Audio Bend Issue

[shoelesscraig]

I'm sure it's my fault, but I need help figuring out what I'm doing wrong.

I have an acoustic kit recorded with a mic on the kick, snare, and 2 overheads (hard panned). When I play all 4 mics back together, all is fine...phase seems good, etc.

I have a couple of slight timing issues I'd like to adjust. So I grouped all 4 tracks, went to the Audio Bend view, and click "detect". It places my markers everywhere, no prob. I then go and SLIGHTLY move a snare hit (which moves all 4 tracks since they're grouped). When I play it back, the snare hit is indeed moved, but I get weird artifacts several beats AFTER the marker I moved. Most noticeable in the cymbals. You can literally hear the cymbals (like a ride cymbal) cut out for a brief millisecond or so, but it's noticeable to hear in the full mix with the rest of the band. Remove the bend markers and it goes back to normal.

Again....this is happening randomly across the rest of the song even though I ONLY moved 1 bend marker manually. I DID NOT quantize the entire track (therefore moving lot of bend markers). I don't get it. What am I doing wrong?

 

[SwitchBack]

You have to be careful with bend markers. Bending always uses 3 markers: The one you're moving and the flanking markers left and right of it which act as anchors for the bend. For want of either flanking marker the bending tool will use the nearest marker it can find or the start and/or end of the event. So make sure you set limits to the ranges you want to bend. See if that helps.

 

[shoelesscraig]

You have to be careful with bend markers. Bending always uses 3 markers: The one you're moving and the flanking markers left and right of it which act as anchors for the bend. For want of either flanking marker the bending tool will use the nearest marker it can find or the start and/or end of the event. So make sure you set limits to the ranges you want to bend. See if that helps.

Man that's what I don't get. I DO have bend markers everywhere. I can move a snare hit, with markers to the left and right of it. The move I makes creates a green section and a red section to the left and right showing the changes. But I'm experiencing the weird phasing issues in the cymbals WAY after where I made the change. Not only right after the change, but seconds and seconds later....where I made ZERO changes to any bend markers. The area where I hear the "blips" or whatever you want to call it will be completely gray, no changes made....bend markers just sitting there ready to be moved. If I had chosen to quantize and it moved a bunch of bend markers, I'd understand it....but I'm talking when I only manually move one.

Undoing the change and removing the bend markers altogether (restoring the audio to original) makes the problem completely disappear.

NOTE: When I say "blip" or "phase issue" or "cutout" or whatever word we want to use...I mean that after I move the one bend marker, I'll hear this "cutout" in the cymbals MANY MANY times to the end of the song. Like, nearly continuously.

CPU is <30% usage, no errors, no red lights....nothing. All other audio tracks are playing perfect. Just the drums with the issue. Remove bend markers and all is back to normal (no "cutouts" or "phase issues"....but now I'm back to timing issues).

I'm lost.

On another note....I tried using the "slice" method (or I guess some call it Beat Detective style method...I dunno, I'm not a Pro Tools guy, but I guess the term comes from there?).....and it seems to work much better. Maybe that's the ticket? Just seems like no one else has this issue with Studio Pro, but for some reason I do.

 

[Sebastian Holtzer]

Have you tried deleting/refresh the cached tempo files and deleting the unused files in the pool? Maybe this could help but i don't think it will. I would try to open a new project and load only the one file to make a test if nothing helps. At least before v8.2 i had no issues with bend markers on all algorhythms. It was working fine.

 

[Navar]

I have had several issues over the last couple of years with this bend algorithm. Even complete audio dropouts after adding a bend marker (not moving, just adding). Most of them were in conjunction with longer audio files and take recordings. My workaround for this was to do a bounce in place and then it suddenly worked. Nowadays I use time stretching only when nothing else gets a good result.

My personal opinion: slicing before stretching, I like it a lot more when it's possible with the base material.

 

[Craig Anderton]

My personal opinion: slicing before stretching

Same here. The detection algorithm just isn't accurate enough, it seems most of the time it lands ahead of the beat. I cut where the real attack is, cut the end of what needs to be fixed, and move it. If that leaves a gap at the end from moving it earlier, I stretch only the tail. Because I'm not an "everything needs to be quantized" kinda guy, it doesn't take that much time to do it manually if there aren't too many needed fixes.

 

[Crossinger]

Same here. The detection algorithm just isn't accurate enough, it seems most of the time it lands ahead of the beat.

And that's exactly what people have been criticizing for years. If competitors have even incorporated the same time-stretch algorithm, why do they often do a better job than Studio One?

 

[Navar]

And that's exactly what people have been criticizing for years. If competitors have even incorporated the same time-stretch algorithm, why do they often do a better job than Studio One?

I don't know how often the zplane gets updated and what a DAW has to do with the results.
But I always missed some options and I was never a big fan of the transient protection areas. The idea yes in detail no, I found too many situations where the protection areas just did not what I wanted and to get full control I have to remove them and do it manually anyway. I have sent over several tests which proved, that there are problems and inconsistencies.
And of course by nature there is material which works better with stretching than other.

But on the other hand. Slicing is a simple process, can be done to perfection, can be automated, destroys nothing, you don't need to keep in mind to create copies or stretch something by accident. For what I do and this is editing audio performances I get away with slicing in most of the cases. And I feel that I'm fast enough.

 

[Sebastian Holtzer]

I found too many situations where the protection areas just did not what I wanted and to get full control

I have to remove them and do it manually anyway.

And of course by nature there is material which works better with stretching than other.

True

 

[SwitchBack]

Note that bending is also affected by the stretch algorithm selected for the track (drums/sound/solo), with very different results. So make sure to experiment with that too. Sometimes the 'wrong' algorithm gives the better results.