Beatgrids and warp function Serato / Ableton Bridge

[danpage100]

Hi all, wondered if somebody could offer some advice....
I can't seem to sync Ableton Live 8 with the beatgrid in Serato scratch live. When I say can't, what I really mean is the beat is slightly off when mixing the two together.....
Now that means either the track in Serato (analysed by Serato to create the beatgrid) has wrongly guessed the grid, or my warp markers are out on my drum loop in Ableton Live 8. That's correct I hear you say! but I've zoomed in to Ableton and all is in line??
The Serato beatgrid isn't as easy to see compared with Ableton but I've tried mixing the drum loop (Ableton) with another track in my Serato library and it is still off beat which to me suggests the drum loop (Ableton) needs correcting? But it doesn't, I've seen it with my own eyes!

I wondered if there was an Ableton track available, correctly aligned / warped, that I could use to mix into Serato, and if the beat was slightly off, i would know that Serato isn't aligning my beatgrids correctly.

I am using a Sony Vaio Win7 64 bit 4mb RAM laptop with Serato Scratch live and Ableton installed all up to date, please help, I'm fed up of my mixes sounding like there's someone at the door!!

Much love in advance x

[102455]

4mb RAM

There's your problem right there!

If I were in your shoes i'd be inclined to try syncing the same track in both progs. So either load the same loop into Live & Scratch Live, or load the Scratch Live full track into Live.

If you try the full track in Live, don't warp it. Just try and sync it to the warped loop and see if it works.

If not, then have a close look at it in Live and see where the beats are in relation to the bar markers.

At least then you'll know if it's your files or your software....

[danpage100]

Ha ! Well spotted, I did obviously mean 4GB.

As for your response - cracking idea! As for the result - nope, beats still slightly out?

Bridge didn't like me playing the same file that was loaded to the serato deck and in the Ableton live slot so I made a copy of the drum loop and saved to desktop, analysed it in serato to create the beatgrid and loaded it to the virtual deck.

I've tried warped and unwarped, looped in serato and unlooped and nothing seems to be working as it should. Any other advice??

[danpage100]

UPDATE: So I played around with a few things, lots of checking, thinking, questioning etc and now I've discovered there is a + and - in Serato when running the Bridge which nudges the Ableton track tempo when syncing to a track in the virtual deck. So...... my theory is that there is always going to be a small discrepancy between how well Serato creates beatgrids and Ableton warps loops otherwise these "nudge tempo" buttons wouldn't exist.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely there's a simpler way of aligning beat grids / warped tracks to be integrated together? Such as using one engine (collaborated between Ableton & Serato)?

[102455]

Well the thing is, Ableton Live is (AFAIK) unique, compared to DJ software, in that warping involves moving the audio to fit the grid, whereas yer average
run-of-the-mill DJ software attempts to align a grid (with fixed spacing between the grid lines) to the audio.

That grid with fixed spacing will concertina in and out but will never 100% fit the audio - unless said audio is bang on the beat.

I think some DJ software does allow differently spaced grids to be assigned to wayward parts of tracks......but of course the problem then is, when you try and mix that track with anything else it still won't sync because the actual audio hasn't moved - it's still "out".

[danpage100]

Hey 102455 thanks so much for your help. I completely understood what you said and it made me realise a few things....

I've managed to sort my problem - Serato's beatgrid was out on a number of tracks, so instead of shifting the whole grid I actually had to stretch it between various marker points, similar to Ableton's warping.

Job done and I'm happy. Thanks mate