Sorry, I mistakenly posted this in the non-X1 forum so I'm re-posting here. Although it probably matters not as Audio Snap seems just to not work very well in any platform:



I am still not able to get a handle on Audiosnap. Haven't used it much for this very reason.

The "Clip follows project" function effect eludes me. For example: after bringing in a rhythmic and simple audio clip I turned on Audiosnap and edited the clip's tempo map. Not too much was needed to align the "beat-1" markers with their appropriate transients. They were just a bit off and it is a short clip so not too much work there, but if it were a long clip it would be quite a pain. So,first off, isn't there an automatic function to adjust a slightly inaccurate tempo map? (i.e. sliding tempo map beats to the nearest transient? - in the case above, that is exactly what I manually did to correct it.)
Here is a section showing my tempo map edited clip with the map and project tempo out of sync:

Before

Then I pressed Clip follows project (with the Measure option selected) in order to have the tempo map corrected but slightly varying tempo clip align itself to the constant project tempo. It changed but did not align itself perfectly with the project tempo!? It started wandering away after a bit. Here again is that same section after choosing Clip follows project:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/WgMIfNR3TbHJuDshgX94-qIOxjpeON_wm_JZgGr6sKA?feat=directlink

Choosing the other various options for Clip follows project (i.e. Beat, Clip or Auto stretch) failed to align the clip's tempo map to the project tempo. Nor did choosing the Set Clip Tempo from Project on the Average tempo drop-down as suggested in the Help file.

In comparison: Ableton, though not flawless, imports audio, tempo maps it and aligns it to project tempo almost seamlessly if it is not too off (if you have warp enabled) with no further editing needed in some cases, certainly with the above example.

In fact, I can't get any function to work in Audiosnap to work the way I assuming it will work. I simply cannot get transient markers to line up with tempo map markers and to then line those up with project tempo delineations, even working on a simple kick-snare quarter note rhythm! It sees this clip and defaults to an average tempo of 0!?! I tell it the average tempo is 130. It starts the map at 0:2 (?) Neither "Clip follows project" or "Project follows clip" will line up beats accordingly. Quantize makes the beats further off than they were!  - All this on a simple, quarter note, kick-snare audio clip (played slightly in and out of time for the test).

What I expected:
-Input a file that is a little off time
-Audiosnap maps a tempo aligned to what it thinks are its beats
-Audiosnap then is able to align those beats and that map to a controlled project tempo map by stretching or compressing.

All this I would hope to happen more or less automatically, but I have to manually move almost every beat myself. Now, obviously the issue here is me. I just do not understand something about Audiosnap (or maybe anything). The help files give me no clue as to the basis of operation here.
I don't want to take of too much time here. Is there a book on Audiosnap? A website? A movie? A religion?!?

I am apparently missing something fundamental here and would really like to understand Audiosnap better...

After much of the day reading other posts it would appear the problem isn't me.
AS is buggy. And just not very good? surprising.

Have you selected the view to transients?
Also you can get more tools, more powerful control if you select "offline".

So when you select quantize, you select "audio snap beats" and select 1/16th or whatever beats you want to quantize to. Then (and this may be your problem) you select the strength, swing, window, and offset. If you set the strength at 100% and the swing at 50, the window at 100 and the offset at 0... it should line everything up perfectly. personally I would lower the strength to the high 90s and maybe play with the swing. If you don't get what you want on the first attempt try a different note like 1/8 or 1/4 notes.

Lower threshod will add more transients but too low can add things that shouldn't be added.

So enable audiosnap, seect transient view from the dropdown, select threshold for the transients, select "clip follows project", select quantize, leave strenght at 100%, swing at 50, window at 100, and offset at 0... then play it quantized to 1/16 or whatever was default. Try starting off with threshold at 0. There is a good video on this in the Groove 3 Sonar X1 explained videos.
In the audiosnap window you can click the metronome and choose to set the transients by musical time or absolute time. You can split the clip at each transient using the button left o the metronome icon, then you can delete or manually change each one. With the button next to the on/off youcan copy to midi so that you can apply the timing to a midi file. The spit transients is cool because you can then manually move or edit each (in this case 1/16 note transients) note and when you get it just like you want it, and you like it... you can use the "estract groove" button to  extract it and then "apply groove" to apply it to other clips.

Maybe someone with more experience will chime in. I hope this helps.

Julien


Hope this helps.

Julien

jbow


Have you selected the view to transients?
Also you can get more tools, more powerful control if you select "offline".

