12.5 Elastic Sound Quality

[dankin]

Elastic audio has never sounded all that great to me. I use it, but only for things that are tucked back in the mix. Anything that is at the front of the mix that I need to edit timing on, is done by hand, using Waves sound shifter with the TCE tool when time stretching is necessary. Which is a shame IMO, because I think elastic audio is implemented very well.

I would love to see a major update in sound quality for EA, but being that they can't even release a stable version of PT right now, I have my doubts of this ever happening. At least we can use 3rd party algorithms with the TCE tool.

[Park Seward]

Originally Posted by Niilo Nuori

Good work! Now let's hope Avid, one of these days, will act on this. Unless PT is total spaghetti code with no documentation, it should be very easy to find and change the API call(s) to iZotope algorithms/DLLs even by a new programmer. It is a question of priorities...

Wasn't PT completely re-written when it went 64 bit? Nice clean code?

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by Park Seward

Wasn't PT completely re-written when it went 64 bit? Nice clean code?

If only ;-)

I don't believe for one minute that the 64bit coders started with a blank sheet of paper and set about recreating Pro Tools in its entirety. Many chunks of code would simply be copied over, especially if there were no (perceived) performance issues/benefits. The main stuff written fresh would be anything designed to take advantage of the benefits of being a 64bit only app. Bear in mind that a single set of core code would be used for both Windows and OSX versions too.


Plus, we know from other threads that there are some bugs that were carried over from PT10 and even earlier.

[Niilo Nuori]

Originally Posted by nigelpry

If only ;-)

I don't believe for one minute that the 64bit coders started with a blank sheet of paper and set about recreating Pro Tools in its entirety. Many chunks of code would simply be copied over, especially if there were no (perceived) performance issues/benefits. The main stuff written fresh would be anything designed to take advantage of the benefits of being a 64bit only app. Bear in mind that a single set of core code would be used for both Windows and OSX versions too.


Plus, we know from other threads that there are some bugs that were carried over from PT10 and even earlier.

+1

Basically 64 bits provides you with pointers that allow the code to point to many more bigger chunks of data. If your program is type safe (properly abstracted code) then the conversion is mostly automatically done by compilers (compile with 64 bit switch on and check for errors). However, hard coded parts (assume 32 bit code), various fine tunings, tricks etc. need special attention and if the architecture is old & messy, code is not clean/commented/documented for new programmers then those are guaranteed sources of unexpected pain . Plus, the biggest change was probably the introduction of AAX.

[Stephen Bond]

+1 for improved Elastic Audio quality at least like we had back in 7.4

C'mon Avid, be market leaders!

Stephen

[jesele]

+1

Jesper

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by Niilo Nuori

+1

Basically 64 bits provides you with pointers that allow the code to point to many more bigger chunks of data. If your program is type safe (properly abstracted code) then the conversion is mostly automatically done by compilers (compile with 64 bit switch on and check for errors). However, hard coded parts (assume 32 bit code), various fine tunings, tricks etc. need special attention and if the architecture is old & messy, code is not clean/commented/documented for new programmers then those are guaranteed sources of unexpected pain . Plus, the biggest change was probably the introduction of AAX.

The moves to AAX, AAE (Avid Audio Engine) and AVE (Avid Video Engine) are likely to be where the bulk of the 64bit rewrite effort went ....

AND (surprise surprise)

appear likely to be linked with many of the issues we are dealing with.

Where other parts of the app have shown flakiness, that may well be due to some interaction with one of those engines that hasn't been properly resolved.

[someone]

holy ****, yeah, elastic audio in pro tools 12 is serious trash. doesn't do a damn thing it's supposed to. avid, asleep on the job and obviously resting on their laurels. bastards.

[midnightrambler]

Anyone here have any experience of the time and pitch stretching abilities of Ableton? I was working with a guy yesterday who was raving about it but I've never used it.

[Carl Kolchak]

Originally Posted by midnightrambler

Anyone here have any experience of the time and pitch stretching abilities of Ableton? I was working with a guy yesterday who was raving about it but I've never used it.

I used to use it for certain things in the past - it was choc full of artefacts, but in a very musical way.

When PT introduced EA, I began ReWireing Ableton Live less, and less - for reasons of convenience.

I have to admit that I did miss the character of Ableton's warping, but I felt it was really only of any use in musical applications, whereas PT's EA was far more suitable in a Post scenario, as well as being a lot more subtle with a wider variety of musical instruments (Ableton's warping felt more like an effect, albeit a pleasant one for certain applications).

All of that said, a lot of time has passed since then, and Ableton's warping quality could easily have far surpassed Elastic Audio, both in terms of subtlety, and the range of suitable applications.

But, for me, and the small amount of incidents where I need to use EA, it's just more convenient to keep it all in PT, and if EA itself fails, insert Melodyne.


I'd say demo Ableton Live for yourself, and see how you get along - in fact, if you have a registered version of PT 6, and probably PT 7 too, you should find you have a bunch of bonus 3rd party plug-ins available in your Avid account, amongst which is a Lite version of Ableton Live.

I'm pretty sure Ableton have maintained that Lite version for registered users, so that's a good option (full functionality including ReWire, but limited to something like 8 audio tracks, and some MIDI tracks).


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