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Playback issues after drums quantization


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Hello all, 

There is an issue I can't figure out. I was not truely satisfied with the drummer's timing so I quantized the tracks. After som trial and error, I managed to make it sound as I wanted. 
My problem is now, whenever I want to play the track, after a short while, everything gets mixed up. Drums are all over the place. I first thought it was a buffer issue, even though I never had any trouble and a very short latency. Nothing helps. 
I have a good system, able to mix with a lot of plugins and this project is quite new, plugin less. My PC has a core i9 processor with 64 Gigs of ram, SSD, so perfs never were an issue.. 
What could it be that I'm missing? 

please help.. 

Edited by Benjamin L.
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Quantizing multi-tracked drums properly is a pretty involved process. Trial and error is not likely to get a good result. Are you sure it was good from start to finish at some point or possibly you hadn't listened to the whole track previously and are just discovering problems that were there all along?

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Posted (edited)

Thank you for your answer. Sorry, english is not my first language. I meant that I had to watch videos to know how to properly quantize. 
It is quantized perfectly. If I play only ten seconds at a time ( or so ) it plays well. But as soon as I want to play the whole track, everything gets all mixed up. 

Edited by Benjamin L.
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Hmmm... sounds odd, not sure what could cause that. I'd probably need to get hands on with a copy of the project to see if the problem reproduces on my system and investigate further if it did. FWIW here's  a process you might want to try if this isn't close that what you did:

 

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1 hour ago, Benjamin L. said:

I quantized the tracks

When you say you "quantized" the tracks, what process did you use? There are multiple ways to adjust drum timing.

If you quantized the tracks individually using an automatic process, it's easy for them to get out of sync, because different instruments in the drum kit will have different transients for the process to detect.

I've never done it myself, but I think the way to do it is to make a tempo map and apply it to all the tracks. Someone other than I will be able to tell you how to get started with that.

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21 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

Welcome to the forum.
If you Bounce to Tracks all the quantized tracks to 1 stereo track, is that track correct?
 

That's what I was about to suggest, too..

Try to either Bounce To Tracks, all of them,  or Bounce To Clips by track or Freeze.

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Posted (edited)

Thank you all so much for all your answers !  I never had to freeze tracks. I used to bounce like 20 years ago when performance was an issue but never did freeze ( and did not know it even existed ) 
It seems that when the tracks are freezed, there is no more timing issue. 
What seems odd is that I was watching my cpu/ram/disk activity and they never went over  max 10% in any of the parts when it started going crazy.. 
Maybe there is a setup option I have missed.. This is a mystery. I would understand if suddently my disk access was over the top or even CPU, but they are flat.. 

What is strange too is that even when I activate all the plugins, results are the same, I do not notice any behavior change, it doesn't get worse faster or anything.

I was starting to suspect my soundcard .. I like it though.. It is a Soundcraft UI 24R .. Are there any issues reported with it ? 

Edited by Benjamin L.
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Posted (edited)

 

On 1/4/2024 at 12:44 AM, Starship Krupa said:

If you quantized the tracks individually using an automatic process, it's easy for them to get out of sync, because different instruments in the drum kit will have different transients for the process to detect.

I switch from CLIP to Transients. I delete the ones that I do not need ( usually on cymbals or hihat, there will be too many of them) 
Then I press Q, I try to find the good rythm and click ok. When it does not sound as expected, I move the transients myself. 

I go for the bass drum first, then the snare , hihat and the cymbals ( but cymbals don't sound great so I try to avoid) 

Edited by Benjamin L.
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Can you share a sample project with a single track that goes out of sync with the metronome when not frozen? Quality of the interface/drivers should not have any bearing on this scenario, but the Soundcraft seems like a reasonable piece of kit with ASIO drivers so should not be a problem in any case.

Quantizing tracks individually should not be a problem in terms of basic timing sync, but to avoid phase issues due to mic bleed across tracks, you really should look into one of the suggested approaches that uses a common set of transient markers applied to all tracks before quantizing.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, David Baay said:

Quantizing tracks individually should not be a problem in terms of basic timing sync, but to avoid phase issues due to mic bleed across tracks, you really should look into one of the suggested approaches that uses a common set of transient markers applied to all tracks before quantizing.

The drums are recorded multitrack but are from an alesis strike pro, an electronic drum set. So there is no mic bleed. 
I use the transient markers to quantize. But not all tracks at the same time. Should I ?   But anyway, when played for a short period of time, everything is in sync.  It's when playing for a longer period that it starts to get out of it. 

Edited by Benjamin L.
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In that case, I'm sure you know the preferred approach would be to record the MIDI from the Alesis, quantize it as needed, and then record audio from the Alesis being driven by MIDI played back from CbB. But if you only have access to the audio, quantizing tracks separately is fine in this case. Beyond that, I really can't advise further without seeing an example, preferably as a minimal project file that demonstrates the issue.

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22 hours ago, David Baay said:

In that case, I'm sure you know the preferred approach would be to record the MIDI from the Alesis, quantize it as needed, and then record audio from the Alesis being driven by MIDI played back from CbB. But if you only have access to the audio, quantizing tracks separately is fine in this case. Beyond that, I really can't advise further without seeing an example, preferably as a minimal project file that demonstrates the issue.

Thanks for overestimating me ? No, I did not know. I just found some really great kit made by someone, studio ready, then recorded them as wave. I did not know the Alesis could do that. 

I tried something last night, I freezed every other tracks but the drums and the issue is the same .. That is so weird.  


I will try to make a video as soon as I can work again on the project to illustrate. 

Cheers

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