So when you select quantize, you select "audio snap beats" and select 1/16th or whatever beats you want to quantize to. Then (and this may be your problem) you select the strength, swing, window, and offset. If you set the strength at 100% and the swing at 50, the window at 100 and the offset at 0... it should line everything up perfectly. personally I would lower the strength to the high 90s and maybe play with the swing. If you don't get what you want on the first attempt try a different note like 1/8 or 1/4 notes.

Lower threshod will add more transients but too low can add things that shouldn't be added.

So enable audiosnap, seect transient view from the dropdown, select threshold for the transients, select "clip follows project", select quantize, leave strenght at 100%, swing at 50, window at 100, and offset at 0... then play it quantized to 1/16 or whatever was default. Try starting off with threshold at 0. There is a good video on this in the Groove 3 Sonar X1 explained videos.
In the audiosnap window you can click the metronome and choose to set the transients by musical time or absolute time. You can split the clip at each transient using the button left o the metronome icon, then you can delete or manually change each one. With the button next to the on/off youcan copy to midi so that you can apply the timing to a midi file. The spit transients is cool because you can then manually move or edit each (in this case 1/16 note transients) note and when you get it just like you want it, and you like it... you can use the "estract groove" button to  extract it and then "apply groove" to apply it to other clips.

Maybe someone with more experience will chime in. I hope this helps.

Julien

I'm afraid most of the above is not applicable to the issues the OP is encountering. I'm sure he knows how to quantize, but he first needs to get the project timeline aligned with the audio which is where he's encountering issues. And many of those issues are probably due to Audiosnap bugs/limitations.


The Clip Tempo Map fucntionality is problematic.  It is often difficult to get beat markers aligned where you want them, and if the clip has a pick-up beat, it can be difficult to make Audiosnap "understand" where that belongs. Also, I've filed a problem report myself that even with beat markers right on, Audiosnap will sometimes simply miscalculate the tempo needed to align the timeline to them, whereas Set Measure/Beat At Now will get it exactly right every time.


Here are some tips to increase the odds of success.


1. Start by sliding the audio to align the first downbeat transient in the audio precisely with the corresponding beat in the timeline.
2. If that isn't at 1:01:000, use Set Measure/Beat At Now (was Ctrl-M in 8.5; I think it's Ctrl-N now...?) to "pin" that beat down.
3. Count out 8 or 16 measures (or the whole clip if you have the patience), and use SM/BAN to set that Measure/Beat to the corresponding audio transient.
4. If the first beat was not 1:01:000, go back and set the initial tempo to match the average tempo you've established for the clip.
5. Now you've got the overall tempo approximately matched to the clip, and The Clip Tempo Map should come up much better aligned when you enable it.
6. Depending on how variable the clip tempo is and how fine a tempo map you need, you might want to just blow off Audiosnap at this point, and continue using SM/BAN to selectively dial in some more intermediate timeline beats to the clip transients.
7. As for the issue with pick-up beats; it may be best to just split that off, bounce each clip down to separate them, and deal with the pick-up beat separately.

I dread the problems I am sure to have but look forward to getting your help with them. I'm glad you posted, I was trying to help.

Julien

FWIW, I just did a quick test of Set Project from Clip in X1b246, and it's not looking too good.

It still has issues with aligning beat markers to transient markers in the clip map - you have to click and drag many that might appear to be aligned, but are not, in order to get them locked in precisely. And even then it still makes slight miscalculations in tempo that cause some beats not to be properly aligned after Set Project from Clip. Also, like SM/BAN when it was broken in 8.5.3, Set Project from Clip is not inserting tempo changes on the measure/beat lines, but is inserting them at the M:B:T times corresponding to the absolute times where the transient markers were before the Set Project was invoked. This needs to be fixed as well.

I'll continue to recommend using SM/BAN for this task for the time being. It takes a little more time, but it's more flexible, and, like so many things in life, gives better results than the automated process.

brundlefly


FWIW, I just did a quick test of Set Project from Clip in X1b246, and it's not looking too good.

It still has issues with aligning beat markers to transient markers in the clip map - you have to click and drag many that might appear to be aligned, but are not, in order to get them locked in precisely. And even then it still makes slight miscalculations in tempo that cause some beats not to be properly aligned after Set Project from Clip. Also, like SM/BAN when it was broken in 8.5.3, Set Project from Clip is not inserting tempo changes on the measure/beat lines, but is inserting them at the M:B:T times corresponding to the absolute times where the transient markers were before the Set Project was invoked. This needs to be fixed as well.

