Elastic Audio - X-Form - rendered/committed regions Q?

[midnightrambler]

Don't use X-Form with drums, your transients will smear. Rhythmic is definitely the best for drums, even though it doesn't really work that great. Personally I wouldn't go near any Elastic processing for drums (for reasons discussed here and here.) I often find "rhythmic" sounds better for bass too, depending on the part obviously.

[pfo]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Don't use X-Form with drums, your transients will smear. Rhythmic is definitely the best for drums, even though it doesn't really work that great. Personally I wouldn't go near Elastic for drums (for reasons discussed here.) I often find "rhythmic" sounds better for bass too, depending on the part obviously.

Yeah no doubt rhythmic sucks for cymbals. And kind of sucks in general actually. But man, I've gotten it really close using polyphonic, and just being careful not to quantize too much.

But the biggest breakthrough I've had has been using stereo tracks for anything that you want to move together -- ohs, rooms, toms, snare top/bottom, kick in/out, etc. No more phasing between left and right overheads. But, the whole event markers things is still confusing, and I'm guessing they are the key to making it work right.

I've used that one workflow that suggests deleting all event markers on everything except the kick and snare, quantizing to the kick and snare, then resetting event markers. However, if I've gone through meticulously adjusting the event markers, resetting them of course undoes that. So maybe just reset the markers on everything except the kick and snare. Well, sometimes that works, sometimes it produces it's own issues.

And what about event markers that get picked up in the overhead track, but not the room mics (say a snare buzz). Delete them altogether? Certainly there's no way of possibly identifying that transient in the room mics and placing a marker there. But then if you start deleting them, you gradually introduce issues. That's the problem. These differences are so subtle that you don't notice them until it's too late, and there are so many variables to the black magic that aren't explained anywhere that I've found, that I can't tell exactly which thing is working and which isn't.

I had been holding out hope that I could blame all these anomalies on not using X-form, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that's a mistake.

I might have to abandon EA and go back to BD+TCE, which is a major drag, but BD without TCE just creates those little moments of repeated audio, and that sucks.

[Sean Russell]

Midnight -

I use rhythmic on close mic drums and poly on rooms/overs/cymbals. I manually move each kick / snare in grid mode with the drums grouped. Most of the time, I'm not moving these very far I don't experience room tmi s jumping out of phase, and only just caught X-Form mucking up the SubKick on this one batch of sessions (I didn't record them; they were sent to me).

I have gone back and forth with X-Form and have found it to smear more then Poly/Rhythmic rendering. I always consolidate before I start, and ignore other analysis markers that I don't need to move. Generally the quality is more then acceptable (and quicker and less edit-intensive than BD). I've seen the EA engine get better, and I've certainly gotten better at doing it, which makes the artifacting a whole lot less discernible.

I would love to know if and maybe when X-Form will be multi-threaded and can move a little faster. It seems the OP has asked about this with no real response from DTS about the 'why' in the current workflow.

Turn on EA.
Make timing adjustments.
Turn on X-Form.
Wait
Turn off EA.

After version 8, BD got real tiresome.

[pfo]

Originally Posted by Sean Russell

Midnight -

I use rhythmic on close mic drums and poly on rooms/overs/cymbals. I manually move each kick / snare in grid mode with the drums grouped. Most of the time, I'm not moving these very far I don't experience room tmi s jumping out of phase, and only just caught X-Form mucking up the SubKick on this one batch of sessions (I didn't record them; they were sent to me).

I have gone back and forth with X-Form and have found it to smear more then Poly/Rhythmic rendering. I always consolidate before I start, and ignore other analysis markers that I don't need to move. Generally the quality is more then acceptable (and quicker and less edit-intensive than BD). I've seen the EA engine get better, and I've certainly gotten better at doing it, which makes the artifacting a whole lot less discernible.

After version 8, BD got real tiresome.

