Unable to commit elastic audio

[midnightrambler]

Not in front of my rig to try replicating this, but it’s been my experience over the years that Rhythm EA algorithm is just awful. Have you tried doing the same with Polyphonic to see if it does the same thing? (No point trying with X-Form with beats as the transients will be completely destroyed)

[TNM]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Not in front of my rig to try replicating this, but it’s been my experience over the years that Rhythm EA algorithm is just awful. Have you tried doing the same with Polyphonic to see if it does the same thing? (No point trying with X-Form with beats as the transients will be completely destroyed)

yeah it did it with poly..

rhythm algo is fantastic.. it's basically an auto slicer.. better on drums than anything cubase or ableton do automatically. Only logic equals it. No transient smearing. Sorry gotta disgaree there totally.

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by TNM

yeah it did it with poly..

rhythm algo is fantastic.. it's basically an auto slicer.. better on drums than anything cubase or ableton do automatically. Only logic equals it. No transient smearing. Sorry gotta disgaree there totally.

Yeah, in theory. Doesn’t work though does it.*

* actually it probably does normally work for simple speeding up of loops, but I’ve never got it to work properly with real drums, or slowing loops down.

I was talking about transient smearing for X-Form. Never had transient smearing for Rhythmic, just a whole lot of other nonsense like odd reversing bits, stretching that sounds awful, etc etc.

[skizzo]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Yeah, in theory. Doesn’t work though does it.*

* actually it probably does normally work for simple speeding up of loops, but I’ve never got it to work properly with real drums, or slowing loops down.

I was talking about transient smearing for X-Form. Never had transient smearing for Rhythmic, just a whole lot of other nonsense like odd reversing bits, stretching that sounds awful, etc etc.

Rhythmic elastic audio works great. I use it on four separate drum OHs even. And/or close mics depending if I am using mics or triggers/MIDI. I am not sure if you are speaking to just the commit function is lousy? That I have not utilized yet so I have no opinion on it. But moving warp markers around whether they were auto detected or inputted manually it works great for me. Speeding up or slowing down, or a combo too. Of course you can adjust too far and start to get artifacts but if you need to move that far, then you should be doing another take or a punch in

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by skizzo

Rhythmic elastic audio works great. I use it on four separate drum OHs even. And/or close mics depending if I am using mics or triggers/MIDI. I am not sure if you are speaking to just the commit function is lousy? That I have not utilized yet so I have no opinion on it. But moving warp markers around whether they were auto detected or inputted manually it works great for me. Speeding up or slowing down, or a combo too. Of course you can adjust too far and start to get artifacts but if you need to move that far, then you should be doing another take or a punch in

Well I guess it’s just my rubbish EA skills then. Or lack of patience maybe. As soon as stuff starts sounding duff, and that happens enough times, then I start exploring other methodologies.

As for “doing another take” or “punch in”, yeah that’s a good attitude, but not one befitting of 2018 technology. Sometimes we just want to change stuff after the fact because we can, y’know?

[skizzo]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Well I guess it’s just my rubbish EA skills then. Or lack of patience maybe. As soon as stuff starts sounding duff, and that happens enough times, then I start exploring other methodologies.

As for “doing another take” or “punch in”, yeah that’s a good attitude, but not one befitting of 2018 technology. Sometimes we just want to change stuff after the fact because we can, y’know?

All technology has its limits even in 2018. You cannot make a 5sec clip into a 50sec clip and expect no artifacts. So if adjusting the timing/tempo "in the box" creates problems then any engineer who is any decent is going to say fix it at the source, as in during tracking.

You very well can make huge changes but it's going to sound funny. All depends on your preferences, what you are trying to achieve, and if that is acceptable to yourself or your customer.

I am sure there are more professional tools for adjusting tempo/time which may be way more sophisticated and produce less or no artifacts, but this conversation is around elastic audio which unfortunately does have its limits

How big are the changes you are trying to make? I will have to review some sessions I have done but I would guess anything I alter is less than a 500ms change, and more like 95% of everything being altered is under 150ms. I notice things are off when for example the drummer is say only 40ms off from a downbeat with the rest of the band

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by skizzo

All technology has its limits even in 2018. You cannot make a 5sec clip into a 50sec clip and expect no artifacts.

