using Audiosnap and Audio Snap with multi trk drums

Dude you are freaking out. here are some links that will help you.

audiosnap drum replacement

some helpful videos

here's some info on dither and bitdepth

Hope this helps.

quentin

And..

what is the relationship between the snap to grid (inside of audiosnap) and the snap to grid of the project?
are they slaved to each other ?

please explain what the POOL is ... and why ...is this the template we are shaping our transients to ?
if our transients are what we are trying to straighten out they should not be in the pool until they are timing corrected ??????? why so vague??????

whats up with the icon that adds the project snap to grid to the pool being outside of the audiosnap dialog "palette" ?
if im trying to get the sound close to the project click track ...? why all the tools to process it away from the click and to the "transients"..?

and the big question ..for you reading this right now, have you ever sucessfully audiosnapped a hi hat and overheads into a straighter time quantizing to the project grid ?

thanks

BTW if this tool was revamped with better instructions and an easy to use (user interface) that has presets for intended uses it would be one more reason for new users to switch to Sonar from the competition.
small and vague with a help file that is useless is not a good start for such a critical tool.

thanks

EOE

CJay,

Seeing as you know how to use audiosnap to snap overhead microphones to the project grid , please tell us how it is done.

EOE

Ok Lack,


Since you know how to use audiosnap to snap overhead microphones to the project grid please share this with us from your own personal experience.

It is not covered on any video anywhere and NO forum users have a suggested workflow for the tool in this dept.

assuming i have not put the time in is a mistake on your part.

After my 2 days of experimenting:
I dont think it can be done in a sonically pleasant manner without artifacts:
prove me wrong please.

EOE

Here's how we are going to do this:

IF YOU HAVE NEVER USED AUDIOSNAP TO CORRECT MULTI TRACK DRUMS DO NOT ADD TO THIS POST.

Thoeries and manual quotes are copouts, if you have a link to a specific video on this subject please add it.

This is an excercise on "paper" to show users how to use audiosnap on multi tracked drums.

Goal:
We are going to "quantize" 8 tracks of audio drums to the project snap to grid with "audiosnap".
note: this is not the internal snap to grid in audiosnap it is the grid in the "project"- IE the Click track.

The drums were recorded to the internal click of Sonar and are "in time" but drift a little , and need tightening up.

We are going to go step by step with a list of steps:

step 1 :

audiosnap enable all 8 drum tracks tracks

now its your turn: what goes into the Pool ? is it the (ADD MUSICAL SNAP TO TRANSIENT SNAP POOL) ?

please add a few steps to the process and let others add steps as this will be a long post.
feel free to re-arrange the order of the steps when necessary.

Thanks
EOE

This is more or less documented around the place but for some reason even reading some of the step-by-step instructions, I missed some crucial points on how to do this correctly and it took ages to work out how to do it successfully (obviously reading instructions isn't my strong point ).

So what I do is this:

• Bounce down the kick and snare track to a single track, mono or stereo - doesn't matter too much.
  
• Enable AudioSnap on the kick+snare track and go through and set up your thresholds, etc. for each of the transients, delete markers if needed.
  
• Add those markers to the pool (use the Add to Pool button) - they'll all turn pink.
  
• Go back to your original tracks, select them all, right click and go to Audiosnap -> Apply AudioSnap Pool Transient Markers (this is the step I always seemed to miss in the past). All of the clips will now be Audiosnap enabled and there will be markers on them. You'll notice that they don't necessarily line up with the hits on all the tracks, but they do line up with the transient markers that were on the new kick+snare track you made.
  
• Go back to your kick+snare track, select that only and quantize it however you like. If you solo that track you can hear what it's done to your timing. It may sound pretty bad but that's because it's using a less CPU intensive online stretching algorithm to preview the sound. If that's how you like it, then move on to the next step.
  
• Select all of your other tracks and do Quantize to Pool. That will move all of the markers in those tracks to where the quantized markers are in your kick+snare track. Again, if you listen back to your tracks, they may sound bad due to the online algorithm.
  
• If you're happy with how they all sound, select the drums, do Edit > Bounce To Clips and go make a coffee while they process the changes. Then delete your kick+snare track. Everything should sound a LOT better because it used an offline stretching algorithm.
  
• If for some reason you have big sections where you need to quantize to hats or ride bell or something, do the same thing but use the hat or overhead tracks as your master timing track. That may not work as well as stuff with strong transient attacks like kick and snare, though, but I've had good results doing this most of the times I've done it (which is rarely - usually the kick+snare thing works fine for most applications).
  
