It there a trick to smoothing with beat detection?

[acacia]

Hey All,

Any chance there's an easy way to avoid having to clean up after smoothing (fill and crossfade) drum tracks with beat detection. I'm sure some ones itching to say Elastic Audio but seriously is there? I'm cleaning up a ton of drum sessions this week and I'm sick of chasing down stuttered hits after every things been tightened up. Elastic audio has been hit or miss for me since it first came out so I've been sticking with old faithful. I'm pretty sure the beat detection cleanup isn't avoidable. I just thought I'd try and step out of my box... Maybe that step should be giving EA another chance with PT8 . Thanks!

[EvilElfBoy]

There really is no way to avoid the stutter effect that sometimes beat detective will do if the drums aren't close enough to the grid you are using. Manual pocketing is probably your best bet, hence why good editors get paid good money for all the tedious work that most do not want to deal with.

EA if used correct will give really great results. The trick to using EA is that YOU MUST create an edit group for the drums when quantizing. if not you will lose all phase coherency and it will sound awful. I would go in small sections and fix whatever warp triggers that have either moved in the wrong direction or just should not be there.

It's pretty easy once you get used to it, especially if you want quick results with a lot of editing time saved.

Give it a whirl. :)

[Drew Mazurek]

Padding your triggers helps. I usually set it to 3-5ms.

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

Padding your triggers helps. I usually set it to 3-5ms.

Not that it helps you so much now, but i use a session drummer who plays very solidly, fantastic kit etc..but always *just* ahead of the damn click.

I've taken to delaying the click in his headphone by about 1/128 note, & bingo, problem solved....

If you find that your recorded drums are always a bit ahead, & you know that you are going to beat-detective the whole track...there is nothing to stop first you sliding *all* the drums back a bit, so the vast majority of the hits fall just the right side of the grid.

Now when you go to BD them, there will be much less manual fixing of flamming edits ...

[smlworld]

Originally Posted by acacia

Hey All,

Any chance there's an easy way to avoid having to clean up after smoothing (fill and crossfade) drum tracks with beat detection. I'm sure some ones itching to say Elastic Audio but seriously is there? I'm cleaning up a ton of drum sessions this week and I'm sick of chasing down stuttered hits after every things been tightened up. Elastic audio has been hit or miss for me since it first came out so I've been sticking with old faithful. I'm pretty sure the beat detection cleanup isn't avoidable. I just thought I'd try and step out of my box... Maybe that step should be giving EA another chance with PT8 . Thanks!

Don't know if you are familiar with Kenny Giola videos. The guy is pretty genius.

http://www.grooveboxmusic.com/str/pr...tricks-v1.html

you might find some for free on the net or on the duc. he is REALLY good with beat detective.

[acacia]

Thanks guys!

I'm gonna try padding the triggers like drew suggested for this next song. Back when EA was first introduced I spent time chasing multi track EA with grouping... and found it to be hit or miss with phase issues. Specifically room mic tracks. It seemed like some rooms just wouldn't work but if the tracks were pretty dead / void of ambience EA work really easy. I've had a few guys mention that with the last few PT versions / cs updates they've seen improvement. So I'll give that a try again. Ru_c, that's a slick trick. The session players I usually use are pretty dead on. Unfortunately this project didn't use a session player and the guy was all over the map so sliding the drums closer to the grid wont really help. It's work but it pays :) So I can't really complain. smlworld - yes I'm familiar with Kenny Giola's videos. thanks for the link. You guys are awesome!

[acacia]

Curiosity got to me and I gave EA another shot before going back to BD. I have to say EA is much improved since early 7.4. I'll mess with padding the triggers a little later but so far I'm getting great / fast results with EA.

[acacia]

Hey Drew, Thanks for the tip with Padding my triggers. That made a huge difference!

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by acacia

Hey Drew, Thanks for the tip with Padding my triggers. That made a huge difference!

Glad to help. I knew it would it make a big difference.

[Kenny Gioia]

Trigger pad can make a huge difference depending on how it was recorded.

I never ever need it. But for some it seems to fix right up.

It must have to do with how BD analyzes transients.

I've received tracks from others where the fades are right on the transient. That's not good. Mine seem to always be right before with no pad. Oh well.