AudioSnap 2.0

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (stevec)

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:16:46 GMT

I've not seen an actual "improvement" at all. it's just garbage marketing hype.

Definitely not on my end. It looks like I now have a tool I can use, so for me the hype panned out.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (DH123)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:31:22 GMT

All they needed to do was make the transient markers more accurate and all would have been fine. This is CRITICAL for quantizing acoustic drums and it just sucks when 30-40% of the hits are off by as much as 20 milliseconds. They are just as awful as v1. Then only plus side is it's easier to fix the foulups that we wouldn't have to fix in the first place if the program actually did it's job.

I've not seen an actual "improvement" at all. it's just garbage marketing hype.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (stevec)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:47:24 GMT

Speaking for myself, I think AS2 is much more powerful than before, but I hated it BEFORE I read the online Help files.

I *finally* got to install 8.5 over the weekend. And while I can't vouche for the accuracy issues - I haven't spent nearly enough time with it - I will "+1" the above.   And the documentation helped.

I understood that AS1 had a lot of power, but I never really "got it". And there aren't many aspects to SONAR that I flat out don't get.   But with AS2 it's as though a light bulb was turned on... The difference in the UI, for me, is like night and day.   I finally "get" how what I'm doing affects the audio, how the controls might affect the outcome.   Granted, I'm still deep in newbie phase at this point, but I already feel like I'm way past AS1.    And I like it.

Now here's hoping I don't come across a crash-fest.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:21:37 GMT

I would (for example) bounce out my kick and snare, use Set measure/beat now to establish a tempo map and then merge the transients from the kick/snare back against all the other tracks and quantise to my hearts content?

Yes, that's basically it. But you'll definitely want to get the SONAR 8.5 Reference Guide PDF from Cakewalk Support to learn the details.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (Rothchild)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:18:20 GMT

brundlefly

I remember something in the tweets about this new version making it easier to snap multitrack drums, can anyone offer an insight as to how? (particularly for drums recorded 'free tempo')

The new feature is about being able to Lock and Merge transient markers across several tracks so that they all stretch together to maintain phase coherence when the sound from a live-miced drum bleeds into the mic on another drum or when an overhead mic is used. The ability to align the time ruler with a freely played part (of which Set measure/Beat at now is a part) has always existed in AudioSnap, as has the ability to quantize one track to the transients of another.

Thanks Brundlefly, so I would (for example) bounce out my kick and snare, use Set measure/beat now to establish a tempo map and then merge the transients from the kick/snare back against all the other tracks and quantise to my hearts content?

Cheers
Child

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:14:24 GMT

I remember something in the tweets about this new version making it easier to snap multitrack drums, can anyone offer an insight as to how? (particularly for drums recorded 'free tempo')

The new feature is about being able to Lock and Merge transient markers across several tracks so that they all stretch together to maintain phase coherence when the sound from a live-miced drum bleeds into the mic on another drum or when an overhead mic is used. The ability to align the time ruler with a freely played part (of which Set measure/Beat at now is a part) has always existed in AudioSnap, as has the ability to quantize one track to the transients of another.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (Rothchild)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:03:56 GMT

brundlefly

1. What happened to Set Measure/Beat at Now?

Figured this one out. Ctrl-M was always a shortcut to Set Measure/Beat at Now (the dialogue box is actually called "Measure Beat/Meter"). The button is gone, but the shortcut and the dialogue still exist and work as always. I can live with that. I prefer keyboard shortcuts to buttons anyway. I think I knew this one at some point, but forgot it.

Thanks Brundlefly, I was scratching my head over this one the other night, relieved to find it's still there. As non AS power user I was going to give up so this is well handy.

