Subject:Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Posted by: feign

Date:5/30/2010 3:01:46 AM

Here's something I've never tried and need some advice on. I've been given a pre-mixed WAV file which is a guitar and vocals together. The incompetent amateur musician (me, many years ago) speeds up and slows down, and even adds extra single beats where the vocals get flubbed. Just for fun I want to dub bass and drum onto this, but nothing stays in synch for more than 3 measures at a time.

Toying with the Beatmapper adjusts the entire track's tempo. But is there a way within Acid to adjust the tempo of each measure separately? Sure, I can slice it all up into 119 separate pieces, one for each measure, and toy with each. But is there something like the Beatmapper, which stretches whatever is highlighted, without affecting the measures before and after? Perhaps this is possible in the Beatmapper or with some magical quantizing tool, but I don't know how to do it.

Advice anyone?

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: pwppch

Date:5/30/2010 4:50:19 PM

You can do this in ACID Pro 7 using the media properties page. There is no magic auto mode, so you will have to start wi beat mapper and the edit manually to get exactly what you desire.

Peter

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: feign

Date:5/31/2010 1:29:38 AM

Peter, is that right? Because I tried fixing the tempo one measure at a time, but it seemed that when I changed the tempo in a specific measure, it changed the tempo throughout the track.

I tried this: after the track had been imported and put through the Beatmapper Wizard, I right-clicked the track on the timeline, chose Clip Properties, set Method to Elastique, then select the Stretch tab.

If I drag any of the Beatmap Markers, it affects the entire clip. If I go through the Beatmap Wizard again (best for me, since it has the metronome) and go to any one measure and fix the tempo there, it still changes the tempo for the entire clip, not just the individual measure or selection.

Please explain what I'm doing wrong. I'd like to fix the tempo on a mesaure-by-measure or selected area basis.

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: pwppch

Date:6/1/2010 6:47:38 AM

1. Beatmapped to a fixed tempo - don't worry about being overly acccurate at this stage as you will be fixing it up later.

2. In the clip properties you add "Beatmap Markers" to the "Strech" tab view. Start by adding them to the beat map wizard markers that exist. You then start to move them or edit them. What you will see is the previous and next marker "tempos" changing.

The help file has a details. Search for "Editing Audio Clip Properties" and select the "Adjust stretching properits for a Beatmapped clip" in the "What do you want to do?" area. This is also covered in the ACID manual. Also search for "Fine-Tuning Beatmapped Clips".

Peter

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: feign

Date:6/4/2010 6:34:17 AM

Peter, thanks for the specifics. I see how it can be done. One more question, though: Is there a way to do the above in the Stretch tab with the metronome playing, as it does in the Beatmapper Wizard? My file, being a mix of fuzzy guitar and vocals, isn't so easy to pinpoint beats visually. The metronome is very helpful in making precision adjustments by ear alone. I've searched the Help files and don't see the way to do this, if at all.

If it isn't possible, may I strongly suggest adding a metronome button to the stretch tab in Acid pro 8?

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: pwppch

Date:6/4/2010 7:32:19 PM

No, there is no way to enable the metronme from the clip properties view. I can see its utility.

I will add your request to the list. I recommend you also make a formal request here on our site.

Peter

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: feign

Date:6/4/2010 10:28:23 PM

Peter or anyone else who can help:

This is driving me nuts. I have a WAV file only 2:32 long, 32-bit (though I resaved as 24-bit as well, makes no difference). When I started playing around with beatmapping measure-by-measure, things went fine. I chose to save the beatmap info in the file.

The next day I opened the project, played back fine on the timeline, but I went into the Beatmapper Stretch tab to continue to work on the tempo, and now all I hear is noise. When I click play on any measure, first there's a delay of maybe 1/4 second, then just a loud buzz, and the cursor sticks half-way through the measure. When I go back to the General tab of the Beatmapper, I hear skipping and clicking. Meanwhile, no distortion, noise or clicking when played back from the main timeline.

I reloaded the backup of the original, non-beatmapped file. But still the same problem. I started a blank new project, still the same problem. Tried the Beatmapper on other loops, no problems at all. Only my main WAV file won't work, even working from the raw original, which worked just yesterday.

I checked all my hardware settings, and everything is the way it has always been, properly set up. Tried a reboot, but no help.

What should I be looking for? It's now impossible for me to work on this project, all of a sudden.

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:6/6/2010 7:03:40 AM

Mmm, that doesn't sound too good; the specific WAV may be corrupt (could be caused by anything ranging from a power spike to a brownout to any other anomaly). Do you have an audio editor like Sound Forge? Did you try opening it in that and seeing if it was fine?

Iacobus

Subject:RE: Quantize terribly off-rhythm track

Reply by: feign

Date:6/6/2010 5:48:10 PM

Opens fine in Adobe Audition 1.5. I used Audition to re-save it as 24-bit and 16-bit, but all such files make the weird buzz. It seems to me that there's some hardware setting that's gone off-kilter, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to figure out what it is. Latency issues?