Elastic Audio Issue (damaging sound)

[-GS-]

Hello everybody. I dared open a new thread because I couldn't find anybody else having my same problem.

I find that Elastic Audio isn't working properly on my system (Pro Tools LE 7.4 on Windows XP platform, AMD 3200 processor). The problem is that whenever I try to stretch the audio (even slightly) the plugin always ruins the integrity of the audio file being processed. I tried to apply Elastic on recorded audio material (that is to say: drums, electric bass and clean electric guitar – NO loops!). When using Elastic on a rhythmic source, such as drums, all is well and the rhythmic algorithm works OK, but when it’s time to use polyphonic or monodic algos on bass – or even worse – guitar, it’s over. I mean, the sound becomes distorted, muffled, full of annoying cracks and pops (as if the RTAS processor were overloaded, but it isn’t!) - the signal loses its original integrity!

I think it’s important to point out that I’d like to use Elastic to correct playing performances: slightly stretching to grid those two or three notes that were played out of tempo. In other words, I’m just making a minimal amount of editing! But in spite of this, almost any warping I do gives a damaged sound quality as result.

So I’m asking you: why do the demo videos on digidesign website show authentic miracles when heavily editing audio with warp markers (have you seen the over stretched bass drum shot becoming a SUB??!? Astonishing! Not to mention the completely out-of-tempo guitars which were perfectly corrected…) while I can’t even move a marker by a sample or two because I’m losing signal quality??? The audio stretches on those videos yield perfect results!

I tried to raise the engine H/W buffer (from 256, used during the recording, to 2048, suggested on the manual when editing), but that was of no use.

Any ideas? Any help/suggestion would be very appreciated!

Thank you in advance
GS

[JasonD72]

Wow this is definitely a problem! I tried to simply tighten up some strumming on a fender acoustic and now it's as if I engaged a "warble" plug in with tons of random clicks and pops. Playing with the decay pot yields different changes to the sound but certainly does nothing to irradicate all the bad artifacts introduced by the warp function. Sorry to chime in on your problem but I just wanted to lend some more validity to the claim. Oh yea I saw the videos as well. I only wish I could replicate those reuslts.

[-GS-]

Thank you for your reply, Jason. At least I’m feeling less lonely now that I know I’m not the only one who encountered this problem! By the way, I was trying to grid-quantize an arpeggio played on a Fender Highway (maybe Elastic Audio doesn’t like Fenders? Ha ha ) but the results were far from good. And the suggestions in the “Setup & General Troubleshooting” thread (disabling the unneeded services, lowering display performance, no “cool & quiet” option etc.) didn’t solve the problem. Applying Elastic to any guitar part invariably yields the result of ruining the quality of the audio signal, and the word you used, ‘warble’, is simply perfect to describe what I hear.

I’ve asked a friend to test all the four (six if you count in Varispeed and X-Form) algorithms on his system (Pro Tools LE 7.4, like me – except the fact it’s running on a Mac) on the same guitar parts: when he’s done I’ll let you know the results.

Thanks again
GS

[Kris75]

Are you using accordion warp when attempting to fix these issues, or are you using the quantize feature?

[-GS-]

I’ve tried both, with the same result: the sound becomes sloppy and wobbling (not always, but pretty often). I couldn’t fix this problem even by manually moving the warp markers where it was needed (e.g. on the offbeat notes), which means a minor amount of editing, but where the warping occurs, the sound wears (sometimes I can hear a sort of “flanged” effect on the warped regions).

So how come that Elastic Audio on the Digidesign demo videos are performing wonders? I might well be a perfect n00b, but I think I did everything right when engaging the Elastic algorithms, as shown in the videos or explained in the Reference Manual.

That’s why I can’t understand whether it’s a matter of lacking resources (but I don’t think so, because the System Performance shows a minimum level of CPU load) or corrupted plug-in, or both (or whatever… )

Thanks
GS

[Camilo Toledo]

I would probably use "Beat Detective" to "FIX" drum hits, out of tempo notes, BEFORE using elastic audio.

[-GS-]

But isn’t Beat Detective supposed to work well only for drum recordings? And, in addition to this, doesn’t it just analyze and split the transients at the marker points? Can you add TCE (time compression/expansion) to the regions, too? I must confess I’m not a big expert in Beat Detective, but the point is that my Elastic Audio isn’t working properly... If it were, it should yield the same result as manually trimming and TCEing the splitted regions in order to put them to tempo. As you can see in Jeff Dykhouse's video (in which he engages the plugin on a guitar part), Elastic should save you a lot of time by automatically correcting an out-of-tempo performance WITHOUT altering the sound quality.

Thanks
GS

[soundonsound]

Are you using Tick based tracks and noticing that same warbling / swishing sounds?

I've mainly noticed this on sample based tracks when using polyphonic and moving markers around.

[-GS-]

I usually use sample based tracks (in accordance with Pro Tools’ default), but I can’t really remember whether I tried the same algorithms on tick based ones… I think I’ve tested that, with the same result, but I couldn’t swear. I’ll try recording new material in both sample and tick based, and check the result with all of the algorithms (except for Varispeed, the one I don’t need). According to my experience, rhythmic algo works very well on drums, even on multi-track (I’ve used it intensively), monodic is OK (but not always… you must be careful not to abuse) for electric bass, and for what concerns electric (clean) guitars, I couldn’t adjust them to tempo grid in any way without getting a trembling and damaged sound quality.

Anyway, I’ll try tick based tracks and let you know.

Thank you
GS

[PaulV]

Hi GS,

I'm sorry to hear you're having sound quality issues with EA. We haven't seen this particular one, so if it's not too much trouble to send the session to us, we can take a look at it and find out what's going on.

I've sent you an e-mail requesting the session and where to send it.