Using Live as a DAW: Advice needed

[Gravity]

I'm not an analog freak, I have use multi-track tape up until now because it works, and computers don't. Trying to use computer DAWs some five years ago I realized I'd rather cut my foot off with a blunt knife, because everything was so complicated and took ages to do. But recently I did some quick testing with Live and Tracktion, and I thought that had changed, but I am now beginning to despair.

So, help me out here:

I like Lives beat warping functionality, and was going to use it instead of doing everything manual and using my sampler. Then, of course, with the MIDI capabilities, why not use it as a MIDI sequencer as well? And, well, heck, why not just transfer all the audio to Live and get rid of my tape recorder as well?

Mëëëp! That didn't work. Even now when I have got sync issues straigthened out, when I record a track it plays back in perfect beat at the start, but slowly, slowly, gets out of sync. It seems like Live will place the beat markers more and more incorrectly the longer you record.


So the options I have left is:
1. Manually rewrapping every track after every take to see if it's any good.OK, that's not really an option. It takes to long, and especially when I have somebody else doing the singing, taking a five minute wraping session after each take is out of the question. The sync HAS to be perfect without me doing anything about it.

2. Syncing Live to my tape recorder. I don't want to do that, because it takes 10 minutes to set up the tape recorder and it takes 30 minutes to wrap everything up again. And besides, although my MC-50 will happily sync correctly if I start in the middle of a song, this makes Live completely confused, and it will start playing somewhere else, out of sync, meaning I have to start from the start of the song every time, so...that's not really an option either.

4. Use tracktion for the DAW and Live as a rewire slave. But that means I'm going to have to pay $400 just for it to wrap the beats. I don't have that money. Besides, I didn't get Live to work as a Rewire slave...
And how does Tracktion behave when you record something and then change the tempo? Is that even possible?

5. Find something else that does similar beat wrapping. I could probably use Reason, it does it's "wrapping" by auto-splicing of course, but that would work too. Still, that's another $400. On the other hand, Malström is a seriously cool synth.
What other are softwares/plugins are there out there that will automatically timestretch a sample to a beat? Anything reasonably cheap and hi-quality out there?

6. Get Live to sync correctly. This is obviously the preferred solution, but I seriously doubt it's going to work.

What do you say? Am I up shit creek without a paddle? Is the whole idea just stupid? Should I forget using the computer and just stay with tape since that WORKS.

[sqook]

IMO, live's power is in it's sequencing, not it's beat wrapping. What you seek is a program such as melodyne.

[Gravity]

Interesting though as it is, it's not what I'm looking for at all. Besides, it costs more than Live + Tracktion together.

Thanks for the hint, but no, I still need something that can stretch and play beats in time with the music in a simple effortless way, like Live can. And I need a DAW that can record things in sync. Like Live can't.

[rikhyray]

Live is the program you looking for. . I have done some old projects transfered from hardware. There are some tutorials about warping.
So try Live 4 or Cubase SX 3 they are excellent but different, obviously Live more live oriented.

[Gravity]

I know how to warp. The point is that I can't take five minutes to warp a take after each take just to put it in sync. If I record something it should be in sync directly.

I'll try to exclain: When you record music, you expect that whatever you played during recording should be played back as you played it. Recording something, and when you play it back hearing it get slowly out of sync, is not acceptable, and makes the program unusable as a DAW.

[feyshay]

Unless I misunderstand the question, is not the problem possibly that the musician is losing sync with the beat (by a gradual speed up during the course of the song)? If that is the case, then I guess you would have Live autodetect that musician's speedup in some way and then modify it?

Unless I have totally misunderstood it would appear you have two options--Try to get your musician to keep the beat, or learn to be speedier in your warp-marking.

I have noted a terrible time with trying to maintain the right rhythm (in fact I see that as my own limitation). Then when I try to warp mark the acoustic guitar that I just played (using tones or texture, rather than beat), the sound of the acoustic guitar sounds warped. I try playing with the metronome, but find that there are still some minor problems with my timing. Then it does not sound synched when I put in a bass or drum track. My only option is to warp mark, and then the guitar sound is not as good.

