Will elastic audio ever get fixed?

[RyanC]

The 2018 version here...

Just wondering if anyone has any inside info on EA, and if avid is aknowledging that it has problems or not.

I was working on some drums the other day and laughing at how epicly bad it is, or rather can be. Sometimes it works, and then for no reason the next bar doesn't work at all...some sounds are reversed and with rendered processing on you can see how incapable it is (can be) at moving grouped tracks together. In comparison TCE of the trimmer tool works, and the same function in logic or S1 are much better than PT...

It would be nice to get this feature fully functional some day.

[albee1952]

Tough call, but the issues I have with EA are not the same as yours In any case, EA is almost NEVER a good choice for drums(way too many ways of messing with the phase across multiple signals). Beat Detective is made for drums(although it can fix other stuff, to some degree). Use the right tool for the job at hand

[RyanC]

I get your POV there, but flex time in logic or bend warping in S1 both work pretty well for drums...

For me the same problem bthat makes it not work for drums, which is the inability to warp grouped tracks together, is what makes it not work well for most things.

If you put the mode to rendered you can see how wrong it is. It will move the transient of one track completely differently then the next.

BD is a good tool when it's right, but I find it doesn't work as well, and certainly not as effeciently, for small things that need fixing. I tend to use it when I'm going to BD the whole drums track.

Generally it's only PT users who think a flex/bend time thing doesn't work for drums, because it does work much better in other daws (within reason).

[BScout]

Have no problem warping grouped tracks together. I pick my master track and put my warp markers there and adjust and all the grouped tracks follow. Internal of the group, they all stay together.

Don't understand the different transients issue.

[leftalive]

It certainly doesn't appear to be very high on the list of things to fix.

My guess is that a relatively small percentage of us use EA extensively, and thus it isn't really something they feel compelled to focus on. I don't think it was ever meant to signal a change in direction, as far as how they see the majority of us using the software over the foreseeable future, but perhaps was more of an acknowledgment of the rise in popularity of Ableton and the warping functions of other DAWs, amongst a certain portion of the user base.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that even those of us who use it a lot don't necessarily use it in the same ways. (I hardly ever warp grouped tracks, but I warp the tar out of individual sounds when doing sound design.)

The fact that you can (sort of) do Ableton like things with it, and that it works just well enough (debatable, I know) for simple drum editing and the like, leads me to believe that it's probably about as good as it's ever going to get. Algorithms are expensive to license, and the coding of something like this has to be pretty complex (right? I'm guessing here...).

I mean, they still haven't seen fit to lick the myriad problems on the MIDI side of things, and I doubt EA is higher on the list than that would be.

The frustrating thing is that by adding something like EA to Pro Tools, Avid are, at the very least, agreeing that there is an avenue there to be explored, in terms of alternative methods of production. EA allows us to do things in PT we never really could before (without a lot of expensive 3rd party software), and it seems as though they (Avid) opened the lid to Pandora's box and then just, noped out.

If these Avid Customer Association polls I keep voting in are any indication, they don't seem to be in much of a hurry to fix the EA issues, or anything related to it.

[RyanC]

Originally Posted by BScout

Have no problem warping grouped tracks together. I pick my master track and put my warp markers there and adjust and all the grouped tracks follow. Internal of the group, they all stay together.

Don't understand the different transients issue.

So it works for me like that about 70% of the time.

What I get is A) the polyphonic mode is inconsistant with maintaining phase. IE I have 2 kick mics, one inside and one on the res head. With poly, each hit sounds different and clearly there is low end cancelation on some. This will be even in sections that were not edited. Note that it only happens once editing starts...

B) Rhythmic mode will keep the phase allignment much better, but then will introduce random artifacts that sound reversed (as in wav flipped backward in time).

And then ultimately C) when it starts to glitch out it really looses it. This is when I can put it in the rendered mode and clearly see that the transients are not moving together. If I compare to TCE mode of the trimmer, the move how they should (provided that EA is disabled again).

The best results I can get are to group all the drums, adjust the sensitivity to 0%, suspend group, adjust kick/snare tracks up top ~90% or so, keep all close mics set to rhthmic, and then set overhead and room mics to poly. Then re-enable groups and then begin editing.

After all that, when it starts to glitch, I will commit everything that has worked up to that point and then re-import the 2nd part after the glitch and go from there. But sometimes it's just hell bent on glitching in a certain section


For me, the motivation to use this over BD is when I don't want everything gridded all the way down. A band playing to a click might rush a few bars and being able to warp that back, and play with it a bit, and continue to play with it as build up tracks enables a different workflow than BD...

[RyanC]

Originally Posted by leftalive

The frustrating thing is that by adding something like EA to Pro Tools, Avid are, at the very least, agreeing that there is an avenue there to be explored, in terms of alternative methods of production.

Yeah, at this time I'm finding most bands I'm working don't want to be locked all the way to the grid. Even a lot of electronic stuff is starting to have a bit of a looser feel...

In terms of the swings of the industry, it's bad timing for Avid to abandon this IMO. BD can of course work not completely locked down, but it's very tedious to tinker a bit with the timing as you build up your tracks. This is what I run into a lot. Also if EA worked correctly a ~50% quantize of just kick and snare hits is often a great place to start relatively quickly, then delete the points that are off and tweak from there. But typically the more it's engaged overall in a session, the more issues it starts to have (for me at least).

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by RyanC

Just wondering if anyone has any inside info on EA, and if avid is aknowledging that it has problems or not.

It would be nice to get this feature fully functional some day.

Next year.......be sure to renew your subscription!!

[Stephen Bond]

Elastic Audio is at the core of many modern work flows. In this respect Avid should be leading the way. As it is, EA good and bad.

Certainly the audio quality is sounding dated. Many report it was actually better back in PT 7 or 8? Also, there are some operating foibles. Any improvements would be more than welcome.

Stephen

[AlexLakis]

Vote here! Comments contain links to threads here at the DUC with sound tests, info straight from Avid and Izotope developers, etc..

http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/...a-tab-comments