I'll continue to recommend using SM/BAN for this task for the time being. It takes a little more time, but it's more flexible, and, like so many things in life, gives better results than the automated process.

brundlefly,
you continue to be an unrelenting source of insight and assistance on this forum from what i've seen looking into this issue over these days. Thanks so much!

Yes, Audio Snap buggy indeed. X1b for me as well. Not a programmer myself, but I can't understand why the same program (Audiosnap) can on one hand locate transients, which it does fairly well on necessarily tidy audio clips, and on the other map a tempo (clip map); and yet not line the two up in any way! In each case with me, so far, I have had to go in and move the mapped beat marker to the correct transient very near by. Then, after going through the entire clip  that way (a carefully trimmed and bounced-to-clip, fairly regular, but not "perfect" tempo, simple quarter note test clip, mind you), a call to "Set project from clip" aligns the project tempo not exactly to my corrected clip map! Some beats (even the majority in my most recent experiment) are dead on when zooming full in. Some are quite not dead on. This For an automated procedure I am quite at a loss to see what logic it is following to arrive at this state. "Clip Follows Project" diverges even more for any logic I can tell! I wouldn't even bother to try and Quantize.

So... the SM/BaN process you are talking about is in the "Project" menu (Shift-N on my X1), yes? It's not an Audio Snap specific function at all. In other words, you're suggestion is to forgo AS altogether and map the project to the clip solely with SB/MaN. Have I got you right? I guess I would then have to go through that entire SM/BaN process for any other audio I imported into the project in order for it to be in sync.

There are so many calls out there on this forum from people with this or a similar issue and so many replies, some from the same users over and again, that encourage the poster into using AS for things that it claims to do yet, apparently categorically will not do with accuracy. Favoring the party line over the truth, or maybe just ignorant of it?

Thank you, though, for a refreshingly honest response.

So... the SM/BaN process you are talking about is in the "Project" menu (Shift-N on my X1), yes? It's not an Audio Snap specific function at all. In other words, you're suggestion is to forgo AS altogether and map the project to the clip solely with SB/MaN. Have I got you right? I guess I would then have to go through that entire SM/BaN process for any other audio I imported into the project in order for it to be in sync.

Glad to help, and yes to everything above, except that last part about what to do with additional imported clips.


SM/BAN is like Set Project from Clip in that it aligns the timeline to the audio using tempo changes without affecting how the audio plays back. So once you've done that, any new audio that came into the project would have to be stretched to fit the existing project rather than the other way around, unless you're talking about bring it in at a later time, rather than in parallel with existing audio. 


If bringing it in to the same time span, you would need to use the opposite function, Set Clip from Project, to sync it up with the timeline and existing material.

brundlefly

So... the SM/BaN process you are talking about is in the "Project" menu (Shift-N on my X1), yes? It's not an Audio Snap specific function at all. In other words, you're suggestion is to forgo AS altogether and map the project to the clip solely with SB/MaN. Have I got you right? I guess I would then have to go through that entire SM/BaN process for any other audio I imported into the project in order for it to be in sync.

Glad to help, and yes to everything above, except that last part about what to do with additional imported clips.


SM/BAN is like Set Project from Clip in that it aligns the timeline to the audio using tempo changes without affecting how the audio plays back. So once you've done that, any new audio that came into the project would have to be stretched to fit the existing project rather than the other way around, unless you're talking about bring it in at a later time, rather than in parallel with existing audio. 


If bringing it in to the same time span, you would need to use the opposite function, Set Clip from Project, to sync it up with the timeline and existing material.

Yes, of course. How thoughtless of me! I'd be creating a new tempo map every time.
So, that puts me back at having to use AS for all following clips. Nuts! Now that I see that it doesn't work that option is not a favorable one to me.

Well, never used to have all this "smart", post-recording technology before. It does make combining MIDI composition and recorded, various source, non-click tracked audio more of a do-able thing. Or at least a desirable thing, seeing how it doesn't actually do what it says it will do, X1/AS anyway. I must say, Ableton does a nice job of it, and other platforms as well from the sound of it...

I find Audio Snap quite complicated.  I see the dynamics of it and how it is suppose to work.  But, it really gets in the way of my creativity in working on a project.  

I too find the time stretching and audio snapping much more efficient and invisible with Propellerheads new Reason 6.  I was blown away with it when I upgraded to Record and I still find it incredibly useful.  

But, I also love working on projects in Sonar X1.  They both function differently.  I must say that I'd like to see this feature improved upon within Sonar X1  Perhaps for X2.  

I'd rather keep my creativity flowing and have editing painless and not a chore that gets in the way of writing, arranging and producing.  

Just MHO.