Hi guys, I've spent a lot of time with MIDI but am just now getting my feet wet with audio recording. Hope someone here can help me clean up a mess I've made. I have a project with about 20 recorded guitar audio tracks that started with a midi track to be used for timing (9/8 time and groove quantized). Most of the recorded audio tracks are broken up into clips to try and get a single copy & pasted 'good' track! I know, I know, I'll wait til the laughter dies down. :) Nothing I tried seemed to tighten up the timing until I selected 'project follow clip' in the Audio Snap menu. Now..., a few days and saves later, I notice that my original midi track timing is all screwed up! OK, that makes sense. My problem is I can't reverse that action. I've gone over every clip on every track to look at the Audio Snap settings but can't find the track (or clip?) that the project is following. I want my original meter and MIDI track back! Any ideas? Thanks, Joe

Now..., a few days and saves later, I notice that my original midi track timing is all screwed up! OK, that makes sense.

EDIT: I whacked my original reply because on second thought, it was all washed up. 


You're right, Using Set Project from Clip will change your MIDI timing with reference to the MBT timeline. Unfortunately, there's no way to lock all the MIDI events to absolute time (only the clip start time, not the individual note timings), so deleting the tempos that Set Project inserted is not going to get you back where you started. I've run into this issue before, and I'm afraid you're SOL. There are some hoops you could jump through to get the MIDI timing back, but it's probably easier to start over.
What you should have done originally is quantize the audio to the MIDI groove.   

Thanks Brundlefly,
I meant "Project Follows Clip" and I didn't tune the clip map. I've got a lot to learn. I had basic timing clicks (1/8 notes) on the MIDI track whose notes now do not display as 1/8 notes. I thought that, because X2 would just insert tempo changes, that those 1/8 notes would still look like 1/8 notes?
 
I was hoping I could untoggle the track that sets the project timing to itself. That would seem to solve my problem, but I can't find the track or clip that is set that way. BTW, the Edit|Undo message 'Undo Toggle Clip Follows Project' is confusing as to what state you're leaving the settings as it reads the same no matter what state it is in currently.
 
Anyway, I'll follow your good advice and a work from a copy of the project. I'll start by deleting tempo changes and go from there.
Thanks again,
Joe

What happens if you quantize the MIDI track to 1/8 notes?
 

I meant "Project Follows Clip"

Just to be clear, there's "Set Project from Clip", and "Clip Follows Project"; there's no "Project Follows Clip". But if Tempo changes were inserted, that implies you used Set Project from Clip. What happens when you do that is that SONAR inserts the tempo changes needed to align the timeline to the clip at the specified points (Beats, Measures or overall average tempo). But it maintains the absolute timing of both MIDI and audio, so that they remain in sync with each other, and playback timing is unaltered. And that means changing the start times and durations of MIDI events to offset the effect of the tempo changes.

I'm finally grasping what it is that I did. And you're right, deleting tempos did nothing. @stevec -- I've never been able to quantize audio without getting weird doubling/echo kinds of effects-- I assumed quantizing was only for MIDI. No?

I've spent so much time reading the Sonar manual but it's obvious I haven't spent enough time. I don't want to waste everyone's time helping me fix something that's covered in the manual. I'll do more homework and report back on my progress. Thanks people, Joe

You can quantize audio as well, either by splitting at transients and quantizing clip start times (works well with drum tracks), or by enabling Audiosnap and quantizing transients with material in between getting stretched according to an appropriate algorithm. Too much stretching and/or using the wrong algorithm for the material can result in doubled notes and other artifacts.

 

You can quantize audio as well, either by splitting at transients and quantizing clip start times (works well with drum tracks), or by enabling Audiosnap and quantizing transients with material in between getting stretched according to an appropriate algorithm. Too much stretching and/or using the wrong algorithm for the material can result in doubled notes and other artifacts.

 

Well, I was able to salvage the project by copying it to another folder, then starting fresh with a new midi timing track and then importing the audio tracks that I needed. The on-disk versions of the wave files I needed seemed to be in their original condition so I'm guessing I was lucky this time. Thanks for your help.