Your trick to keep drum tracks in phase

I have been mixing music by a local rock band and again - as always - been wondering how easily you can ruin the phase coherency when using the audio snap. IMHO it's a piece of crapola of the worst kind. The bakers should dish out a new version of it. One that actually works well and is easy to use.
 
Anyhoo, it's easy to keep the phase intact with stereo or double-mono recordings as you can treat them as one track so no phase problems there. But if you have eight drum tracks, how do you work with them when you are correcting timing issues in order to keep the tracks in sync and thus in phase?
 
(It would be SO easy if you could lock the tracks so that stretching on would stretch all of them in the same manner --- and no phase issues.)
 
Can you make, say, a 8-channel surround track out of the 8 drum tracks and use it for treating timing issues and then unpack it afterwards back into separate tracks???

By your description I'm not sure that you understand the difference between phase and sync. Just because tracks are not synchronised doesn't mean they are out of phase. So. What tells you that a track or tracks are out of phase?

I have also found Audiosnap to be a complete waste of time when working with anything more than a stereo file.
 
If you're working with 8 or more live drum tracks, good luck with audiosnap. You're gonna need it.
 
I've resorted back to the tried and tested cut, move and time stretch to close gaps. At least you can put all your drum tracks into a created group which will stay together, in phase and in synch.
 
Only thing is now the snap to clip settings in X3c is also a mess and doesn't work as soon as you hit the scroll down bar.
 
I live in hope that this will be fixed soon.
 
Cheers,
 
Peter.

PJH
I have also found Audiosnap to be a complete waste of time when working with anything more than a stereo file.
 
If you're working with 8 or more live drum tracks, good luck with audiosnap. You're gonna need it.
 

Seriously, AudioSnap can do what you want. Always has been able to. Here's a blog post about it:
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation/default.aspx?Doc=SONAR%20X2&Lang=EN&Req=AudioSnap.11.html
 
 

Fair enough, it works for some (most?) occasions, but if you have a longer clip, it may turn into a bloody mess.
 
You may find yourself with a sea of phantom transients, which don't go away yet won't engage. You may find yourself with a sea of tiny "user" transients that you never put there. You may find yourself with clips that won't let you make a transient. You may find yourself with hidden double ("twin") transients that will not let you stretch the audio. Etc.
 
The longer the clip and the longer you work with it the bigger chance for these mishaps.
 
I can't always use the "double click the transient" feature since it enables also "hidden twins" for the transients I'm aiming for. And I can't use the "ctrl-double click" at all since it doesn't do anything for me.
 
So, I did read the manual yet I still have problems that should NOT be there.

Jyri T.
Fair enough, it works for some (most?) occasions, but if you have a longer clip, it may turn into a bloody mess.
 
You may find yourself with a sea of phantom transients, which don't go away yet won't engage. You may find yourself with a sea of tiny "user" transients that you never put there. You may find yourself with clips that won't let you make a transient. You may find yourself with hidden double ("twin") transients that will not let you stretch the audio. Etc.
 
The longer the clip and the longer you work with it the bigger chance for these mishaps.
 
I can't always use the "double click the transient" feature since it enables also "hidden twins" for the transients I'm aiming for. And I can't use the "ctrl-double click" at all since it doesn't do anything for me.
 
So, I did read the manual yet I still have problems that should NOT be there.

 
- Merge and Lock markers is what you want to use to maintain phase. But it takes a lot of work to get to the point where you can do that and have all the markers you need in all the correct places with no dupes. I don't think it's ever going to be "easy" to re-time 8 tracks of multi-tracked drums without introducing phase issues. And Audiosnap certainly has some issues that "shouldn't be there". Some thoughts/suggestions:

- Not sure what you mean by "phantom transients...?.
 
- The superfluous User markers on beats can be selected and deleted (bind a key combo to Delete Marker so you can just hold it down  after selecting all User markers and let it iterate until they're all gone), and it was recently brought to my attention that they go away on their own if the clip map tempo roughly matches the actual audio tempo. If it's mis-detected, setting the correct tempo in the clip map drop down should clear the User markers.
 
- I use Alt+click to insert User markers.
 
- Normally I would not expect to have an issue with hidden duplicate markers if you're zoomed in enough to accurately place your own, but it pays to do a quick visual scan of every clip at a zoom level sufficient to see all the markers before you start working so that you have an idea where the transient detection issues are.
 
- Splitting clips as Ron suggested might be a good strategy to try, especially if there are only particular sections that need work.