MIDI Drums/Audio loop - occasionally out of time? [kind of solved]

[Mark Baker]

Hi everyone. I have a project which has a relatively simple drum beat with a percussion loop and a couple of hi-hat loops playing simultaneously. The project tempo is 104BPM and I used audiosnap and quantising to get the percussion loop aligned nicely to the drum MIDI. The HiHats also required a little stretching and underwent a similar audiosnap/quantising procedure. When playing, I randomly sometimes get it sounding great (maybe 1 in 3 playthroughs), and sometimes it sounds like the timing is "off" and all of the tracks sound like they are doing their own thing. Freezing the tracks seems to fix it and it sounds great now, but I don't understand what exactly is going on to cause the randomness. I don't mind have the tracks frozen for a short while, but when mixing etc. I'll want to unfreeze them again but it just then sounds so off.

The only effect is MEqualizer, and switching this on and off doesn't appear to affect the "off" timing. At the moment there is very little else in the track, no synths etc. apart from the drum MIDI which is MTPowerDrumKit 2.

Any ideas on where to start looking for a solution?

Edited September 5, 2021 by Mark Baker

[Mark Baker]

I think it is solved, kinda. Using the information in this post from 2019, the solution was switching the render properties from Elastique to Groove, and doing the same in my project has also sorted it. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between the two is, so I think it is time for some reading for me.