I use drum samples a lot and often use more than one kick or snare tracks in a project. I frequently run into difficulty aligning the kicks or snares to where they are hitting tightly. the method i've been using is to use audiosnap on one track to align it to the other. it's a crude way, i believe, because i am 'eye-balling' it. Any better methods out there?

Align the transients at the beginning.

 

thanks john, but i don't follow you..

Im curious too john. As far as how to do this. Is there a tool for it?

see, the problem i am having is when using two different kick samples (or snares), for example, that have different waveforms and different peaks and valleys in the waveform. Sure, i can set each sample to the beginning of a measure, but that does not necessarily mean they will hit at exactly the same spot due to the differences in waveform.. or maybe i'm doing something wrong... so, when they don't hit exactly, it doesn't sound tight

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have a simple phase issue.  Normally you can nudge the audio back and forth to line the tracks up, after zooming way in to actually see the waveforms.  If for some reason that's not an option, even after bouncing the tracks to single audio clips, there are auto-phase plugins that do this for you.  I hope this helps.
 
Cheers,
Eddie
 

thanks eddie, yeah thats bascially what ive been doing. tho, it is tedious when doing for the whole track or more tracks. just wondering if there is a better way. instead of nudging, ive been using audiosnap, which works great but takes a while to do.

Have you tried audiosnap? Right click on the source track. Select Pool from the drop down menu, select add clip to pool. You will see the dotted lines elsewhere indicating they are all being used as a reference point. Right click on the destination track. Select pool from the dropdown menu, select quantize to pool. You will get a window that shows up with a few parameters to set for strength 

Rocky

thanks rocky. ive been using audiosnap but not the way you describe. i will try that.

joshcamp


thanks eddie, yeah thats bascially what ive been doing. tho, it is tedious when doing for the whole track or more tracks. just wondering if there is a better way. instead of nudging, ive been using audiosnap, which works great but takes a while to do.

If you're having to line up each hit separately, I can see that would be very tedious.  If avoiding that is worth $65 to you, try something like this:
 
http://www.meldaproduction.com/plugins/product.php?id=MAutoAlign 
 
Note:  I'm not sure if this will work in your case, but it might be worth a try.
 
Cheers,
Eddie