Problems with beat detection and speeding up tracks

For seeking technical help with Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on MacOS.

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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.
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funkyfreddy
Posts: 422
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2005 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: upstate NY

Problems with beat detection and speeding up tracks

Post by funkyfreddy »

I really banged my head against the wall trying to get beat detection to work yesterday w/o success. I played around with my DP preferences but couldn't get the BD lines to show up on my drum tracks. They showed up on a perc loop in the piece, but not my drum tracks which are the tracks I was trying to fix?!? I tried opening and closing the piece, restarting my computer, adjusting the BD sensitivity, etc., but couldn't get the BD lines to show up on my drum tracks

After not getting BD to work I tried to speed up the track as an experiment, first from 94 bpm to103 bpm....... I won't be doing that again in DP 4.6, the results were sonically atrocious. I also tried to split the difference, went from 94 bpm to 99 bpm. Well, I won't be doing that again..... I did it the way MagicDave suggested on the OSX forum, gave all the soundbites the current tempo, changed the tempo then adjusted the soundbites to it..... it sounded really bad on my acoustic guitar and mandolin tracks, which is OK because I can replay those, but my drum tracks also had some intermittent issues as well, OUCH!

I'm wondering if BD actually works on multitrack drums..... Has anyone on the list gotten it to work well w/o phasing issues, etc. If so could you describe to me what your working methods are? Thanks from a Frustrated Fred
Artspoke
Posts: 60
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2004 10:01 pm
Primary DAW OS: MacOS
Location: Bay Area

Post by Artspoke »

FF,

I have posted about a few issues related to the very problem you describe. I doubt you'll get very far - I didn't. There just doesn't seem to be an understanding of, or interest in how broken this is - everyone kept telling me that the problem was my fault, but it seemed like the fault everyone was finding was with me personally, and noone had any idea what DP problems I was trying to describe - even at MOTU support.

It is something terribly frustrating, I agree. The problem, in my opinion, is in the time stretching/compressing engine. It's way beyond "artifacts", it's totally FUBAR. If you listen to enough examples of the mayhem it creates with your tracks, you start to develop an idea that there is an error in the math somewhere, and the synchronization between what it thinks it doing and what it actually does gets off, so it does crazy, but methodical things to your audio!

I won't be doing it again either.

-Frustrated James
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