Sorry, I'm just not feeling the love on the 'improvements'. I just spent around 3 hours getting the tempo map for Hot Stuff by Donna Summer. Seriously. Those disco cats had great meter, most of the song has a variation of 1 BPM at most, but Audio Snap gets it wrong. I've had to make almost a dozen passes on the song to get it to map and the snare drum fill at the beginning of the song freaks the algorithm out, so it tries to map it to 240 something BPM. I had to copy a chunk of audio and paste it at 0:4:000 to keep it from thinking that 0:4:480 was 0:4:000.
The worst part about the enhancements is you can no longer see the priority of the marker, they all look the same so a hard hit looks like it carries the same weight as a softer one. Adjusting the sensitivity isn't much help and using anything other than 'all' for the filter misses too many hits.
It's disco, yeah there are a couple fills on the turnarounds, but it always lands on 4 on the floor. Meh, if anything it's gotten worse at what it's supposed to be able to do perfectly (kick, snare 1234). At the very least it should be able to tempo map Donna Freakin' Summer perfectly with no intervention using the default settings.
 

I could be wrong, but I always assumed AudioSnap was for individual tracks, not program material...it comes from the same lineage as software like Beat Detective. The only algorithm I've found effective with warping program material so it maps to the beat is the advanced algorithm in Ableton Live. It's what I use to warp stuff to be compatible with Traktor, which requires a metronomic beat but doesn't do warping of its own.

When I've had to do program material in SONAR, first I adjust the tempo to the song as closely as possible. That's crucial for decent results. I wrote an article for Sound on Sound about how I do this, search on "version therapy Anderton sonar sound on sound". Then you can add AudioSnap markers and warp whatever is off.

I too find it works far better on individual tracks than program material. My main use for it is building tempo maps from loosely recorded material using either a guitar track if it's just me or the kick track if it's a band.
 
My secondary use for it is if I am producing MIDI backing tracks for my solo project in which case I am using it initially on the stereo track. In that scenario it definitely doesn't work as well, although it is useable.
 
As Craig says there are definitely tricks to getting the best out of Audiosnap. As well as setting the project temp to roughly the clip tempo other things will help trimming and bouncing clips to get rid of any studio outtake, lining up the first downbeat roughly with a measure line are another two that will help.
 
In harder to read parts you can always use "Set measure/beat at now" that may help as well.

I know it's not helpful, but whenever I've needed to add stuff or remix existing tracks without fixed BPM, I've used Ableton. Just didn't get anywhere with AudioSnap.

Anderton
I could be wrong, but I always assumed AudioSnap was for individual tracks, not program material...it comes from the same lineage as software like Beat Detective. The only algorithm I've found effective with warping program material so it maps to the beat is the advanced algorithm in Ableton Live. It's what I use to warp stuff to be compatible with Traktor, which requires a metronomic beat but doesn't do warping of its own.

I'm just tying to get the project set from the original track so I can grid my cover once I've got the arrangement down. I realize it's the same mathematical problem, but the beat detection algorithm should be smart enough to weigh the low end differently from the high end and compensate a little for the slop. Why shouldn't Sonar be able do this as well as Ableton and the rest? I really would like to be able to use Sonar to do it instead of importing the track into Live and then exporting a gridded version.

Anderton
When I've had to do program material in SONAR, first I adjust the tempo to the song as closely as possible. That's crucial for decent results. I wrote an article for Sound on Sound about how I do this, search on "version therapy Anderton sonar sound on sound". Then you can add AudioSnap markers and warp whatever is off.

Yep, that's what I'm doing.

TomHelvey
I'm just tying to get the project set from the original track so I can grid my cover once I've got the arrangement down. I realize it's the same mathematical problem, but the beat detection algorithm should be smart enough to weigh the low end differently from the high end and compensate a little for the slop. Why shouldn't Sonar be able do this as well as Ableton and the rest? 

 
The other programs I've used aren't that different from SONAR, except for Ableton Live. However Live's focus is to be able to seamlessly take program material and beat-match it, so that's a crucial element of its gestalt. I'm sure it's not cheap to license that algorithm...
 
I've had the best luck with program material when using EQ and transient shaping to process the track, and make sounds like kick drum really pop. Then I apply AudioSnap. Once you have a prominent kick with a sharp attack, life becomes much easier. Who knows, maybe that's part of what Live's algorithm does.

Sanderxpander
I know it's not helpful, but whenever I've needed to add stuff or remix existing tracks without fixed BPM, I've used Ableton. Just didn't get anywhere with AudioSnap.

 
+1
 
Yeah, I'm spoiled with the warping algorithm in Ableton.  I can't get anything usable on a full mix with Audiosnap.  What's interesting to me is that Audiosnap is using Radius Mix, which is supposed to be pretty advanced and one of the best around, and whatever Ableton is using seems even better than that, and it's real-time to boot!  AFAIK, they have never said who developed it, it might even been in-house.

forkol

Sanderxpander
I know it's not helpful, but whenever I've needed to add stuff or remix existing tracks without fixed BPM, I've used Ableton. Just didn't get anywhere with AudioSnap.

+1
 
Yeah, I'm spoiled with the warping algorithm in Ableton.  I can't get anything usable on a full mix with Audiosnap.  What's interesting to me is that Audiosnap is using Radius Mix, which is supposed to be pretty advanced and one of the best around, and whatever Ableton is using seems even better than that, and it's real-time to boot!  AFAIK, they have never said who developed it, it might even been in-house.

Radius Mix does have excellent fidelity. For transposition and such, it's hard to beat. I believe Ableton is using algorithms from zPlane. But, check my post above this one. Processing the program material to make it "AudioSnap-friendly" makes a HUGE difference. Perhaps that's something Live's algorithm does as well, but does it transparently.

I think the new transient detection is better than it was, but you still have to go through and manually edit marker positions to get AudioSnap working well.
 
As to the Radius component, that's just what does the rendering. The actual transient detection and user flow and whatnot is nothing to do with Radius. If you get all the marker positioning and editing right, Radius sounds fantastic, but it can only work with what it gets.
 
I welcome the small update to AudioSnap we've had, but I do think a more major overhaul is coming due.

Anderton
 
 
I've had the best luck with program material when using EQ and transient shaping to process the track, and make sounds like kick drum really pop. Then I apply AudioSnap. Once you have a prominent kick with a sharp attack, life becomes much easier. Who knows, maybe that's part of what Live's algorithm does.

Aha! I think I feel a feature request coming on.
 
What would be really great would be if AudioSnap had a user-adjustable EQ on the detector. So you could leave your audio as it is, but fine tune how AudioSnap looks at the wave. I know the detection process isn't a real-time thing, but there's no reason I can think of why AS has to only consider the raw wave.