Audiosnap x3

So both set of tracks are the same tempo? If they were just moved to the right spot the would all line up perfectly for the entire song (which would mean no stretching like you said)?
 
If this is the case you do not need to use audiosnap for that. Just the Snap to Grid feature which is another function altogether and significantly easier to use.
 
I'm going to assume that you are somewhat new to the program (if not my apologies) and it sounds like you are trying to line the tracks up one at a time which indeed could be laborious and sloppy.
 
So multi select the clips before moving them in place (press Shift + A to clear any previous selections the hold Ctrl and click on each clip you are moving into place... this will select them and make it so you can move them all at once). Now you if you line one up they are all lined up.
 
Once you are done this it would probably be a good idea to trim down or stretch out the clips so the are the EXACT same length as the other tracks. That way if you accidentally move something and don't want to Undo (like you didn't realize it and you;ve already done a bunch of other stuff) you can just move them back with Snap To Grid turned on. Just select all the clips (Ctrl + A) set the now time to where you want to trim them down to press S (split) and now all your clips start at the exact same time.
 
There is another function involving Snap to Grid you might find useful but I forget the exact name of it or which menu it is under (I think it is under the right click menu after you've selected a clip). It basically puts a little marker/flag thing on the clip wherever you want and now instead of the Snap To or By function going by the start of the clip it will treat that flag as the start of the clip.
 
The reason I bring this up is you could mark the very first beat on each clip (or whatever beat you want really if that end up working better... because you may actually need to use the REAL Audiosnap to time stretch and sometimes finding the best anchor point is a time saver). Now with the Snap to Grid turned up to whole notes or measures you can just slide your clips until all those markers (and thus your first beat of every clip) snap into place. This feature has helped me out of similar jams before.
 
This feature is detailed in the manual under the Snap section (not Audiosnap). Maybe I'll look it up later and post it.
 
Cheers.

Okay... so I could not find the entry in the X3 manual (maybe something has changed but I doubt it... I'll check later when I fire up the DAW) so I dug up my personal notes on the subject from when I was studying X2
 
You can offset the Snap point of a clip by setting the Now Time > selecting the clip > Right Click > Set Snap Offset to Now Time. Now that point will snap to the grid instead of the beginning of the clip. The offset point will show a little arrow at the bottom of the Clip. To remove the offset select the Clip > open the Inspector (I) > select the Clips tab > in the Snap Offset section type 0
 
Hope that is useful. Good luck.
 
Edit: Oh and the good news is you can use multi select to do this. First select the first set of tracks using Ctrl + Click then perform the procedure described above (set your Now Time to the first beat of of the song and insert your snap markers there... they will insert on all clips at the exact same point). Then turn on Snap and move the clips so that first beat lines up with the point on the timeline you want (I usually use Measure 2 or 3 so I have room at the start of my project).
 
Now repeat the process on the next set of tracks. If your first beat doesn't line up right away just keep trying until you get it right. Now listen back to make sure there are no tempo fluctuations or drift (there shouldn't be if you used a meetronome and played tightly). If there are problems THEN you may have to use the Audiosnap function you were referring to earlier and stretch/shorten the clips or do more finite surgery like moving specific transients around which is a total pain. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Well you could just turn on Transients, set the now time to line up with a specific transient (one that appears in both tracks). Then insert a Snap Offset marker on one at the Now Time and line it up to a point on the grid. Then do the same thing to the other track. Now, if the transients are indeed at the exact same spot and the transient detection is working properly they should line up. It may not be perfect though so then use the nudge tool if need be.
 
As far as project drift THAT is something you can use Audiosnap's beat detection for. It's a little complicated and doesn't work that great sometimes but if the drift is only slight then you may have a shot. Personally though I just right click on the timeline where the beat SHOULD be then use the Insert Beat/Measure function to adjust the timeline. Doing it by measures is probably the best way to do that as opposed to every beat. It saves time and doesn't leave your tempo map looking like a total mess.
 
Cheers.

Just a little background on what I'm doing here so it makes more sense. 
 
A friend of mine in another state has an old (late 70's) 1" 16 track master tape from his band he played in years ago. He's dumping the tracks to wav files and sending them to me to put together in cakewalk to both preserve and possibly re-master the recording.  Most of the songs only have about 8-10 tracks recorded. He's successfully baked the tapes with a food dehydrator to temporarily cure the sticky tape problems associated with these old tapes.
 
Unfortunately he only has the capability of recording 5 simultaneous tracks, so he dumps 5 tracks, then goes back and dumps 5 more tracks picking one track for a duplicate.
 
He sends the wavs to me and I Import the audio producing a file with 10 tracks, 5 from one recording and 5 from the other, with two tracks that are the same. 
 
