Absolutely critical Elastic Audio Z Plane Elastique Bug

[TNM]

Hi, if you have any material that starts right on the beat, and you enable Elastique Pro, and you change the project tempo even one bpm, i.e. elastic audio is stretching the content, then at the start of the audio clip there will be a nasty pop noise. Only right on the very first transient, and then the rest of the clip plays fine. However if you copy and paste that clip, every time it gets to the next copy it will do it again, effectively making the elastique audio algorithm useless right now, and that's by far the best overall algorithm.
The issue is that it RENDERS with this distorted nasty pop.

This is truly critical and needs to be fixed beyond asap as this means that one of the best new features in recent years is broken.

Change the algorithm to any of Avid's built in ones, pop gone. Change the algorithm to the offline Izotope X Form, gone. (but x form sounds terrible on transients).

I tried a little something to see how deep this bug went.

I imported a new kick drum loop onto an audio track without elastic audio enabled. It was an 125bpm loop and project is 134 BPM. I used the offline TCE trim tool with Waves sound shifter as the algorithm to trim it to the perfect bar, therefore the original audio file has now destructively been changed to the project tempo, and waves soundshifter is perfectly ok for this task on transient material as long as you are speeding the source clip up, not slowing it down. So I've done this right, all new processed audio file, in case someone tells me it was a bad audio file or something.

Now, enable elastic audio and the Elastique algorithm, absolutely no problems.

Change the project tempo from 134 BPM to 132 (for example), and POP! Audio is in perfect time to the tempo but at the start of the clip that nasty pop is back. Change elastic algorithms and all is fine with regards to there no longer being a pop at start of clip.

The thing that gets me is that if it was just an issue when starting playback, it would do it once and then not keep doing it at the start of every copy. There is nothing wrong with the audio, obviously, as we have discovered with both destructive TCE processing and using any other real time algorithm besides Zplane Elastique Pro, that the audio is clean and 100% pop free.

This really, REALLY needs to be fixed and can not wait till 2024.9 or whatever, it has to be done in a hot fix like there was a hotfix interim release for a previous 2024 release. Same thing needs to be done here.

Also, since almost all other DAWs use elastique pro and none of them exibit this issue on the exact same audio file, even with extreme stretches, this absolutely concludes that it's a pro tools bug.

The workaround currently is to 1) use destructive processing with Soundshifter or the much better Pitch n Time Pro if you have them, or 2) Use the Avid Rhythmic Elastic algorithm for drums, which can work well on some material or 3) Use X form offline IF it's a vocal or melody, which I would do anyway or 4) Use Elastique Pro is there is no audio on the first beat, i.e. right at the start of the clip.

[TNM]

I have tried it now on a variety of audio files and it's 100% repeatable and even does the click in the workspace browser preview. If I set the elastic algo to rhythm in preferences, the click disappears and in workspace preview also! However that only previews well with drum loops. With melodic material it's all out of time. So choose polyphonic, but that has wack timing with drums. Elastique is the one that works for perfect preview timing on any source, however it adds the click both in preview and in elastic mode on the main PT page as described above. I haven't found a way to eliminate it other than silencing an entire beat of the first bar. But what good is that?

Cutting? That won't work either cause if I cut a selection from the clip to make a new loop out of it, it will start popping there too.

I am going to try change my import options where I have convert to project sample rate and 32 bit float on import, however I can't see how that would be the issue, but I will try!

By the way, X form can work quite well in audiosuite mode as it has transient control, much better than offline. Maybe the solution for now is (and this only works for projects that are at one tempo from start to finish) is to do offline destructive stretch for everything.

I don't know what to do as I rely on stretch so much, and the Bitwig workaround doesn't work either as per the other topic as that's just for browser preview, once importing the file into pro tools I need to use Pro Tools' own elastic audio.

Is there any way to get support to prioritise something?

I mean for me, I literally can't really use the app right now, and I am not exaggerating. The reason is that although I create all my own melodies, basslines and chord progressions, I can't do drums, could never do drums and don't think I ever will be able to as I've tried. My ex writing partner used to play the drums in manually, single sound by sound till he layers an amazing all original drum sequence, but I am hopeless at this. And believe me I have tried, as we parted ways over a decade ago. I did everything else and he did rhythms, but boy was he good at it. So I rely on drum loops and layering percussion loops, as well as of course re ordering them and mangling them, and I do make my own kick drums in Kick 2 or Metrum. That, I do. Just the sequencing of the percussion is my issue.

I really need a working elastique. When Avid added that algorithm, that was what tipped me over to make PT my personal one and only DAW for my own projects, and now it's a disaster.

Maybe it won't do it on Mac, I am on Windows atm, but I am too sick to go to the studio room and test it right now, so I am in my bedroom on the laptop.

Any ideas are welcome, anything. Nothing is too silly or not worth trying, so please if you have a thought, share it. I appreciate it, sincerely.

