose “ split clips at asnap pool “
10. Turn off Audio snap palette on multi track drums and guide track.
11. Highlight all multi track drum clips. ( not guide track, you’re done with that)
12. Choose “Process, Quantize “ set the duration, ( I was working on a straight rock beat so I used 8th ) pick “audio clip start times” only. Click OK (Listen & check everything)
13. Bounce individual tracks to clips.

The problem is we no longer have a "split clips at audiosnap pool" comand and the "apply audiosnap transient markers" comand we now have is erratic. When you split multiple tracks some will split others won't so you have to go through and fix and fix and fix, I'm gonna try tomarrow one more time and I can't find a reasonable way to do this I'm going back 8.5.2 because I have alot of decent but not perfect drummers through here and I used to be able to deal with that pretty quickley.

The problem is we no longer have a "split clips at audiosnap pool" comand and the "apply audiosnap transient markers" comand we now have is erratic. When you split multiple tracks some will split others won't so you have to go through and fix and fix and fix

 
I have not been able to reproduce this problem in 8.5.3. Applying one track's markers to 6 or 8 others and splitting them worked fine. As did using the Merge and Lock Markers function and then splitting, which essentially does the same thing if you have markers enabled only in the one track, and is probably the preferred method if you really want to ensure that no phase errors are introduced by any of your edits.
 
EDIT: I want to emphasize that I am not intending to address the OP with this, just pointing out that the tools seem to work as advertised for me. I haven't tried to snap live drum tracks with ambient mics, so I can't vouch for SONAR's claim of phase preservation. Based on what I've already heard of what Audiosnap does to sustained sounds, I wouldn't be optimistic that stretching a track with room ambience would give really good results. I guess that's why spltting at markers and moving/quantizing clips is preferred by many.
 
  
 

Ok so I figured out what I was doing that caused the problem.
Here's how you quantize multi track drums in 8.5.3
1. "bounce to Track" all your individual drum tracks I label it "drum Guide" Click on the drum guide track (turns black) then click the transient tool button. Look through the track to see that the major hits show transients but deactivate transient markers that aren't obviously important (usually setting threshold 75% is pretty close)
Right click drum guide clip and select "add clip to pool" Leave audio snap on but close the audio snap window.
2. Select all of the multi track drums (not the guide track) click on the transient tool button. the audio snap palette apears and should say "multi" set the treshold to 100% so no transients appear. Right click any of the selected clips and choose " apply transient pool markers" then click the "sisors" button (split beats into clips) your multi track drums should all split at the same points and at the same points as the guide track transients.
3. Select that whole mess of clips and choose "process, quantize, pick "audio clip start times" only and choose Quarter or eight Click OK
Listen & check everything
Bounce individual tracks to clips.
If you've done it right everything will be in phase, you don't have to quantize 100% you can make it sound just like a drum machine if you do. Most of the time 50-80% and quantizing the down beat (1,2,3,4) cleans up a decent players meter and makes it sound "rock solid"

When I 'split beats into clips', for some or other reason my .cwp file becomes huge... ... As a result, it slows down everything considerably, to such an extent that I can hardly even play it back to audition before rendering. And saving the project takes about 5 minutes.

I think it's normal for the file size to increase radically. I'm not sure why save is so slow, though I see that as well. But basically each beat in each one-beat is a copy of the original clip that's been slip-edited down to a length of that one beat, and I suspect the transient info for every beat in the original clip is contained in each of the sub clips. So in additional to adding two slip-edit points for each beat in each of the tracks, you've just squared the number of transient markers that SONAR has to keep track of and save. This definitely drives the file size and save time, but I don't see any change in performance when I do this.


I think the bottom line is that this is kind of an unusual state to leave a project in. Once you've split the beats and quantized or otherwise adjusted the timing to your satisfaction, you should probably bounce them all back to one clip per track.


What do your CPU and Disk meters look like before and after splitting clips, and how powerful is your PC?

I think the bottom line is that this is kind of an unusual state to leave a project in. Once you've split the beats and quantized or otherwise adjusted the timing to your satisfaction, you should probably bounce them all back to one clip per track.

Problem was, I couldn't even play it to audition and figure out if I was happy. I had to render/mixdown then listen, which kind of defeated the purpose, since the transient isn't always detected where I think it should be. I couldn't make any manual adjustments.

But, I have figured out how to get it working (on my system at least). For some or other reason, Audiosnap always leaves my machine very taxed (I assume it's memory, since disk and CPU meters aren't even over half). So after 'split beats into clips' and quantizing according to clip start times, I disable audiosnap again (since I'm not using audiosnap to stretch, it's not needed anymore.) This frees (is there such a word? :) up the resources I need to then listen to and make slight changes before rendering/mixdown.


By the way, I've since tried stretching drum tracks (as opposed to split, quantize, crossfade) and had pretty decent results. I find that the 'groove clip' setting actually works better for me than some of the more fancy ones (on drums at least).