Timestretch in Sonar not good?

The other day, I played and recorded the same guitar pattern in both Sonar and Studio One, and time-stretched the recorded clips by changing the song tempo from 120BPM to 100BPM (to see what would happen). The result in Sonar was pretty disastrous.

I don't know if I did it correctly. All I did was read the reference guide and:

1. Record guitar 
2. Double-click the recorded audio clip (Loop Construction View opens) 
3. Enable "Stretch On/Off" in the Clip menu
4. Make sure the BPM field in the Loop Construction view is displaying the same tempo as the song tempo (120BPM)
5. Close the Loop Construction view
6. Change the song tempo in the Transport module from 120 to 100

It was a 16th note strumming pattern, but it sounds like 32nd notes after the tempo change.

Is Sonar not good at audio time-stretching?

I totally forgot to mention that the clip I recorded was only 8 measures long...

Bristol_Jonesey


Did you bounce it down after you stretched it?

If I'm not mistaken, by following the steps above, I turned a regular audio clip into a Groove clip, didn't I? I thought that was it. Do I need to bounce it down to complete the process?

But, I actually have no intention to drastically timestretch audio clips like this and use them to create a loop or something. I'm only afraid of the sound quality and the rhythm accuracy of audio clips when I change the tempo of a song in Sonar, even slightly like from 120BPM to 117BPM.

I know all DAWs have strengths and weaknesses, and I love Sonar in many ways, but the result I heard tells me that I need to be very sure the current tempo of the song to which I'm going to add guitars from now is best suited for the song, because changing the tempo later might cause undesirable result.

Jlien X

Bristol_Jonesey


Did you bounce it down after you stretched it?

If I'm not mistaken, by following the steps above, I turned a regular audio clip into a Groove clip, didn't I? I thought that was it. Do I need to bounce it down to complete the process?

But, I actually have no intention to drastically timestretch audio clips like this and use them to create a loop or something. I'm only afraid of the sound quality and the rhythm accuracy of audio clips when I change the tempo of a song in Sonar, even slightly like from 120BPM to 117BPM.

I know all DAWs have strengths and weaknesses, and I love Sonar in many ways, but the result I heard tells me that I need to be very sure the current tempo of the song to which I'm going to add guitars from now is best suited for the song, because changing the tempo later might cause undesirable result.

Yeah I'm pretty sure you'll have to bounce it down in order to utilise the offline algorithm.

Try it & see.

Or listen......

Thanks for the replies guys!

GIM Productions

Hi,did you choose the right time strech alg.?It's important,try the Radius for bass.You can try ,after that you have choose the Radius alg.,to clik ctrl+endclip (yellow bar)to strech at needed measure.Best 

Unfortunately, I'm using the Essential version of X2a (because it satisfies my needs), which doesn't have the AudioSnap feature. But if the quality of time-stretched audio clips become better, I'll be happy to upgrade to the Studio version. Perhaps you could do a little test for me? Record a guitar phrase (fast strum) like I did, follow the above steps like I did, and compare the result with the result you get when you use the Radius feature you mentioned.

BlixYZ


Sonar does not do it an intuitively as some DAWs.  But it seems your issue is that when you made it a groove clip, (if you did) you didn't specify the correct number of beats/measures.  That would make it play back too fast or slow. 

You totally can do what you're trying to do in Sonar- I just wish i could tell you that there's a super easy and obvious way to do it. 

I think you can only specify the number of beats/measures when you enable Clip > Loop On/Off. I only wanted to turn the audio clip into a groove clip for the song tempo change purpose, so I instead enabled Clip > Stretch On/Off. If you enable this, the Beat field turns grayed out and you can't change the value in it.

Bristol_Jonesey

Jlien X 

Bristol_Jonesey 


Did you bounce it down after you stretched it? 

If I'm not mistaken, by following the steps above, I turned a regular audio clip into a Groove clip, didn't I? I thought that was it. Do I need to bounce it down to complete the process? 

But, I actually have no intention to drastically timestretch audio clips like this and use them to create a loop or something. I'm only afraid of the sound quality and the rhythm accuracy of audio clips when I change the tempo of a song in Sonar, even slightly like from 120BPM to 117BPM. 

I know all DAWs have strengths and weaknesses, and I love Sonar in many ways, but the result I heard tells me that I need to be very sure the current tempo of the song to which I'm going to add guitars from now is best suited for the song, because changing the tempo later might cause undesirable result. 

Yeah I'm pretty sure you'll have to bounce it down in order to utilise the offline algorithm. 

Try it & see. 

Or listen...... 

So I gave it a try (Bounce to Clip, isn't it?), but unfortunately it didn't improve the result.


No one in this forum has ever experienced the same issue? (Is this even an issue or is it just Sonar's limitation?) If you wanted to change the tempo of your entire song, from 120 to 110 for example, what would you do? Record guitars, vocals, etc. all over again or use tools like Melodyne?  

It is a Sonar limitation not an issue. In Studio One for example if I want to alter the music to play back at 110 BPM instead of 120 BPM it is a simple matter of altering the tempo and that is it! Very cool time stretch and all in real time as well. Going down or up 10 BPM would not even be audible. In fact you can go quite large distances before it falls apart. 

I still think though it is better to sort out the tempo accurately and early in the piece. 
 
BTW Pro Tools also does not time stretch very well at all either. It falls apart way before Studio One does too.

Haven't used it, but Amplitube standalone lets you import tracks and alter playback tempo. You can dowload a free version, Amplitube Custom Shop and see if it works well enough for you.

perfectprint


use ctrl+drag on the slip edited clip and snap it to grid at your new tempo settings, then bounce it down. groove clip looping often misses the mark and doubles the loop length.

I had an instance where I had to make a piece of music 'fit' over a 30 sec TV commercial. The tune I had been given was probably around 2 or 3 secs too long for the video. I used the ctrl+drag method to shorten the tune down to fit the 30sec video. It worked a treat, no artifacts etc. If the OP only has 8 bars to change i'd say this may be a good option.

Look in the help for "Slip-stretching".  It simply extends or compresses the audio by a percentage of the original value.

stevec


Look in the help for "Slip-stretching".  It simply extends or compresses the audio by a percentage of the original value.

Thanks. I figured out why this "slip-stretching" didn't work for me......it's because the feature is only available in Studio/Producer. I'll probably upgrade to X2 Studio in the next upgrade sale because it looks like slip-stretch is going to produce much better results than using the groove clip feature.

Still, I wish timestretch was much easier in Sonar, because if I change the tempo of the song, I'll have to slip-stretch all audio clips that I recorded in the project (if I understand correctly).

vinny199

Still, I wish timestretch was much easier in Sonar, because if I change the tempo of the song, I'll have to slip-stretch all audio clips that I recorded in the project (if I understand correctly).

In essence, you are correct. Sonar time stretching features are not so much as "bad", but overly complicated compared to the competition. You can get good timestrech results in Sonar, but you have to try various options, algorythms, ways of time stretching etc.


It is all hit and miss and not user friendly.


don't upgrade for more "time stretching features", honestly, they are not better in the full version.


And the Audiosnap feature is so complicated.. it looks like a dinosaur of time stretching. It works, but EVERYTIME I want to use it, I need to re-read / watch video about how it works, the various steps I need to take etc. It is that bad that I have not even memorised the process. .


So, the short answer to your questions is in my opinion: Sonar can achieve as good time stretching results as other software, BUT you will spend ages to get results other software now offer is a click of the mouse or two.

Then I think I should stick to Essential, which pretty much satisfies my needs. I'll just make sure I'm absolutely happy with the current song tempo before recording any audio. Thanks for posting this.