• And that's it - your files should be in time and the phase relationships maintained.
  

What I tend to do is clone all of my drums and put them into another folder, then I work on one set and do the quantizing, etc. and cut in parts of the unquantized versions to the final composite of the tracks, just in case there were parts that sound better not aligned to anything. You get the best of both worlds then.

Hope that helps!

Hi Endoverend,

One more comment.

Save a sample section of your multitracked project as another project name. Then send that small piece to CW tech support. Let them give you the steps needed to fix that project, and then post their steps here. I'd like to know the best way to fix this issue also.

Another idea is to post that sample project in the forum, and let the experts here in the forum take a shot at it. I'd love to be educated.


Over and out.

If for some reason you have big sections where you need to quantize to hats or ride bell or something, do the same thing but use the hat or overhead tracks as your master timing track. That may not work as well as stuff with strong transient attacks like kick and snare, though, but I've had good results doing this most of the times I've done it (which is rarely

thanks for your input LT.

we are trying to create a step by step process to help people learn how to do overhead mics

yea im was just planning to invert what you said and try it that way (pray for me)

i get the feeling this will be tedious and possibly not worth the effort.

but i WILL report back on it.

I wish we had a person who had actually approached it from this angle to give us the minutia to look out for

EOE

we are trying to create a step by step process to help people learn how to do overhead mics

ok, everybody who has read any of your posts knows this.

this thread is silly. dude, you have to understand that there is no exacting way to do this. Each track is going to be different, therefore the steps to achieve this goal are going to be different as well. I have asked you for more information on the tracks and for screenshots but you have not responded. I bet you are great with the broken record refusal technique at parties.

Act 2 Scene 1 (the party scene)

Curtain opens and Dove(that's you) is now at a party standing in the corner of the room. He seems unaware of what is going on in the room around him. He also looks timid, as if he hasn't done much interacting with humans

Drug pusher:
"Hey Dove, wanna try some of this weed that I got earlier today?"

Dove:
"I'm here to have fun"

Drug pusher:
"This is fun kid"

Dove:
"I said, I'm here to have fun!"

Drug pusher:
"Ok, take it easy."

The Drug pusher exits the room stage right. Dove continues to stand there in the corner of the room still pretending to be completely oblivious to the happenings in the room.

Stripper:
"Hey Dove, wanna have some fun and mess around a little bit"

Dove:
"What I'm trying to do is have fun"

Stripper
"You saying I'm not fun?"

Dove(still you)
"I said I'm trying to have fun"





Step 1
Think for yourself and open your mind

Step 1.5
Hold my hand. (softer dove)

Step 2
click the overhead clip that you want to use audiosnap on and then hit f12.

Step 3(this is where it gets different for every clip)
Think about what it is you are trying to do. are there a lot of long cymbal crashes that are going to have weird transients built into them. are there a lot of markers with 3 dots after them. if so zoom in a little and see if they look like they are going to be a problem... i.e. transients that are in the middle of a waveform for no reason.

you may want to play a little or a lot with the threshold.

Step 4
make sure that you are in quantize mode and hit the quantize button. a screen will pop up and in the upper left corner choose the musical time that is best suited for your track. basic 1, 2, 3, 4 quarter. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and is eighth notes and so on. click ok

you should see the clip shift. It will align to whatever you have in the pool. if you don't have anything in the pool then it will automatically line up with the project tempo.

Step 5
listen to the clip.
Does it line up with the kick and the snare that were a "no brainer" to quantize? If not move the markers around so they do.

is it full of artifacts? if so....

could be the online rendering.

maybe you quantized to the wrong musical value (quarter note... eighth note)

could be the that fact that some of the transients got moved too far. (when the clip is highlighted, there are bright red transients. These have been stretched to the max. This is also covered in the videos)

you'll want to delete the bright red ones or move/reset them to get them sounding more natural. when trying to get the markers to line up here are some times to remember.

Places in the messure that the beat is going to line up (a lot of the time)
0:0:000
0:0:720
0:0:480


Well Dove, That's kinda it. Pretty much all in the videos except for the online and offline rendering. That might have even been in there. It's been a while since i've seen them.

quentin

Every time this issue comes up, the same thing happens that you're seeing. People who don't understand the issue and who never tried to quantize multi-tracked drums offer their suggestions, which never help.

Frankly, Sonar is terrible at this to the point where it's not even worth attempting IMO, but here's the step by step anyway.