I remember something in the tweets about this new version making it easier to snap multitrack drums, can anyone offer an insight as to how? (particularly for drums recorded 'free tempo')

Cheers
Child

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (Paul Russell)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:28:37 GMT

I just spent a weekend exporting timing of percussion tracks out of AS2 into midi tracks for re-mapping into new percussion. It did what it said on the tin. More or less.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:15:59 GMT

2. What happened to showing times at each marker (not just when you're hovering over it).

Quoting myself from post #2 here. I just wanted to add that while hunting around for a key binding for the lost "Add Musical snap to transient snap pool button" in 8.5.1, I found one called "Audio Snap Show Time (transient location)" in the Track View bindings. It appears in both the 8.3.1 and 8.5.2 binding lists. In 8.3.1, I verified that it toggles the individual transient time stamps on and off (on is default), but in 8.5.1, it has no effect - so it would appear that this feature is well and truely gone. " />

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (jamescollins)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:37:08 GMT

brundlefly

More weirdness:

1. Transient marker timestamps of 1:01:5084, 1:03:4962 and 1:04:5149.

2. A Transient marker within 30 ticks of a 1/4 note gridline is disabled when I set Resolution to 1/8s, and a spurious one nearby that is 235 ticks (about 1/16) from a quarter note becomes enabled.

3. A clip of quarter notes played to a 100BPM click initially has a clip map tempo of 50BPM. I change it to the next higher option of 107BPM, quantize the clip to quarters, bounce it down, and the clip map tempo goes back to 50. I go to change it again, and the next higher option is still 107BPM, even though all the transient markers are now within 2 ticks of a quarter note gridline.

4. Every operation I perform resets the Threshold slider to 75% disabling some of the transients on which the operation was based.

5.Even after setting the Threshold back to 0, one of the transients 1 tick from a quarter note is disabled. i change the resolution form 1/4 to 1/8, and it re-enables.

Guess I'll be keeping a sharp eye out for AudioSnap 2.1. " />

Surely Cake must sort this out? It's quite outrageous that they would release a product with as many flaws as are being described with AudioSnap 2.0

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (CakeFan)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:08:58 GMT

I just wanted to chime in here and mention that I haven't heard anyone mention "Editing a clip's tempo map". I find a lot of power in Ctrl dragging the time markers to where I want them. Speaking for myself, I think AS2 is much more powerful than before, but I hated it BEFORE I read the online Help files.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (mixmkr)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:31:16 GMT

I don't know...A>S was hard enough for me to wrap my head around, and now keyboard shortcuts need to be memorized...

I used it a little, but always spent waaay too much time using it, but it was/is a brilliant feature.

I'd love to sink my teeth into a well oiled Audio Snap.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:05:05 GMT

More weirdness:

1. Transient marker timestamps of 1:01:5084, 1:03:4962 and 1:04:5149.

2. A Transient marker within 30 ticks of a 1/4 note gridline is disabled when I set Resolution to 1/8s, and a spurious one nearby that is 235 ticks (about 1/16) from a quarter note becomes enabled.

3. A clip of quarter notes played to a 100BPM click initially has a clip map tempo of 50BPM. I change it to the next higher option of 107BPM, quantize the clip to quarters, bounce it down, and the clip map tempo goes back to 50. I go to change it again, and the next higher option is still 107BPM, even though all the transient markers are now within 2 ticks of a quarter note gridline.

4. Every operation I perform resets the Threshold slider to 75% disabling some of the transients on which the operation was based.

5.Even after setting the Threshold back to 0, one of the transients 1 tick from a quarter note is disabled. i change the resolution form 1/4 to 1/8, and it re-enables.

Guess I'll be keeping a sharp eye out for AudioSnap 2.1. " />

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (jamescollins)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:15:14 GMT

"Enhanced fidelity with Radius Mix Advanced Mode: new Radius Mix settings improve “pitch coherence,” which preserves the naturalness of timbre in human speech, vocals, reed and brass instruments."

Has anybody noticed 'enhanced fidelity'?

AS2 sounds absolutely brilliant in the write up Cakewalk gave it, I really want to believe them, but so far the response seems to be that they've actually ruined it's usefulness whilst simultaneously making it crash a lot more. I don't think I'll upgrade until we start hearing positive reports about AS. If this is the case, again, AUDIOSNAP IS WORTH DOING PROPERLY!

