Beat Detective and Elastic Audio Help!

[Johnrg]

Guys,
I have seven drum tracks that I am trying to tighten up.
I have spent the last five hours trying to use Beat Dective and Elastic Audio but I just can't get it to happen.
Beat detective gives me random pops and clicks and no matter what I do or try, I have tried collection mode but it seems no better. I can get it 95% right but there is always a problem somewhere on the track that I can't ignore.
Elastic audio has no clicks and pops but to my ears really washy and phasey, especially when there's alot of cymbal work.
Can anyone give me some pointers on how they use these time correction tools on multitrack drums?
I know some of you guys use these alot - where am I going wrong?
Help.
JG

[danander11]

Originally Posted by Johnrg

Guys,
I have seven drum tracks that I am trying to tighten up.
I have spent the last five hours trying to use Beat Dective and Elastic Audio but I just can't get it to happen.
Beat detective gives me random pops and clicks and no matter what I do or try, I have tried collection mode but it seems no better. I can get it 95% right but there is always a problem somewhere on the track that I can't ignore.
Elastic audio has no clicks and pops but to my ears really washy and phasey, especially when there's alot of cymbal work.
Can anyone give me some pointers on how they use these time correction tools on multitrack drums?
I know some of you guys use these alot - where am I going wrong?
Help.
JG

OK, I assume that you are grouping the drum tracks together BEFORE doing any EA editing to them..

I now that a lot of guys here swear by Beat Detective, but other than trying it out to see how it functioned, I have never used it.. I just use EA. Place a warp marker at the begining and end of whichever track you want to slave the others to, then start moving transients. You can manipulate things as you wish and as long as you recorded OK you should be able to move things around (resonably) without phasing issues..

Short of that, Kenny Gioia has a good DVD that shows how to go about multi-track editing using Beat Detective and EA.

[twix]

First off, EA is worthless with drum editing, unless it's a small or quick fill. When using Beat Detective try just doing 8-32 bars at a time. Make sure the the region your going to edit is exacting on the beat of the bars, I have never used collection mode. After it analysis's the section, scroll though and just double check the markers are lined and listed correctly and add or delete markers as need be. Use a 3-5 ms pre-edit buffer. Try using 75-100% conform strength (I personally use 87%). Use 1-2 ms crossfade when doing fill & crossfades. You should go though all the edits zoomed in and make sure the regions & crossfades are good and no sections got cut off, which might be the clicking your hearing. If the drummer is really bad, it's probably best to cut & paste together parts, edit and then copy and paste as much as you can. Hope this helps.

[danander11]

Originally Posted by twix

First off, EA is worthless with drum editing, unless it's a small or quick fill. (snip)

Interesting.... I've only been at this for about a year or so with any regularity.. but I've never seem to have had many issues with EA at all.. It's one of the things I like best about PT. And being a drummer I've had occasion to do some editing on bad parts, etc...

Why is it that you aren't so fond of EA for drums? (serious question here). I haven't used Beat Detective much but maybe I should spend a bit more time with it?

Thanks!

[twix]

I like EA, but because of the phasing issues with multiple tracks, it's not very functional for certain things, like drum editing. Quick parts, mono sources or needing to extend notes, it works pretty well. Once in awhile I will edit tiny bass parts with it too.

[danander11]

Originally Posted by twix

I like EA, but because of the phasing issues with multiple tracks, it's not very functional for certain things, like drum editing. Quick parts, mono sources or needing to extend notes, it works pretty well. Once in awhile I will edit tiny bass parts with it too.

Cool. Thanks for the answer. I haven't noticed the phasing, but I've run across similar comments before.. Guess I need to experiment a bit more, and then spend more time learning BD.

[tha]-[acksaw]

I use EA a great deal on drums. With cymbals and without. If you use it right, it works great. No phase problems and such. I find that EA not working properly comes down to operator error, 95% of the time. The other 5% are people trying to fix things that just can't be fixed with EA, TC/E or otherwise. So it would be time for a rerecord.

To the credit of anyone who does have problems with it, I would hardly say is correct use it intuitive. I took me a great deal of reading and research to figure out how to make EA work properly. I look at this as a flaw on Digi's part, but to their credit, they make one heck of a tool.

