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?

The more drastic the stretch, and the longer the clip, the worse the results will tend to be. 

If the stretch had been 120 to say 116, I'm guessing the result would have been more acceptable. I say "guessing" because I don't (or haven't) used the time stretch function. 

I do use Melodyne Editor to manipulate audio notes,,, to move them around on the scale...and also to time stretch them on occasion. I do know that in ME, if I make small changes they are transparent.... but when I move a note several steps is is pretty obvious that the note has artifacts from that move, or stretch. 

IMHO, ME is one of the best audio manipulators on the market. Even so, care must be exercised when making larger edits to maintain any semblance of transparency. I'm sure the same general rules would apply to using Sonar's time stretch features. 

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

Did you bounce it down after you stretched it?

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.

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

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......

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.

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?  

If it was me, I'd re-record it.

But I'm sure others have equally valid methods.

I did this on an older song about a year ago - dropped the BPM by about 10 and started recording.

Luckily, all the drums & keys were Midi based so it was only the guitars & vocals I had to re-do