1. Enable Audio Snap (AS) on the overheads
2. Zoom in close and manually move each transient marker so that it is not overlapping the start of any given beat. Manually add transients where needed. When done...
3. Add those transient markers to the pool (you'll now see gridlines over your project)
4. Turn on AS for all of your other drum tracks
5. Go in and MANUALLY align the transient markers on the direct mic channels to the overhead channels. In fact, you'll likely have to experiment as you may need to nudge the markers on the overheads forwards a bit as not to cut off the transient from the direct channel. This is because the sound is traveling further and will reach the overheads a little later than the direct mics. You'll need to factor this in. Either way, the idea is to make sure each transient marker a) comes just before the start of the note and is b) in the same exact place on all of your tracks to preserve the phase relationship. This should take you hours to do if not days.
6. Once you've got everything lined up as described in step 5, use the "Split at Transient Marker" (or whatever it's called) feature for all of your tracks. You'll now end up with several hundred tiny clips across the multiple tracks.
7. Now find the notes/beats that are off, select that beat across all of your drum tracks, and now quantize the Audio Clip(s) Start Time for that beat (or manually move it). Repeat this for every beat you need to do this for.

This will literally take you days to accomplish something Pro Tools can do easily.

Cakewalk, this is how this should work:

1. Group the clips that make up the drum track
2. Select the overheads track and enable AS
3. An option should appear that asks, "Apply Transients for Parent Track to All Grouped Tracks? Yes or No?"
4. Clicking yes should apply the transients from the overheads to all the grouped drum tracks. Those transients will now be linked/grouped so that any change I make to one, will apply for all tracks in the group (unless I manually indicate otherwise).
5. Manually adjust the transient start times so that you're not cutting off any hits in their direct channels and add them where needed. Once done...
6. Split At Transient Markers
7. Quantize the Audio Clip Start Time

While it's the same number of steps on paper, my proposed method would make this process take a 20 minutes as opposed to 20 hours just by updating how Clip Grouping and Audio Snap work and by having them work together.

...Or, less automatic, but still way better than the current methods

1. Allow clip selection grouping to create a new group after an existing group was split, then...
2. Group all the drums
3. Split only the beats that are slightly off time
4. Manually quantize only those beats using the Quantize/Audio Clip Start Times option

I'm really hoping from what Noel said in a different thread that the last option (i.e. changing how clip selection grouping works after a grouped clip has been split) will be in the 8.3 update.

ORIGINAL: lackluster strumming

Step 1
Think for yourself and open your mind

Step 1.5
Hold my hand. (softer dove)

Step 2
click the overhead clip that you want to use audiosnap on and then hit f12.

Step 3(this is where it gets different for every clip)
Think about what it is you are trying to do. are there a lot of long cymbal crashes that are going to have weird transients built into them. are there a lot of markers with 3 dots after them. if so zoom in a little and see if they look like they are going to be a problem... i.e. transients that are in the middle of a waveform for no reason.

you may want to play a little or a lot with the threshold.

Step 4
make sure that you are in quantize mode and hit the quantize button. a screen will pop up and in the upper left corner choose the musical time that is best suited for your track. basic 1, 2, 3, 4 quarter. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and is eighth notes and so on. click ok

you should see the clip shift. It will align to whatever you have in the pool. if you don't have anything in the pool then it will automatically line up with the project tempo.

Step 5
listen to the clip.
Does it line up with the kick and the snare that were a "no brainer" to quantize? If not move the markers around so they do.

is it full of artifacts? if so....

could be the online rendering.

maybe you quantized to the wrong musical value (quarter note... eighth note)

could be the that fact that some of the transients got moved too far. (when the clip is highlighted, there are bright red transients. These have been stretched to the max. This is also covered in the videos)

you'll want to delete the bright red ones or move/reset them to get them sounding more natural. when trying to get the markers to line up here are some times to remember.

Places in the messure that the beat is going to line up (a lot of the time)
0:0:000
0:0:720
0:0:480


Well Dove, That's kinda it. Pretty much all in the videos except for the online and offline rendering. That might have even been in there. It's been a while since i've seen them.

That method will not quantize the kick and snare, and will only adjust the timing in the overheads, thus knocking the overheads out of phase with the kick and snare.

1) Anything you do to one track in a multi-tracked group needs to have the exact same thing happen at the exact same time in all the other tracks to preserve the phase relationships. For instance, if the kick and snare in the overheads is in phase with the direct mics, then making any timing adjustments to only the overheads will knock them out of phase with the direct mics. So what you do to one, you must do to all, also (and equally important)...

