Elastic Audio in ProTools!

glu · Post by **glu** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 2:20 pm

I was hoping 7 would bring a new warp mode or two. I use whatever warp mode sounds the best when stretching time or altering pitch-depending on the audio file, but Live's current modes don't quite cut it for some sounds. It would be nice to have a few more algos.

illtrooper · Post by **illtrooper** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 10:57 am

That looks incredibly easy to use and you have to admit, it's more intuitive to have the WAVEFORM distort visually in the timeline, rather than the way LIVE does it, by having us distort the markers on a fixed timeline in a seperate window.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it shows up in the 'arrange' view but it's slick having it direct like that, and it can snap to the grid while you edit the markers if you want... I may upgrade my ProTools for this, I haven't even used it this year, but this looks great.

Still love me some LIVE, though!

lunabass · Post by **lunabass** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:05 pm

I agree that the way they've implemented 'elastic audio' looks very good... BUT... see how you feel about it when you go to add your 17th stereo audio track in Pro Tools LE and it tells you you've run out of available voices for your system!

No amount of Elastic audio is going to stop the expletives exiting your mouth when this happens!

I've been a Pro Tools user for close to 10 years and although I can say that Pro Tools is an excellent program, Digidesign have got to be one of the most arrogant audio companies going around...they treat customers with contempt once they have your money...

On the other hand I've never felt this way about Ableton. They are always updating their software and they quite often implement ideas from their userbase

shlomo · Post by **shlomo** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:00 pm

You can have as much as 128 audio chanels and 32 voices in LE. This means that when you reach 15 stereo tracks (30 chan 30 voices) you can record all of them directly inside PTLE (via bus) on the last two, deactivate them and voila, more tracks more voices. I am doing this routine for years and never get out of the voices. Need more for your sessions, hmm then you are most likely a PRO user so getting HD should not be a problem, right

lunabass · Post by **lunabass** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:51 pm

Wow shlomo, amazing work around....happy bouncing

Oh thats right...all audio bouncing/rendering is in real time isn't it, love that pro tools workflow

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:47 am

Stephen Bond wrote:Well I am a Pro Tools user first and foremost but I have been using Live since V2 and like it a lot with its ease of use, creative features and low CPU stress.

My biggest problem with Live has been the sound quality of the warping. Even since 'complex' mode arrived I have not been greatly impressed. For more important stretching I would revert to Pro Tools and use a plugin such as SoundToys Speed or the new Digidesign compress/expand plug.

Second problem is that the auto warp transient detection is poor in V5. I don't know if things have improved in V6 or 7 but I hope so! Even in the beta testing of V5 I highlighted the problem of most warp markers being set anywhere around 10 or 20 ms late. Tis unfortunately did not improve in the subsequent release of V5.

When PT 7.4 drops I can see myself doing many of the things I used Live for in Pro Tools. Even from the video you can hear the quality of the stretching is certainly 'world class' and the transient markers are auto set in perfect position.

I am all for bells and whistles but I need the basic functions to be rock solid and sound great too. Digi has been catching up in areas of creativity and supplied extras and with this release it puts itself at the head of the game in the warping arena.

Well put.

+1

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 3:25 pm

I read the review of this in the latest Sound on Sound, which really grabbed my interest. After searching here to find this thread, I watched the video too... impressive stuff.

I like the way that you can move and stretch within the timeline and see how the audio aligns with other tracks - very good. Also its great that you can preview using the different warp modes before even draggin in the clip. And nice that the whole thing is phase coherent, etc. The audio quality sounds good on the video, but needs testing....

As others have stated, the quality of Ableton's audio warping is a big issue - while it's great for sketching purposes or probably onstage, very often it simply isn't good enough for poduction purposes/finishing a track with audio you can be proud of.

This has irked me so for a while now, and as a proud owner of an M-Audio Ozonic interface I now will seriously consider moving over to Pro Tools M-Powered. I understand that with the Music Production Toolkit this can also be expanded to have 48 stereo tracks (far more than my needs), add in a convolution reverb, the Smack compressor, MP3 export, etc. Very tempting (and it would be useful to upgrade some equipment before the end of the tax year

).

So... who's tried this out? Can we have some reports back please...?

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 8:59 pm

This still doesn't address the fact that Pro tools has a disgusting, bland, non intuitive interface, ties you to certain hardware (M-Powered - have you tried an M-Audio interface recently, holy cow they blow jism over a 15 kilometre radius these days) and the hardware, i.e. Mbox and co. give piss poor latency results and don't set the heart racing for their performance stats in any way.

I know that PTHD is an entirely different proposition but how many people can afford 10, 20, 40 grand etc.

STILL NO PDC. Having to nudge audio tracks individually or use exactly the same set of plugins on each track to keep everything in sync is just unacceptable in 2008, most other DAWS had this problem nailed 5 or more years ago.

Limited to 32 mono tracks, unless you pay an extortionate upgrade fee (then you get a whopping 48 tracks), absolutely gash implementation of MIDI, and proprietary RTAS effects (your vsts won't work).

It works well as an audio tape recorder someone told me recently. Well, so does Audacity and that costs ZERO and doesn't tie you to certain hardware.

mp3 export - yes, Ableton should implement this but there are a gazillion freeware .wav/.aiff to mp3 converters. Smack compressor - the new compressor in Live is awesome and doesn't have the silly phoney 'olde worlde' GUI of the non accurate VU meter.