[skylar_battles]

I just did the following and did not get a pop and the beginning of the loop during the process or when finished

1. Drag 125 BPM Hat loop in from Splice
2. Enable elastiquePRO and right click and choose "conform to tempo" (Session Tempo 120)
3. Set track to ticks, and change project tempo to 130 BPM
4. Command Control click on the algorithm name to change to rendered processing
5. Set elastic audio to "None" and and hit return to "Commit"

I cant imagine the reason that I'm not having trouble is because I'm on Mac though…

[TNM]

Originally Posted by skylar_battles

I just did the following and did not get a pop and the beginning of the loop during the process or when finished

1. Drag 125 BPM Hat loop in from Splice
2. Enable elastiquePRO and right click and choose "conform to tempo" (Session Tempo 120)
3. Set track to ticks, and change project tempo to 130 BPM
4. Command Control click on the algorithm name to change to rendered processing
5. Set elastic audio to "None" and and hit return to "Commit"

I cant imagine the reason that I'm not having trouble is because I'm on Mac though…

Might be a bug with the PC version.
I can not avoid the issue no matter what I do, so....
I guess I need to make a video of it.

By the way, thanks heaps for doing that:)

[skylar_battles]

I experienced the issue today.

I tried to use elastiquePRO to "conform to tempo" a loop that I got from Splice and got the unexplained pop from the algorithm at the very beginning.

So same on Mac and PC… It's just hard to know when to expect it. Definitely a bug.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by skylar_battles

I experienced the issue today.

I tried to use elastiquePRO to "conform to tempo" a loop that I got from Splice and got the unexplained pop from the algorithm at the very beginning.

So same on Mac and PC… It's just hard to know when to expect it. Definitely a bug.

There you go, and it hasn't been happening to me on my latest project but I can't use elastique without it on another project.

Ok it's obvious I am going to have to go through traditional support avenues as the moderator that offered to help me here via PM has disappeared (so to speak, nothing personal against them meant by that), so I will included the ADC timing bug and this, and I'd appreciate if you also write to them about it.

I am surprised no one else is noticing it, but there does have to be audio right when the clip starts for it to happen.

And if you change to any other algorithm you will see the issue instantly disappears. And this is NOT a zplane thing, this is an Avid thing, as all DAWs use z plane and none of the others have the issue.

As someone who very rarely works at OG tempo, this has made PT a bit of hell for me lately, especially since X-form smears transients and is not real time.

The only solution I can come up with for now is to use the rhythm algorithm for anything percussive, which is a beat slicer therefore has no actual degradation to sound quality other than splicing sounds in the wrong spot which are not suited to slicing, therefore it really is only for drums/percussion, and x form for everything else. The issue with that is that Elastique is better for bass than X form as it doesn't smear transients or get phasey. The X form pluign can be used to avoid that as it has transient control, however that is not present in the elastic audio version.

I am just about to do a project with dynamic tempo changes and hoping x form works in that scenario. I don't mind if it needs a few minutes to process it offline, as long as it can actually support multiple changes in a project.

This is why Elastique by ZPlane is so good though. It's actually, by far, NOT the best quality time stretch in the world or anything, but it's the best overall compromise for true real time stretch and pitch, that maintains transients well and is very fast on CPU.
So we really need this fixed.

I am bummed it is happening on Mac too, I was hoping that would be my saving grace. I first noticed it in 2024.3 so I wonder if that's when the bug was introduced.

For me, it's 70% this issue happens, 30% it doesn't. YMMV.

[TNM]

Ok so bad news, X form does not work with tempo ramps. It just stays at the same speed if it's enabled on an EA track.

One off tempo changes do work, but I haven't yet worked out the minimum spacing needed between each change before it will activate again.

So far a change every bar seems OK so I am trying to work out how small I can go.

Smooth sliding changes can not be done though. You'd actually be better off doing those in the audiosuite plugin or pitch n time's AS plugin if you have that, as that's the best quality TS on the market.

At first, in a project where elastique pro was pop free, the pops came back at the start of tempo changes. However, now they have disappeared again after a few algorithm changes and back to elastique pro.

Therefore, although this is a major bug audibly, it *may* be a MINOR one to fix, because there is no bug in the elastique itself, rather something that is causing a real time obstruction, that if found and eliminated will solve it. Nothing is wrong code wise with the algorithm, and if it were, that would have been a much bigger issue IMO.

I am also going to randomly do sequences and keep a record of them via screencast, to see what works in removing the issue in a project once it has presented itself. For example I am not entirely sure what I did above, but the pops were egregious and now it's clean as anything, and I did something in between including going to x form and back to elastique and other things I already forgot the exact sequence of, so I will try work out a reproducible "fix", or, series of events to perform, in the meantime.

My worry is that nothing I have ever reported to Avid has been fixed, in nearly 7 years now, so THAT'S what gets me, and I hope they have a better consistency with fixing bugs these days.

Edit, actually, the VI losing midi connection seems to be fixed, so one of my bug reports has been fixed.

Imagine loving a DAW so much that you choose it over anything else, but feeling the DAW is fighting you to NOT use it because it has showstoppers for your particular workflow. That's how I feel with PT, but I am very stubborn and don't want to leave it and want these things fixed.