Audio Snap transient detection not as good as hoped

[dougalex]

Spent a lot of time on trying to quantize a live played drum beat but Audio Snap transient detection is too often not really close enough to the transient.

And sometimes the stretch is resulting in something sounding too crazy to really know how to get it adjusted. Trial and error trying to adjust the transients to fix those spots just makes it worse. 
My problems might be "user error".... so
Maybe someone has some tips and tricks on Audio Snap? Or "common mistakes" list. 

Edited Friday at 07:04 AM by dougalex

[tecknot]

Hi dougalex,

Have you tried messing around with the Filter Threshold in the Audio Snap Palette?

 

Kind regards,

tecknot

[mettelus]

There are numerous posts in the forums with the same question over the years, and I only remember one that had detailed usage outlined (was very well done), but I cannot readily find it or remember who posted it... but is also probably 10 years old. Barring that (potentially futile) search, there have been quite a few tutorials posted, and the newer ones will include new features and bug fixes that have been done (this can be important). A tutorial from 2022 that seems to have a fairly detailed walk-through for 2 methods is at this link, but there are many others... tutorials are probably the best path to start on. Audio Snap tends to fall into the category of either you love it or you hate it; rarely is there middle ground.

Also, depending on which version of Melodyne you are using (this requires Melodyne Studio) there are methods to quantize live drums there (this is a good starting tutorial for using Melodyne Studio for live drums - any tutorial by Rich Crescenti is usually the best go to for Melodyne-related things). Personally, I have shied away from Audio Snap due to past struggles, and I much prefer something "third party" so I can get the work done regardless of DAW (as long as it has ARA capability).

Edited Saturday at 03:24 PM by mettelus

[reginaldStjohn]

It takes some time but after doing the autmatic detection manually move the ones that are not to your liking.

[dougalex]

My next experiment will be:
I will record a second track of me tapping along to the playback 4/4 downbeats using something like a sidestick sample. Then try the transfer that track to the transient pool, and copy that to the target track.

If works well, then would take a lot less time than adding, disabling, moving transients that were detected from the actual source material. 

[dougalex]

4 hours ago, tecknot said:

Have you tried messing around with the Filter Threshold in the Audio Snap Palette?

Yes, that, and making sure average tempo, and resolution are set.

[Will.]

15 hours ago, dougalex said:

Spent a lot of time on trying to quantize a live played drum beat but Audio Snap transient detection is too often not really close enough to the transient.

And sometimes the stretch is resulting in something sounding too crazy to really know how to get it adjusted. Trial and error trying to adjust the transients to fix those spots just makes it worse. 
My problems might be "user error".... so
Maybe someone has some tips and tricks on Audio Snap? Or "common mistakes" list. 

It work best when chopped up in smaller clips and moved to individual tracks. When you're satisfied with the outcome - you can always move them to one track and bounce them together. 

First make a copy - work on that and hide the original track. 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Melodyne is a much better tool for the job. 

[John Vere]

You can also just drag the drum track to the timeline and Melodyne will create a tempo map. 
Using ripple edit you drag the project so it starts on a downbeat. 

[dougalex]

I changed my experiment to: Take a whole stereo mix played live without click and convert it to constant tempo that matches average tempo.

So far my experimental results are:
1] Using Melodyne  stand-alone to detect and "flatten" the tempo, then export results to wav, got me what I wanted quickly, albeit with some artifacts (presumably because it is stretching as opposed to slicing)

2] The best sounding results (and most feeling like I was in control) was when, in Sonar, I manually split the material where it drifted off, then using stretch (Control+shift) on various length sections to align the whole song to a constant tempo. (No noticeable artifacts). Only in a few instances did I have to split a measure down into the single beats and align them, was mostly four bar phrases.

In other words, at least in some situations, it is best just to "manually do" what "audio snap is intended to do automatically".

Edited yesterday at 02:07 AM by dougalex