[pfo]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

I'm going to answer as many of these as I can and try to get some time with the developer engineer to lay the rest out in more detail.

The reason this hasn't been answered before is simply that taking the developer off what they're working on to answer these questions presents some difficulties.

Totally understandable, thanks for taking the time to chime in.

#4 - This is why grouping is important. When grouped, those analysis markers apply to all grouped tracks so, while you may not have that marker in the overheads, the markers on other tracks will 'warp' the overhead at that same marker, keeping everything phase aligned.

#5 - Same situation applies as #4

The thing is, my drum tracks are always grouped. I would never perform an edit on any multi-mic instrument without them grouped. And with regard to #5, if you have an analysis marker at the start of a transient in the overheads, and somewhere in the middle of the transient on the room mics, even if they do both apply to all tracks, wouldn't that cause odd results when you warp? I mean, that essentially means the same transient is represented in multiple locations in each track. And for that matter, close mics vs overheads, the markers will always be in different locations. I always assumed the point of the markers was to say "here's transient x in the snare track, and here's where transient x is represented in the overhead track." It seems odd to apply both markers to each track. But then maybe I'm not fully understanding analysis markers.

But here's the other thing. When I started pairing my paired and stereo mics onto stereo tracks, 90% of my phase issues disappeared. With overheads on mono tracks, I'd often get an analysis marker showing up on the left channel but not the right, or have them showing up in slightly different locations, and every time that happened, there would be weird swishing across the stereo field. That suggests that the markers don't actually apply to every track, as it certainly sounded like each channel was being warped slightly differently. Putting them together on stereo tracks forces EA to treat them as one track and choose one spot for the analysis marker, and now my only phase issues are from one set of mics to the next, not within a pair. That's why I was experimenting with using quad or 5.1 tracks for the drums.

#6 - After analysis, just select the region (you may have to change back to regions view if the region is not already selected), copy, then select the region you want to apply it to, switch to analysis and paste.

Thank you! I hadn't tried selecting the region in waveform view, only clicking on it in analysis view and pressing apple+a, thinking it would select all markers, but it would never let me copy them. I'll give this a shot tonight. So is that a good way to work -- analyzing key tracks like kick and snare, and then simply pasting those markers on the other tracks? Seems like, while helpful, it might not be the ultimate solution.

#9 - It looks like what you need to do here is place a warp marker before and after where the actual audio starts and ends in the region, to 'bound' the audio with the marker. So you would place a marker at 4:20.655 for all those regions (before the beginning of the audio and with the marker at the exact same point on all related tracks) and another at the end, just past where the audio ends on the track. When you move a warp marker, it moves relative to the warp markers around it - if there's no 'bounding' warp marker, it's going to move everything to the right or left of the marker (assuming you're using the 'shift' key to constrain movement between the markers directly to the left and right of the marker you're moving). Again, grouping is a great way to keep things aligned - the marker on one track will warp all other tracks in the group even if the other tracks don't have a marker at the same point.

Right, I understand bounding the warp with extra warp markers. But what you can't see is that this is one of several edits throughout the track, so there are warp markers before and after this edit. I understand that warping a given spot will naturally cause everything between the warp markers to shift slightly, but that's one of the main reasons I'd like to use EA instead of Beat Detective. I want the timing to shift gradually in a natural way, I just want them to remain phase coherent. But if the offset between the close mic snare and the overhead snare changes, then there's no way their phase relationship could stay the same. This may just be a limitation of EA, but I'm hoping it has something to do with the window size, decay time, or some other parameter I don't fully understand.

One thing I would suggest is checking out Kenny Gioia's Groove3 tutorials on EA - he knows his stuff and his tutorials are an excellent way of seeing a 'real world' example of what's going on, as opposed to reading it on a page...

I've seen those, both the PT7 and PT8 versions, and he certainly has some helpful tips. However (and this is not meant in any way to take away from Kenny's work or talents), I really didn't feel like the results sounded natural. Granted, listening through the video is maybe not the same as hearing it in the room, but I think I remember hearing all the usual phase artifacts and stuff, and assuming he was going to address it at some point, but he never did. Or maybe I missed that section? Even so, for the work he was doing in the video, a loud pop/rock track where the drums really aren't necessarily even expected to sound super natural and organic, that's probably not as much of an issue, so it really could come down to the style of music.



To me, the best reason to use EA instead of BD is to avoid over-quantizing. I really love how I can change just a few errant hits here and there, and everything leading up to and away from that spot will adjust gradually over time until the next warp marker. And it's extremely simple to experiment with warping different hits to achieve the most natural result. It really is an amazing tool, and I'd like to believe that with a full understanding of the plugin parameters, it can work on multitrack drums.

Any insights on question #1? That actually applies to much more than EA -- Beat Detective, tab to transient, etc. Is it a problem that EA constantly places analysis markers in the middle of transients? Obviously, placing a warp marker in that location is a bad idea, but what effect does the exact location of the analysis markers have? Is it even important? Are they like Beat Detective event markers, in that they determine the precise spot that will get cut (or warped, in this case), or are they just meant to mark the general location of the transient, and we're supposed to adjust the plugin parameters to fit?

Thank you for your help, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to clear some of this stuff up. Like I said, I think EA is an amazing tool with a lot of potential, I'm just certain many of us don't fully understand how to realize it's full potential.