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This forum is for seeking solutions to technical problems involving Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on MacOS, as well as feature requests, criticisms, comparison to other DAWs.
Theodore wrote:Not exactly useless. I tried a different tack.
Made a Kick/Snare comp track and beat detected that. Copied beats to all drum tracks. Made soundbites from beats. Quantized.
This got me 90% there. Had to clean up a few edits, and had to manually tweak some tom hits and such that weren't on the kick/snare comp track. Also flams (intentional)presented some confusion for beat detector.
All in all, much better than manual, not quite as hip as PureDSP would have been if it had worked. But the most imprtant thing is time is flawless and can be grooved or whatever, and phase coherence is 100%.
Thank you for giving it another shot, Theo. It's always inspiring when someone figures out a way, even though it may not be perfect, nor as slick as newer implementations in other DAWs (when they work, and they don't always). I would almost agree with Splinter that beat detection can be frustrating, but I'd stop way short of "U.S.E.L.E.S.S." [yet I do feel your pain, Splinter] So, thanks for trying, and thanks again for coming back and reporting what you were able to do.
Shoosh
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Time stretching, beat detection, slices and audio quantizing appear to be the way things are going. I think it behooves MOTU to improve it's beat detection and PureDSP functionality. They may have been the innovators back in the day, but that doesn't mean they don't have to keep up. PT's time stretch algorithms are far superior (at least compared to DP6 - I'm still waiting to try out DP7)
So you are saying it worked on one song and not another? The Copy Beats tool never worked for me. It would place random transient markers all through the song that had nothing to do with the source or target track. It was very frustrating. Maybe it was just earlier versions of DP and now they've fixed it. Anyone try it in DP7, yet?
Well. I tried a few more songs and I've got to agree with you, Splinter. The copy beats function just doesn't work. I must have gotten lucky once because it hasn't worked on any of the other projects.
What a shame. This could have saved me hours and $$$ if it weren't broke.
So you are saying it worked on one song and not another? The Copy Beats tool never worked for me. It would place random transient markers all through the song that had nothing to do with the source or target track. It was very frustrating. Maybe it was just earlier versions of DP and now they've fixed it. Anyone try it in DP7, yet?
Well. I tried a few more songs and I've got to agree with you, Splinter. The copy beats function just doesn't work. I must have gotten lucky once because it hasn't worked on any of the other projects.
What a shame. This could have saved me hours and $$$ if it weren't broke.
The very few occasions I've tried doing anything like this in DP have been complete disasters. Nothing at all usable. I've had freeware/shareware and Open Source apps do a better job than DP. As a rule I stay away from working this way anyway, but there have been times when I've needed it or wanted to experiment so I definitely can see the value in it.
Ok, there is a fairly usable way to do this. Here's the drill.
Bounce a Kick/Snare comp to use as a beat guide. Bouncing is NOT sample accurate, so shift it a few ticks left to get it in sync with the original.
Select all drum tracks. Then select [Audio/Create Sound Bites from Beats]... then select the Kick/Snare track as the source track in the window that pops up. Dial in the proper threshold and it will chop your drums up on the beats.
Quantize, or just scoot things around, then clean edits.
I've done three songs this way and it works. The hardest part was the song with a slight shuffle, but I was able to groove quantize and make it feel pretty darn good.
I know that ultimately we should all hire Steve Gadd and not have to worry about all this, but I find this very valuable in tightening things up.
Theodore wrote:Bouncing is NOT sample accurate, so shift it a few ticks left to get it in sync with the original.
Are you completely sure about that statement?
Why does sound cancel out then (when making proper settings)?
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--------------------------- "In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
FMiguelez: Are you completely sure about that statement?
Nope!
Why does sound cancel out then (when making proper settings)?
Sorry, I was unclear. I was bouncing through a digital console and was probably getting some delay from the conversions. About two ticks.
Should have just done an offline bounce.
Yeah, virtual bounces are sample accurate. Realtime bounces within DP are not anywhere near sample accurate. I mean they're way way way late depending on how much bussing is going on.
I'm going to try DP again for multitrack drum edits since they've FINALLY fixed the crossfades problem. That would just bring DP to crawl with a full song of edits. My only trepidation is if any stretching needs to be done.
MOTU's PureDSP works well on two things. Vocals and bass. Everything else is a no go. Artifacts, distortion, wobbly time are the norm. This is after many years of editing in both PT and DP. I miss many things about DP when I'm in PT, but I don't miss that. The fact that PT lets you pick your weapon (Serato Pitch n' Time, Waves SoundShifter, etc etc) to automatically be used for time functions is just indespensible. PT's built in Elastic Audio is honestly not much better than PureDSP, so I never use it.
Another issue is how much faster and easier Beat Detective is when it comes to this stuff. I find it to be consistently more accurate than DP.
Whichever app I end up using most of the time, I only use timestretching to make up for space created by something having to be moved really far. Most of the time you can just move audio edges back enough to cover the blank spot. I much rather just move actual pieces around than stretch anything if at all possible.
Oh, and guess what...PT *still cannot* drag edges of multiple soundbites on the *same track*. DP has always been able to. This makes me grumble on a regular basis.
So neither on is perfect, I guess is the conclusion that can be drawn.