2) Stretch should not be used, instead Split at the markers and quantize. Stretching will cause more artifacts than splitting. It will require some manual adjustment after the fact (some crossfades, slip editing, etc.), but it will yield more cohesive results.

Funkybot, I noticed that your post was in reply to mine (or was it this forum software that did that automatically?) and it seems to suggest that my method doesn't work and/or I haven't worked with multitracked drums with Audiosnap before. Definitely not the case for either point there.

I previously did a lot of work with a program called Beat Quantizer by Zero-X, and it worked very much along the same lines as how I'm doing it in SONAR: bounce down the tracks with core timing of what you want to do to a master track, set your markers up on that, add them to the pool and apply them to the other tracks so everything moves in sync, quantize the master and then make sure the pool gets quantized too (which will mover every track at exactly the same distance so no timing discrepancies occur).

I don't understand why you can't use the ProTools method you mentioned as the easier alternative with SONAR. Just going through the method step-by-step:

1. Group the clips that make up the drum track

Check, can be done in SONAR.

2. Select the overheads track and enable AS

Check, but I'd prefer to do a master timing track personally because where AS falls down is its detection routine for complex material like overheads - I'll get to that in a bit.

3. An option should appear that asks, "Apply Transients for Parent Track to All Grouped Tracks? Yes or No?"

OK, this is where you do it differently in SONAR. You right-click all of the other tracks at that point and do Audiosnap -> Apply AudioSnap Pool Transient Markers. That will copy those markers from your overheads to your other tracks in exactly the same place. Bear in mind that this will be slightly different timing to the close mics because of the distance, etc. but it'll all be exactly in the same place on all of the tracks, ie: keeping the phase relationships consistent.

4. Clicking yes should apply the transients from the overheads to all the grouped drum tracks. Those transients will now be linked/grouped so that any change I make to one, will apply for all tracks in the group (unless I manually indicate otherwise).

This is an extra step in SONAR, you need to Quantize To Pool for those tracks whenever you make a change to whatever your master timing track was, and in the case of this example, that was the overheads track.

5. Manually adjust the transient start times so that you're not cutting off any hits in their direct channels and add them where needed. Once done...
6. Split At Transient Markers
7. Quantize the Audio Clip Start Time

And for this part, I'd quantize just the master timing track (overheads in this example), and then go to all of the other tracks and quantize to pool so they align with the markers that moved when you quantized the master timing track.

Then when you're done, bounce to clips to apply the changes and use the offline stretching algorithm.

That's not a lot different, really, and just one more step you have to take into consideration - quantizing to the pool every time you make any timing changes to the master track. No splitting necessary either if you let it stretch the audio rather than cutting and cross fading.

Where I have a big beef with Audiosnap is mostly in its detection algorithm. Like a lot of people have mentioned around the forum, it can false trigger a LOT because it sees a bit of noise before the main transient and assumes that's attack of the hit when it's really not, or it adds extra weird markers during the tail of an event for no good reason but misses the attack of another one somewhere, seemingly at random places sometimes! It'd be nice if you could set it up similar to, say, compressor / expander controls where you can set the detection level, release times, attack times, more powerful threshold controls where you can reject stuff above or below a certain point, or have it even frequency dependant so you have control over what sound have preference for getting markers.

The other beef I have is the consistency of the audiosnap palette. OK, you can do most things in there but applying pool markers is a BIG IMPORTANT THING when you're doing multitrack drums and that's not even accessible from the palette at all - it's in a right-click menu item. That took me ages to get my head around why I couldn't assign each track to a pool because it looked like there was no option to do it because there was no button on the audiosnap palette to do it. The right-click stuff is great but it should also be right in your face to keep all of the controls in a central place.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's not perfect and I hope they improve on it for SONAR 9, but it's definitely usable and definitely similar to how you'd work in other hosts if you know the right steps.

EDIT: spelling

then he later uncovers his own failure.............

this is not a failure... I use it all the time and it works. Lord Tim says tomato I say tomato.(you know what i mean) This is merely a case of good cop/bad cop and how we gonna do this?

you are siding with him because he was nicer to you. I'm sure his method works well too. As i've said this whole time there are different ways to do this. it comes down to what is in your clip.

quentin

ok,

report your bugs and flaws and problems with audiosnap (overview)

because if we are discussing inadeaquate programming there is no need to argue about method

mine
i have phase problems between overhead tracks and the rest of the tracks unacceptable to paying clients
help file is vague
no fundamental workflow recommendation from manufacturer for multi track drums