Pro Tools LE, M-Powered - The only reason to go this route over Logic, DP, Cubase, Sonar, Live, heck even Acid, is the fact that you can load your project straight into a PTHD system, 'industry standard' etc, etc, as found in most recording studios. There are dozens of reasons to avoid it.

Most of the new timestretching features in PT were already implemented 18 months ago in Sonar, even cheapy but good Reaper is very advanced in this area. So much for the groundbreaking news !

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:35 pm

Well I do understand about the (somewhat articifical, it's true) limitations that the Pro Tools route would involve... although for me the lack of PDC is the only one that I can see as a potential problem.

As for the opther points... I own/use an M-Audio firewaire interface that I am very happy with indeed - no problems here. So that's good...

Sonar's timestretch (yes, I have Sonar, but no longer use it) is very over-complicated (like most of Sonar in fact!) and Reaper (which I have also tried) lacks many of the options that I believe the PT 7.4 timestretch offer - for example groove extraction, and moving warp markers manually within the timeline. In some other areas it is also lacking at this point (but a great bargain none the less!).

Regarding VSTs I basically use Reason 4 for software instruments, alongside my hardware keyboard workstation. I only have a couple of VSTs anyway. But the Digidesign instrument range is quite interesting, and perhaps a better investment for me that the Ableton instruments (which have not impressed me at all so far...)

The benefits for me in going over to Pro Tools would include the fact that MIDI tracks can be exported directly to Sibelius (I own Sibelius 5), and as a teacher I could give studnets some early exposure to the industry standard audio software (alongside Live still of course) which would be good for their education. I can get M-Powered very cheaply via education, and would certainly be looking get the Music Production Toolkit expansion from the outset.

In other words, if PT 7.4's Elastic Audio is as good as it looks in the video, it pretty much seals the deal.

So I'm interested to hear from people who have tried this by now, specifically to compare the timestretch quality with that I am used to (and unhappy with) in Live.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 12:22 am

I think Live's reputation as 'timewarp kings' is long over and needs addressing in the next issue, so I see a reason to consider ProTools there, if you have a need for that functionality.

Maybe PTLE/M-Powered can do a little more than Reaper right now in terms of timestretching modes but they are adding things all of the time and I already know that the feature set of Reaper in general is at least as good as if not better. SOnar, Logic and Cubase have some features that Digidesign owners dream about and in some cases, have had these features for 3-4 years.

If you have an M-Audio interface that works well than that's great but every forum I've been on (Live, Cubase, Recording.Org, Gearslutz etc) have many people very disappointed. Mostly it's a driver issue. Still no workable drivers for Vista or Leopard in many cases and the ones under XP and Tiger are often quite shoddy. I know 8 people who bought an M-Audio firewire 410 and 6 of them have since sold them, 5 could never get them to work. Oddly enough a friend tried his 410 on my PC laptop and it worked OK, but he could not get it to tun on his Mac Book Pro for love nor money.

Since Avid bought M-Audio, there has been a lot of commentary about the quality of M-Audio audio interfaces going to the dogs. It's not just the FW410 that gets a lot of flack, all of them do. Oddly enough, The Fast Track Pro (a very bland and uncomplicated USB interface) seems to be one of the least problematic, even though it's performance is nothing spectacular.

Although I can see that now Sibelius is also an Avid company as is Digidesign as is M-Audio, that you might expect a certain level of integration.

Dan Dare · Post by **Dan Dare** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:31 am

I like how you can snap warping to a grid in PT 7.4 . The Groove Quantize is really handy as well.

My only real test was to to make a track from scratch in Live and then make that same track again in PT and see how the work flow felt, and to hear the difference in the sound.

The track I did in PT was much tighter, I was able to apply some MPC style swing to the warping through the PT quantize.

I'm not to excited about the warp quality in PT compared to Live, not a lot of difference at a quick test.

The track I made in Live was a lot more fun for me though, and very quick.

I work all day in using PT for radio production, so when it's time to make music, Live gives me the change I need to put my mind in creative mode.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:50 am

Dan Dare wrote: The track I did in PT was much tighter, I was able to apply some MPC style swing to the warping through the PT quantize.

I'm not to excited about the warp quality in PT compared to Live, not a lot of difference at a quick test.

Thanks for that. When you say "tighter" was that to do with PT being better at picking up the transients more accurately, or do you mean that the quality issue allowed you to push harder with the elastic audio?

Dan Dare · Post by **Dan Dare** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:17 am

headquest wrote:
Dan Dare wrote: The track I did in PT was much tighter, I was able to apply some MPC style swing to the warping through the PT quantize.

I'm not to excited about the warp quality in PT compared to Live, not a lot of difference at a quick test.
Thanks for that. When you say "tighter" was that to do with PT being better at picking up the transients more accurately, or do you mean that the quality issue allowed you to push harder with the elastic audio?

Neither really, it was more about being able to use groove templates to apply to warp markers. You can pull in a nice drum loop with a cool swing to it and then conform all your other warped audio (bass keys vocals etc..) to the groove of your drums, or even a new groove or a MPC style swing.
It still took me a bit of messing about but when I was done the timing sounded bang on.

When you warp in PT you can actually see the markers and the audio stretching together to the grid, instead of the markers moving around the audio like in Live if that makes sense.

In my opinion Both apps do a great job of warping, they both sound good if not pushed. I just prefer to make music in Live it happens faster for me.

headquest · Post by **headquest** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:20 am

Thanks

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 4:11 pm

leedsquietman wrote: SOnar, Logic and Cubase have some features that Digidesign owners dream about and in some cases, have had these features for 3-4 years.

Which features are those?