Ah come on, your example is silly. Turning a drum fill into, say, a more tripletty feel shouldn’t be too much of an ask.

Originally Posted by skizzo

So if adjusting the timing/tempo "in the box" creates problems then any engineer who is any decent is going to say fix it at the source, as in during tracking

Not how records are made nowadays. A lot of decisions can be made well after the drummer has left the building. Who starts editing their drums while tracking? No one, that’s who. Time is money, and all that.

Originally Posted by skizzo

this conversation is around elastic audio which unfortunately does have its limits

That’s putting it mildly. “Not fit for purpose” is more how I would describe it.

Originally Posted by skizzo

How big are the changes you are trying to make?

Ideally, as big as I or the talent want to make them. I want to be the person who says, “Check this shît out!!” And definitely not the person who says, “sorry, computer says no”.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Yeah, in theory. Doesn’t work though does it.*

* actually it probably does normally work for simple speeding up of loops, but I’ve never got it to work properly with real drums, or slowing loops down.

I was talking about transient smearing for X-Form. Never had transient smearing for Rhythmic, just a whole lot of other nonsense like odd reversing bits, stretching that sounds awful, etc etc.

i just slowed down a drum loop i made myself, using VI's, then rendered to audio as a perfect 140 bpm loop, to 120, and sounds *flawless* with no intervention or moving the slices from my end. The rhytm algo rocks. Maybe not so much on acoustic drums then? Sorry to hear that. I will write something with EZ drummer at say 110, render as audio and try move it down to 90 and see how it fares and get back to you

[TNM]

All I can say midnightrambler.. is that if you think EA rhytm is bad, you should try changing the tempo of a loop in ableton or cubase to compare and prepare to be horrified.

or if you really want to hear drums destroyed, use the ztx algorithm motu rave about in DP 9,5, and change a drum loop just from 120 to 118 BPM lol.. and every transient is destroyed with "low frequency bumps" added for good measure. Smears.

Logic is the best at this, yes.

Cubase uses elastique which is awful for changing the tempo of drums..

Radius was absolutely fine till avid ruined it (X form).

Cubase i only have one option.. I select the hitpoints or markers, then select slice so it breaks it up into individual little slices then do a mass crossfade.. and i still can't get the results of PT or Logic but it's bearable.

Live is ok for a few % then gets terrible.

Samplitude uses elastique pro also so i presume it would also be just as bad.

Wavelab is terrible.

The one that Flux rave about, ircam? Is terrible on drums. Especially slowing them down. Slowing them down is the worst part of all of them.

So when i get to use rhythmic mode in EA, i guess even if it's by comparison, it's a sheer delight.. I can literally change tempo of my drums without them being destroyed.

BUT, it IS not fit for purpose in this particular case, cause rendering is broken.. 50.50, it works one project, won't the next.

As my video shows.

I have reproduced it in 6 out of the 10 new projects I created to test it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------HOWEVER, there is some solace at hand...

I used my noggin to think of a workaround, and i found it.

So all is not lost.

When someone is at render time and wants to disable EA..

Hit shift, alt and 3 at the same time.

This will simply "consolidate" the loop in place (whatever clips are highlighted)..But it's also happy doing just a simple 4 bar clip on it's own.. even though it's not consolidating it with other clips, it's like it "renders it in place", permanently. It works.

and then when you disabled EA, it won't even bring up the box to ask if you want to commit or revert.. it just disables and all is well.

Other caveat being you always have to be in realtime EA mode and not rendered, so more cpu, but the shift alt 3 workaround really does work.. I tried it 100 times in a row, 100% success.

So for the OP of this topic or anyone else having an issue, there's your workaround. And it's more or less instant anyway, even on my old macs.

[midnightrambler]

Hey TNM I just tried your example on my rig and couldn't get it to replicate. Working as expected here. Anyone else?

FWIW I've had weird things with Elastic before now which only a complete uninstall and reinstall could fix.

(N.B I'm on 2018.4 but OS 10.13.1)