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (jamescollins)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:01:30 GMT

Well this is all extremely disappointing - why doesn't Cakewalk make AudioSnap dominate? I'm sure I'm not the only one who spends a vast amount of time fixing up drum tracks, bass tracks etc. played by less than perfect musicians, and it would make a HUGE difference to be able to do this QUICKLY, EFFECTIVELY and RELIABLY. I never normally complain, and get sick of seeing all the crying on the forums, but please Cakewalk, surely this is worth doing? Anything that makes audio editing quicker, better and more reliable should be at the top of your 'to do' list, and will make Sonar far more attractive to potential customers.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (seriousfun)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:57:58 GMT

mike_mccue

"I think you all should give AS v2 a try and enough time to make an informed decision."

take as long as you need ;-)

OK, now you made my AS2 crash.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:10:25 GMT

Okay. I forgot about that "SONAR needs to close" crash mode. Thankfully, I haven't seen it for a long time. You're right, that's a pretty minimal project to be having a problem. Might well be something to do with AudioSnap, but it's impossible to say for sure. Guess you'll have to try to reproduce it. " />

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (...wicked)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:41:26 GMT

brundlefly
If SONAR is still responding enough to save the project I wouldn't call that a "crash". What are the symptoms, and what's going on in SONAR when it happens?

Well I was working with an AudioSnapped clip, and was toggling some options (trying to determine the tempo just for starters) and I noticed a whole bunch of keys had stopped working. Eventually I noticed another SONAR window had popped up on my taskbar and when I tabbed over to it noticed it was the "SONAR needs to close...blah blah.. should we save a copy... blah blah". But since I had some keyboard/mouse control was able to save normally and then click through the crash dialog.

Happened a second time on another project that was newly created in 8.5. Only had a few soft synths and the only thing I did was create a MIDI clip with Battery, then bounced it and Audiosnapped it to determine the tempo (I was jamming out on some shaker samples and then wanted to figure out the tempo so I could sequence it properly). So, two soft-synths, one MIDI clip, one Audiosnapped clip. That's not a lot of things that could cause a crash!

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (dantarbill)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:32:05 GMT

brundlefly

1. what happened to Set Measure/Beat at Now?

I'm sorry I didn't see this thread earlier. Yes the button went away. (That's a bit of a head scratcher though.) Yes Ctrl-M still does the job nicely. Last night, I just finished up doing a tempo map for a guitar/vocal recording done without a click...including a few rubato sections. I'm quite pleased with the results. Dropping in a drum track with SD3 and mining drum patterns with the new Media Browser was all relatively painless.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (The Maillard Reaction)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:22:32 GMT

"I think you all should give AS v2 a try and enough time to make an informed decision."

take as long as you need ;-)

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:13:46 GMT

but there are other ways to do the same job.

There are other ways to do a similar job, but there is no other way to do exactly what Set Measure/Beat at Now does, especially if you're working with a MIDI track.

I think some of the conceptual changes to AudioSnap look very promising, I was just taken aback at the the various issues I encountered in the first 5 minutes with it that are clearly not working correctly - like the amplitude-proportional transient marker lengths - or that seem like a step backward in functionality, like the elimination of timestamps at each marker, and the inability to display marker locations in different time formats.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (seriousfun)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:53:11 GMT

I think you all should give AS v2 a try and enough time to make an informed decision.

I worked with it a little bit last night, setting the project tempo to an acoustic guitar track. Many things were different, but it seemed to take about the same amount of time as v1. I didn't figure out control-M yet - thanks! - but there are other ways to do the same job.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:45:45 GMT

But, at least it's a calm crash, and I can still save my project the way I want before I have to close it all down.

If SONAR is still responding enough to save the project I wouldn't call that a "crash". What are the symptoms, and what's going on in SONAR when it happens?

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (...wicked)

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:41:25 GMT

Well, I notice it crashes SONAR more often now, which is odd, and a little lame. But, at least it's a calm crash, and I can still save my project the way I want before I have to close it all down.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:18:16 GMT

1. What happened to Set Measure/Beat at Now?

Figured this one out. Ctrl-M was always a shortcut to Set Measure/Beat at Now (the dialogue box is actually called "Measure Beat/Meter"). The button is gone, but the shortcut and the dialogue still exist and work as always. I can live with that. I prefer keyboard shortcuts to buttons anyway. I think I knew this one at some point, but forgot it.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:27:52 GMT

Audio Snaps tendency to place a transient marker many, many samples in front of the actual transient as shown in the waveform drawing (or playback).

