Audiosnap - Buggy, Unusable.

Hi all,

Unless I've lost the plot completely, Audiosnap is ridiculously buggy and practically unusable.

I have tried using X1d, 8.5.3, 8.3.1 and all of them seem to suffer from the same, or a variation of the same suite of bugs.

I have witnessed magically appearing User markers, at times undeletable user markers, disappearing waveform view, disappearing transient pool markers..  all of which generally result in the termination of the project file.

I have restarted the same editing session about a dozen times now, and abandoned them because you cannot remove Audiosnap data in it's entirety from a project, or even from a clip - and it appears persistent through project save files also.

If it makes any difference, it's a 13 track wide drum group, about 5 minutes long at 96/24.

I've wasted about 48 hours on this and had to push the client's session out by a week, so unless there's some magic "Push this to remove bugs" button in the software somewhere, I'm about to abandon Sonar for PT10 - which I am LOATHED to do since I've been a Cakewalk user since 2000.

Google suggests that this problem has been experienced by many people, and since at least Sonar 8.5 - how is it that no debugging has been done on this?

I'm in shock.

-Tim Shackleton
-Das Bunker Studio
-New Zealand

Audiosnap is awful. It's really not a feature, as much as it's a gateway to a world of frustration and premature greying. It really is best to ignore it. I've found it useful a couple times for extracting timing for triggering a MIDI kick from a poorly recorded audio track. Every time I try to dig deeper than that, it drives me nuts.
 
However, if you really need a feature like audiosnap and ignoring is not an option, then I would definitely consider another DAW, as I have absolutely no faith that Audiosnap will be fixed in the forseeable future.

I cannot figure out what the technical terms mean that whizz past in the videos. 

It seems to be a box of tools that you have to know in depth before you can do anything useful. Like a surgeon.

Steps that seem obvious to me do seem change something, but not in the way expected.

I have gone back to manually cutting up tracks and nudging them to the correct positions. I do not have the time.

The next thread down includes this link, which seems pretty useful:   
[link=http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov11/articles/sonar-workshop-1111.htm]http://www.soundonsound.c...onar-workshop-1111.htm[/link]

 

>>it makes CWP files so much bigger and slower

Holy cow. Mine jumped from 715k to 1.690k!

Good thing I have an older version to fall back on.

Thanks for the heads-up.

I've just mentioned this in another thread about AS but I've found the key to getting it to work is to make sure the clip map is lined up correctly. I don't think I've used it once yet where I haven't had to sort that out.

That can also be a quite convoluted process especially if the first transient isn't the first beat. One thing for sure it isn't a "couple of clicks" process.

>>customer support has advised me to do tuning/timing in 8.53 for now.

Wow.

The more problems I'm encountering whilst doing in-depth work with X1d ex, the more I'm tempted to do just this.

bitflipper


I guess there was a slip-up in CW Manufacturing and they accidentally sent me the version of AudioSnap that works. 


It's a complicated tool and not very intuitive. There's certainly room for improvement in terms of usability. But for everyday timing tweaks it does in fact work as advertised. At least, my version does.

Lucky bastard
 
Honestly though, I'd be happy if all it did was accurately place the markers at the transient. So far that's been too much to ask for.

I use AS for correcting my wayward guitar playing and we have been getting on fine ever since Cakewalk decided to make it work again.
If I'm doing a rythym guitar track I just use 1/16 quantise and if it's a solo I'll go in and move notes manually.
When I've finished messing about, I bounce the clip to get rid of AS and off I go. 

At least a couple of users are happy...

Grum.

  

Yeah, I only use it for by-hand adjustments too. And checking and refining its automatic transient placement is a must for most recordings too. 

 

I use AS for correcting my wayward guitar playing and we have been getting on fine ever since Cakewalk decided to make it work again. If I'm doing a rythym guitar track I just use 1/16 quantise and if it's a solo I'll go in and move notes manually. When I've finished messing about, I bounce the clip to get rid of AS and off I go.

I do too from time to time (lazy, lazy..replaying properly is always the better option). But do you find you get the exact same guitar tone when you then bouce to clip? I always keep a copy of the original on separate track and compare it to the quantised one.

I've always found the quantised one has less dynamics (gets crushed a bit) and the tone can be affected also.

That is the case even where markers haven't been moved / quantised. I've tried every radius options, but always find the sound to be degrated a little.

Have you?

I'm pretty much old-school in that if a drum or bass performance is so out of time that it requires extensive remedial re-alignment then that track simply needs to be re-recorded - maybe after some rehearsal time. I've talked my way out of having to salvage an overly-sloppy song by convincing the artist that the end result would still be unacceptable. And it would. 

bitflipper

well said,as usual.this is the down side of digital recording.i`ve actually cancelled sessions due to poor timing and playing and refuse to "fix it in the mix" which seems to be the general thinking now that the studio time is affordable and available to anyone.

V-Vocal,Audiosnap,AutoTune,Samples blah,blah blah-bring back the 8track..........................
 

vinny199


 The thing that drives me mad with AS, is that when you want to add it on a small portion of an isolated clip, it nevertheless create transients on every single clip on the track.

This gets really annoying as if you don't manually select each clip and swirch off audiosnap for them, everytime you load your project X1 is "building transients".

This is a right pain in the ass, but maybe it is me using it wrong?

So, is there an alternative to audiosnap? a great plugin that would do what As does but better? a bit like melodynne does, loads your clip in its interface and deas with it there until you bounce it back?

What I would do here is to split out the clip you want to AS then drag it down into an otherwise empty track. Do your work on it, bounce it down, then drag it back.

JazzSinger


Is there an easy way to drag a clip into an empty track without shifting it's position horizontally (time)?

Hold the shift key while dragging.

 

What I would do here is to split out the clip you want to AS then drag it down into an otherwise empty track. Do your work on it, bounce it down, then drag it back.

Yes, it is also what I do, but I so often forget to do it, especially when working with layers, I do get confused quite easilly.

It would be so much easier and better if it was possible to activate audiosnap only on the selected clip. Maybe they will develop that sometime. Thanks for your advice.

I use an unaffected recording (i.e. I monitor the guitar going through whatever patch I'll eventually use but I record the basic (clean) output of my guitar), I then use AS (if required) and then put it through Pod Farm. I wouldn't use AS on a finished recording. If you keep things sensible there is no indication of any messing about with the timing but, like I said, I wouldn't do it on a "dirty" recording.

Yes, I do only edit the dry signal. I do not have any "timing" problem when using audiosnap. It quantises pretty much as I need most times.

What I mentioned was a slight audio deterioration when bouncing to clip of the quantised part, regardless of which radius bounce option I choose.

I can most time notice a difference between the quantised track and the original version. 90% of the time it is so slight it is perfectly usable, but in some instances I found it to affect the tone too much and re-recorded the part.