If you follow a few guide lines from the get go, and take the time to really understand the why and how of things you wanna fix, instead of just hitting Quantize and expecting magic, EA works like a charm. Not saying thats what anyone is doing. Just a few thoughts.

[Johnrg]

Thanks for the comments,
OK, so could you please give me so step by steps on EA.
What I have been doing is:
Group tracks
Open event window
quantise to 1/16th
Go through and fix up obveios mistakes
What else can you do, especially to sort phasey issues?
JohnG

[tha]-[acksaw]

Grouping track is a must. Make sure you do this before you Enable EA, that way it looks at them as a single performance instead of a bunch of different ones.

The next thing is, work in small sections only fix 8 or 16 bars at a time. If you use this method your frustration level will be minimized greatly. Now that you have your drums tracks grouped and EA is on all tracks you need to get into the diry work.

Lets say your gonna start EAing the first 16 bars of your song. Lets just say its an intro. First thing is first. Drop a warp marker at the beginning and end of the 16 bars you want to fix. What I do is drop one just before the first downbeat and then drop one after the first downbeat of the next 16 bars you want to mess with. To drop a warp marker use the windows key and click with your mouse. Make sure you drop the markers before the transient starts. I know is sounds like a minor thing, but I can't tell you how many time I edited something thinking I was only chanigng as I went along, just to get at the end of the song and find out that every time I moved a marker, all the others ones after changed as well. If you drop makers outside your working area before you start, you can make sure that you only change audio within that section. An all together better way is to cut up your drums 16 bars at a time, and have those alternating bars on different tracks. Once all the EAing is done you can then commit, or bus the audio out as you see fit, then edit all the pieces together. Of course this requires a lot more attention, for instance, if there were cymbal crashes in certain parts you might need to extend your cut sections to include the time it take for the cymbal to die out, if per chance it came very close to the end of one of the 16 bars.

So, know you have warp markers on either side of the part you want to edit. Highlight across the 16 bar section, within the warp markers you added. Then use Alt+0 to open your Quantize Dialogue, and Apply. Now go through that section and see what needs fixing. I gotta be honest, I have had much better luck avoiding the Quantize and just doing it all by hand. I know its much more time consuming, but very worth the time. If you find that after quantizing your still hearing phase problems and such, its probably best to rerecord the performance. EA will not work magic.

Another thing that helps out for me. Sometimes when working with cymbals, I will cut all the drums parts with cymbal crahses out to another track. Then I will use a different algorythem or change the setting on the one I'm using (usualy Rmythic). The cymbals can get touchy, but if you mess around a little, you can ususaly get some very nice and realistic results. Also, another thing you can do. Use you overhead mics to house the real life of the kit, and cut up all the DI mics so they only sound the drum that its micing. Basicaly eliminating the empty spaces where the other drums are bleeding into the DI mics. You can also use a Gate to make this happen. I just feel I get better results if I do it by hand. I often find that phase problems on drum edits were do to the phase of the DI mics. Maybe you're seeing a trend here. EA works better when you take the time to do it yourself. Leaving important decisions up to a computer is often not the best route to take.

If you find you still have problems, I would consider rerecording. Or you could use the oldskewl method of Cut then TC/E, Cut then TC/E. Sometimes I find TC/E works a bit better if you have some real bad stuff to fix.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that EA will work like midi. That anything should be possible. I have seen someone spend 30 minutes trying to fix a cymbal that hits a little early before the downbeat and kick drum. They wanted the kick and cymbal to hit on time and it just wasn't gonna happen. There was too much inbetween the cymbal and kick to make anything sound real. And a rerecord was needed.

Hope some of this helps. Take the time to mess around with EA. One day you will wake up and just know how to use it, and the limits of its use.

Nick

[DigiTechSupt]

This topic has been covered in extensive detail here on the DUC - you may want to search for 'elastic audio' and read through the threads that I've posted in, as I've covered how and why phase issues occur with EA and how to avoid them.

I'll work on getting a sticky that covers all the best instructional threads on this topic when I get back into the office.