This has not been a really big issue for me. In my experience, Audiosnap will sometimes put a marker a tick early or late (24 samples at 125BPM and 48kHz), but it's not consistently early, and not usually that far off. But you have to really zoom the amplitude scale all the way in to see what AudioSnap is detecting. Markers might appear to be early if you don't zoom far enough to see the very beginning of the attack. But I'm sure you're aware of this already.

And, of course, this all assumes you are working with material that has very discrete events, like drums. Instruments that produce sustained notes, especially if they have evolving amplitude envelopes (e.g. synth patches with Amp LFO) can result in all kinds of spurious and misplaced markers.

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (Psalmist35)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:20:34 GMT

This is ALL very sad news. I've reserved upgrading for the 1st time since Sonar 3.0. Audio Snap 2.0 was the only thing that interested me to potentially upgrading to 8.5.1. Sorry to hear this guys. I'll be watching this thread closely. Hopefully one of the Bakers will chime in and shed some light on this topic.

Rich

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (The Maillard Reaction)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:06:42 GMT

You may be right about the intention but I looked at a chicken picked guitar track and thought it seemingly followed amplitude.

The fact that it doesn't track amplitudes "correctly" seems to correlate with Audio Snaps tendency to place a transient marker many, many samples in front of the actual transient as shown in the waveform drawing (or playback). So, I just thought it was displaying amplitude within the slop tolerance that Audio Snap already uses. I mean, that's my primary use of the diamond symbols... dragging them to the actual transient point... because Audio Snap can't seem to target them with anything other than near accuracy.

When I heard Audio Snap 2.0 I figured some of those actual problems and bugs may have been fixed... not really, but what else was I supposed to think.

And another thing... is there a reason the Audio Snap palette looks blurry when compared to the underlying SONAR gui? It seems softer... like the fonts have softened edges. More designer design for designers?

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (brundlefly)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:49:53 GMT

I can't help but think of the irony that it was the fact that I could see all the timestamps at once that alerted me to the fact that AudioSnap doesn't always snap to where you left the marker.

My first uncharitable thought was that they are trying to obscure the little inaccuracies, because along with the missing timestamps, the time display format has also gone missing. AFAIK, you can only see M:B:T times which, of course, is the least precise measure.

The varied length lines are darn funny... it's like I might forget to look at the wave form and think... "oh my this is a loud part... and this, well, this must be a quiet part".

Funnier yet, if that's what they're supposed to be indicating, is that they are completely wrong. I started my investigations with two tracks of kick and snare generated from MIDI events that all have a velocity of 100. The transients are all identical, but the transient marker heights are radically variable. Actually, they appear to be taking on just two values, tall and short. As a result, I thought they must represent something else, like maybe proximity to a beat in the time ruler...?

Re:AudioSnap 2.0 (The Maillard Reaction)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:28:46 GMT

yes, it's a bummer.

re: the timestamps: I can't help but think of the irony that it was the fact that I could see all the timestamps at once that alerted me to the fact that AudioSnap doesn't always snap to where you left the marker.

Now if the marker slips/snaps sideways a smidge, that fact is conveniently hidden from you until you get a nagging uneasy feeling that something went wrong... and then instead of seeing where the problem occured quickly, now you will have to search it out like a needle in a hay stack.

What could be easier?

The varied length lines are darn funny... it's like I might forget to look at the wave form and think... "oh my this is a loud part... and this, well, this must be a quiet part". It's nice to have been provided with a visual cue just in case I forget what the waveform drawing is there for.

Burying the diamond markers on the zed line seems like design for designs sake. ( the obvious result of having made the decision to show us the relative amplitudes in the redundant manner I speak of above ). Let's see now, where on the clip drawing will one most likely see the waveform? Right on the center line, that's where. So while it's easy to predict where the symbol can be displayed with no other visual competition the symbol has been placed where there will almost always be visual competition. Of course if you are trying to place the beat line on a zero point it is now more ambiguous where you have placed your line... because it's been displaced with a diamond symbol. So you ave to zoom in and sorta surround the point you are trying to snap to.

bummer.