Issue: Elastic Audio Playback out of Sync - PLEASE HELP!

[derrek_clay]

I'm having a very bizarre issue with elastic audio in Pro Tools and I haven't been able to find any answers online, so I figured I'd turn to you guys for help and/or guidance.

There's a session that I've been working on for a band and I had used elastic audio to quantize the drum tracks on the song. I had everything in time and finished and I was working on editing the drums to get them perfect. This is when I randomly encountered an issue. I had used the Rhythmic (Rendered) algorithm to quantize the drums when all the sudden they started playing back out of time. It was like someone had taken some stray drum hits and moved them around so that they were playing back at the wrong beats. What's bizarre is that you can clearly look at the audio and tell that the waveform is playing with the grid despite the audio playback being out of sync. In fact, some drum hits can actually be heard during what should be silent sections of the audio.

On top of this, the audio clips had randomly been split at many of the transients on the tracks, almost as if done by Beat Detective - however this hadn't been done to all of the transients for some strange reason. It was like it stopped half way through or just decided to do this at random points in the waveform. I suspect the problem is with how Pro Tools is actually re-rendering the quantized audio files - despite them being perfectly in time and rendered before. Nothing was changed when this randomly occurred.

I was able to fix this (temporarily) by switching the algorithm to Polyphonic. I didn't notice a difference in sound and the audio was playing back in perfect time again. However this didn't last, as several hours later the same problem arose again. I tried everything to fix this, including rendering in X-Form. The problem still persisted. I even opened up session file backups that I had long before this issue appeared. The problem was still there! The same out of sync drums. Clearly Pro Tools is having a problem playing back elastic audio like it's supposed to. Thankfully, it is somehow only confined to my drum tracks (knock on wood) - specifically kick and snare.

I'm kinda at a loss as to how to fix this. Something very strange is going on. Hopefully you can point me in the right direction.
Thanks!

[Stig Eliassen]

Welcome to these forums.

That sounds bizarre. What is your current setup? Mac? PC? Exact Pro Tools and OS version?

—> Help us help you <—

[Wall2Wall]

Consolidate the drum tracks first then use EA. See if that helps.

[derrek_clay]

Originally Posted by PT Lover

Welcome to these forums.

That sounds bizarre. What is your current setup? Mac? PC? Exact Pro Tools and OS version?

—> Help us help you <—

Thank you!

And sorry, I should have stated that to begin with.

I'm on a late 2010 Macbook Pro
OS X Version 10.9.5
Pro Tools 11.2.1
2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo Processor
16 GB of 1067 DDR3 RAM
And I'm running my session off of a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB SSD

I should also mention that I've been watching the system usage window in PT just to see if I was taxing the CPU and I've had no spikes. The usage peaks at maybe 70%, but never for long. The HD (SSD in my case) is also running normal with no spikes.

Originally Posted by Wall2Wall

Consolidate the drum tracks first then use EA. See if that helps.

This does fix the problem, however I'm afraid that as many edits as I have that I'm going to run into a ton of clicks and pops. If worst comes to worst, I suppose I can always go back and add crossfades at every edit point (which I maybe should have done anyway but drums are usually fine without), though I will have to do hundreds of them. So i'd like to avoid this if possible. Either way, I need to try to fix this rendering issue if I can, otherwise editing drums properly will become near impossible.

[ninjaflapjack]

Even in Pro Tools 11, elastic audio is a huge resource hog and can cause all kinds of gremlins in a session, so here's what I do when I use it:

1) Build your comp track
2) Make a duplicate track of the main playlist ONLY, then consolidate the track; "hide and make inactive" the original comp track.
3) Apply elastic audio and check that it's proper from the top to the end.
4) Make a duplicate track of your "elastic audio" track with NO playlists, deactivate elastic audio on the duplicate.
5) Go to waveform view on your original elastic audio track and use the grabber tool to copy the audio down to the duplicate track (option+control allows you to drag a copy onto a new track while maintaining its place in the timeline). This brings a straight audio file with the timing fixes applied to the new track; "hide and make inactive" your original elastic audio track.

If you follow these steps, you'll not only have your timing fixes without having the elastic audio function eat up your CPU power, but you'll also always be able to go back and hit the elastic audio track if you hear something you missed as you continue working on your production...hope this was helpful. Good luck!

[ninjaflapjack]

If the number of edits is a concern for crossfading, use Beat Detective to execute your edits for you:

1) Highlight all edits in the audio region
2) Press "Command+8 (number pad)"
3) In Beat Detective window, select "Crossfades" on the left, and "Fill and Crossfade" radio button on the right
4) Hit ok, and voila!
5) As always, before consolidating your track listen down to it once to make sure the crossfades are all good. Another time-saver, especially in deadline situations.