Yeah, BD also encourages over-quantization I think, and time-stretching to not have those little repeated moments of audio. I'm never thrilled with EA if I use the quantize feature; I like just dragging sloppy hits around here and there, and find that I can get away with very little stretching, and doing that stretching over longer sections most of the time.

So it seems that the best results come from placing the warp marker right before the start of the transient -- what about event markers? Is that what the "window" refers to -- how many ms on either side of the event markers are considered part of the transient? If so, exact placement of the event markers would be a little less important. I'd just like to see some real info on how the EA is analyzing the audio and where it likes to see analysis markers for the best results.

[ZEUSS]

I Still think that if Beat Detective could generate the analysis markers it would be killer. Select the section, get your trigger points and have it generate the analysis markers. Takes forever to place them by hand when BD locks right on.

[Bobby Peru]

Here is what I do:

1. Do all of my Elastic Audio editing in Polyphonic.
When all the markers are in the correct places and things sound exactly how I like them, I save this as: [song title].EA

2. Then I convert all the EA tracks from Polyphonic to X-Form and do a Save As: [song title].EAX

3. Lastly I commit all the edits to audio and remove X-Form. I do a final Save As: [song title].Rend - for rendered.

This way - I can go back to any one step and thing will be exactly how I left them.

I've used EA EXTENSIVELY since it was introduced. This is the most solid way I've found to work.

I can say working regularly on both 7.4 HD and 8.0 LE that EA in 8.0 is definitely better - markers go down in better places, etc.

Shane Olivo
The New Loud
Bobby Peru Recording
Milwaukee, WI

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by pfo

Yeah, BD also encourages over-quantization I think, and time-stretching to not have those little repeated moments of audio

I actually requested to digi (sorry, Avid) that BD be updated to include some time-stretching options, which would really help automatically remove those little "bumps" you get - the response I got was, "Have you tried EA?", thus completely missing the point.

Sean - I never thought of actually mixing the algorithms up like that, I thought that would introduce yet more anomalies. Will try giving it yet another whirl. Thanks.

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by Bobby Peru

Here is what I do:

1. Do all of my Elastic Audio editing in Polyphonic.
When all the markers are in the correct places and things sound exactly how I like them, I save this as: [song title].EA

2. Then I convert all the EA tracks from Polyphonic to X-Form and do a Save As: [song title].EAX

3. Lastly I commit all the edits to audio and remove X-Form. I do a final Save As: [song title].Rend - for rendered.

This way - I can go back to any one step and thing will be exactly how I left them.

I've used EA EXTENSIVELY since it was introduced. This is the most solid way I've found to work.

I can say working regularly on both 7.4 HD and 8.0 LE that EA in 8.0 is definitely better - markers go down in better places, etc.

Shane Olivo
The New Loud
Bobby Peru Recording
Milwaukee, WI

Well, I'll say it again then. Listen to your transients. They are ruined using X-Form. Completely smeared.

[Mark Dann]

The secret to getting X-Form to commit without taking forever is, 1- The track must contain only one region, and 2- there must be no crossfades. In other words, no edits of any kind. Then committing is actually quite fast. But you'd better save the original, because even X-Form will produce lots of ugly moments if the material is challenging enough. If you delete the original, it's just a question of time before you want to kill yourself.

That said, EA can be very hit or miss with harmonically complex material. Often Polyphonic sounds better than X-Form. I never do X-Form on drums or bass. I use X-Form only as a last attempt to get things to play nice. It's pretty much never really hits the mark for me. If I really want sonic integrity, I just do it the old way, which is cutting things up and doing TC/E with Waves SoundShifter or SoundToys Speed. Sonically, it's night and day better. Now if we could plug THOSE two algorithms into EA, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

[midnightrambler]

Originally Posted by Mark Dann

T If I really want sonic integrity, I just do it the old way, which is cutting things up and doing TC/E with Waves SoundShifter or SoundToys Speed. Sonically, it's night and day better. Now if we could plug THOSE two algorithms into EA, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Couldn't agree more.