Then line the two recordings up in cakewalk to produce the full master. Right now we're doing one song to make sure we can do it, if all goes well we'll do the rest.
 
It would be a lot easier to buy a better recording interface and record all the tracks at once, but then I wouldn't learn as much about cakewalk if we did that!

Thanks beep, good thoughts all. Indeed these were recorded with no click and hence the difficulty in lining them up with time in cakewalk. 
 
At least the 1" 16 track deck he has is very stable, so the drift between the two files is virtually nonexistent. Lining up the two groups of files  using the vocal track as the duplicate/overlapping track seems to work well. It's actually easier to hear if the vocals are in sync than it is a snare drum or guitar. Once in sync the two tracks just meld together and sound like one track.
 
I have the one file lined up using the manual method I described and the nudge function to get it exact. I can play the two vocal tracks solo'd through the whole song and they don't drift at all. Playing all the tracks and giving them a listen sounds pretty much spot on. 
 
For the next file I'm going to use your suggestion as that seems to be a lot more efficient way of doing it. From your post.. "turn on Transients, set the now time to line up with a specific transient (one that appears in both tracks). Then insert a Snap Offset marker on one at the Now Time and line it up to a point on the grid. Then do the same thing to the other track."
 
It's a cool project and is going to be fun. 
 
Also you asked about my experience with cakewalk. I've had an on again, off again experience with cakewalk. I used it years ago as a midi recorder to sync to a tape deck with SMPTE. We recorded all the synths and a few other things on the computer via midi and all the other stuff on tape. We didn't really use a lot of the functions, just burned a sync track on tape and used it to extend the tracks of our tape deck. 
 
Then work got in the way and we stopped recording for a while. Now we're back into it and I'm just now learning all the new stuff. 
 
One thing that's always been a problem for me is that all the tinkering with computers tends to completely zap your creative side.. Therefore we have mostly used it sort of like an old fashioned tape deck, turn it on an PLAY! If things are out of time or don't sound right, don't fix it on the computer, PLAY IT AGAIN! hahaha. It's  much more enjoyable to play another take than it is to get all balled up in the computer. 

I also think the time changes and drifting around of live music is much more pleasing to me than stuffy things that are sync'd perfectly to a click track. As long as it's with good musicians and within reason. So I've not played around with all this sync stuff too much in the past.
 
I also don't do this for a living, otherwise I would have to learn how to deal with what other people want to do. Myself and a few long time friends write songs and play music. We now live in different parts of the country, so we're learning how to do this remotely using cakewalk.

Thanks beep, yep been recording and playing for a long time. Came very close to a life in music and a record deal with Atlantic back in 1982. Would be interested in hearing some of your work as you get it going.
 
Here are some things I've done in the past. All written and recorded by myself and two other guys. I'm the lowly drummer, hahaha. My standard joke.. what do you call a girl who hangs around the band? answer - groupie. What do you call a guy who hangs around the band? answer - the drummer!
 

The latest was the shadows of doubt work which was finished in 1993! With cakewalk midi sync'd to a 16 track tape deck. They are all copyright'd but free to play, just no using the songs or recordings in other works.

Agreed Alex, they need a real musician/engineer to consult with how to do that. It provides some incredible functionality, but it shouldn't be as hard as it is.
 
Even the simple things are a pain. One thing I do sometimes is take a snare part, turn the transients on, copy the transients to a midi note, past that into a session drummer track. Effectively building a session drummer snare track from my recorded snare, mix the two and it's better drum production than trying to add reverb/effects to the recorded snare. In doing that, you have to set the midi note for the transients to the sessions drummer snare note.. Of course the setting in audiosnap is in notes.. eg C3 or whatever, and in session drummer the note is something like "note 38." Arrgh, it always takes me a bit to remember the mapping between C3 and note 36 or 38 or whatever it is.. See I don't remember it now!! 
 
Just making that consistent where both places used the same thing would be a big help.
 
GB

Hahah, internet police!! 
 
The link is fun dot gbco dot us slash music dot htm.. haha that should get through!

I'll give it a try. 
 
http://fun.gbco.us/music.htm

Thanks man, look forward to hearing some of your stuff as well. I'll be around the forum now that I'm getting back into this stuff.  That's really but a sampling, we have written over 300 songs!! Now-a-days we waffle around between recording an old one we wrote but don't have a recording of or recording a new one as we still are writing things. 
 
I have a couple of new ones in the works so should be able to add a few. I need to find a place to upload them, I had a friend who had songs on reverbnation at one point, not sure if they are even still around. But need a place to upload and sell/share songs at some point.