Elastic secrets? Why does it allude me?

[abt]

Many a time I've used elastic audio to quantized audio, occasionally successfully, but for the most part I get too many artifacts. I thought I'd give it a go in PT10 as I not used it for a while, doesn't seem and different from previous versions.

I was testing it on some clean electric guitar, a few arpeggiated chords, nothing too complicated. The analysis markers are for the most part pretty well placed and the resulting timing after being quantized is good. The sound is the problem, too many artifacts, mostly the burbling sound. I'd really love to use it because it's so quick and easy.

I've tried mono, poly, and rendering with xform which helps a lot. Anyone got tips for me?

[filosofem]

Logically, recording tighter to a click track yields better results.

[abt]

That's a fact, but there's always times we need to quantize. I've seen lots of videos on ea but it doesn't work as well for me.

[soybalm]

I ended up slicing and dicing some tracks and just used used crossfades all over the place. the fidelity was way better but I ended up keeping most of the original version and just sliced in some key places where the tempo takes off on one particular tune. I used it on a real 'trashy' roots tune and it worked out fine because a burble doesn't matter to the client or his audience, just other engineers. ;-) It works great on drum tracks if you have ever watched the Phil Jackson demos, you'd know what I mean but what I would do for long sustained chords is to use a 3rd party like waves time and pitch shift. That works great but I end up using lots of trial and error but that's because I haven't learned the product well yet. It is not as friendly and each process means a new region or clip so you have to do your own crossfades. I didn't mind though, I got it done.

Update: I saw some of you talking about x-form. I was using elastic to quantize various parts of some tracks. I was getting some weird artifacts as I expected but really got some pitch warble on a lead guitar track when just quantizing the time. I decided to try x-form. It was like night and day! Amazing! I still left much of the track alone but you really couldn't hear any tone change when comparing rendered clips to natural clips.
This is what's great about this forum. Very few stones get left unturned here.

[danander11]

Like Soy, I almost always edit and fade.. When I do need to stretch or squeeze something, I use pitch-n-time pro. Much better.

[abt]

Yeah, I do the chop slip edit method. It would be nice if ea worked better because it's so fast.

[Stig Eliassen]

IMO, the main problem with polyphonic audio, is the inevitable phase/warble/gurgle artifacts you get when you expand and compress a sound source that covers a wide frequency range. We need linear phase EA.

[PD-John]

I do the chop and fade thing too, haven't had much success with elastic audio. Though I do find elastic pitch quite useful to fix minor vocal errors.

[Dizzi45Z]

I agree with a lot of others here.

1. Elastic Audio does create quite a few artifacts, especially on polyphonic material such as piano, electric guitar and other similar instruments. More percussive instruments such as drums and percussion work much better with it as long as they arent too out of time.

2. Except for percussion and drums where I use Rhythmic Mode, I almost always use Polyphonic mode. Xform is sometimes better but takes way too long to render at times. With the drum set, I use Rhythmic mode on close mics and polyphonic mode on room and overhead mics. This avoids weird artifacts on sustained cymbals.

3. You get way better results if you delete analysis markers where they aren't needed. I will often go into clip properties right after a clip is analyzed for EA and change the detection settings to somewhere around 96%. That option is funny because there is a huge difference in the amount of analysis markers between 100-96%. I often find I get better results allowing analysis not to detect every single transient. If it is a spot that needs more detailed correction, then I will make sure it is detected more accurately on every transient. I also always remove every single stretching marker that isn't on a transient or a note. EA especially sounds bad if elastic audio is stretching with a marker in the middle of a sustained note.

4. Although you may still hear artifacts on the instrument soloed it is often easily hidden in a mix as long as it isn't too prominent.

5. My favorite trick with EA is to duplicate the track you want to fix and then quantize the duplicated track and mute it. Then when I hear spots I want to fix, I'll check the EA enabled track and adjust that track to what I want notes to be like and then copy that section up to the original track. The clip will render with the changes. This allows you to only risk EA artifacts on sections you fix rather than risking artifacts across your whole track just to fix one segment.

6. Finally, when ultimate fidelity is needed, splitting the clip and crossfading gives best results until you really have to stretch a note. In which I will use the elastic enabled track to stretch the note and drag it up to the original track. It is actually a pretty fast workflow when you get used to it.

Hope those help.

[Carl Lie]

Originally Posted by Dizzi45Z

I agree with a lot of others here.
5. My favorite trick with EA is to duplicate the track you want to fix and then quantize the duplicated track and mute it. Then when I hear spots I want to fix, I'll check the EA enabled track and adjust that track to what I want notes to be like and then copy that section up to the original track. The clip will render with the changes. This allows you to only risk EA artifacts on sections you fix rather than risking artifacts across your whole track just to fix one segment.

Hope those help.

Great tip. I also edit the analysis markers. Often on bass guitar or other guitar parts with a slower attack.

Carl