Any comments or suggestions?

[Gravity]

Unless I misunderstand the question, is not the problem possibly that the musician is losing sync with the beat

No, that is not the problem. (And in fact, I have yet to meet a musician who starts playing out of sync. That seems to me to be quite impossible. Sloppy timing, sure, bad playing, absolutely, but just slowly sliding out of sync? Can you even do that unintentionally? )

[sqook]

Unless I misunderstand the question, is not the problem possibly that the musician is losing sync with the beat

No, that is not the problem.

Yes it is. It's just that the "musician" is the computer.

[monarkeys]

I guess I don't understand - can't you simply record into Live without warping?

That would get your take in sync.

Now the only problem is that you *will* need to warp the take if you want to change the tempo after recording the take - I don't see any way around that. I mean, maybe there is a piece of sofgtware out there that will automatically time compress all the audio when you change the tempo - but I can't imagine it would ever do it correctly - somehow you have to tell the computer that a certain point in the audio file corresponds to a certain beat, in order for things to stay in sync.

[braj]

I record guitar tracks in Live and have never had any issue with them going out of sync with the rest of the mix. If they are set to warp, then they change tempo along with the rest of the mix. Something sounds screwy. Are you sure they are warped before you change the tempo?

I'm guessing you're having live musicians playing to a track that already has tempo changes?

About a few of your points:

3. There is no point 3

4. Tracktion's time stretch is horrible, and not improving any time soon. Forget about that as an option.

5. Reason doesn't record audio. That's not an option.


Seriously, #1 is your best option. It really doesn't take very long to chop a track up into segments and warp them. You have way more flexibility than you ever had with tape and it takes the smallest fraction of the time it would have with tape as well.

[feyshay]

By the way, the term is warping, not wrapping right?
When you record with guitar (I do acoustic usually), do you find that when you are making some changes (warping) with the timing (because you have misplayed some picking part) that the quality of the sound is now reduced. (Even with tones or textures rather than beat mode)

I have tried warping lengthy pieces (minutes in length), just to get them into a perfect rhythym so that they will synch with my synthesized drums, bass, etc. Then, I find that the pretty good piece that I played now is in perfect time but sounds like someone applied vibrato to it.

You mentioned cutting the piece into short pieces and warping them. Would cutting my lengthy pieces make them less vulnerable to sound quality changes caused by the warping of an acoustic guitar? If so, I am grateful for that idea.

[basetwo]

I've never had any problems recording my electric guitar, tin whistle or violin when playing along with midi drums and bass. But I do two things:

1.) I've adjusted Live so that the latency offset (The value you can change in "overall latency" in the audio preferences) was set correctly.

2.) I only record each section of the song (i.e. verse, chorus, bridge) at a time.

Could it be that you havent made proper adjustments for latency?

[feyshay]

Latency is just fine.
I'll just try recording in smaller segments and then warping slightly to get the timing right on with the MIDI. I think what I'll start doing is recording a drum track first, instead of trying to play with the metronome. I think my timing will be better. Hopefully the minor warping I'll need to do on these smaller recorded sections (verse/chorus) won't noticeably change the sound quality.
Thanks.
As to the original post's dilemma, ?

[Gravity]

By the way, the term is warping, not wrapping right?
When you record with guitar (I do acoustic usually), do you find that when you are making some changes (warping) with the timing (because you have misplayed some picking part) that the quality of the sound is now reduced. (Even with tones or textures rather than beat mode)

Oh, absolutely. Especially if the parts is being stretched rather than compressed...

I have tried warping lengthy pieces (minutes in length), just to get them into a perfect rhythym so that they will synch with my synthesized drums, bass, etc. Then, I find that the pretty good piece that I played now is in perfect time but sounds like someone applied vibrato to it.

The beat warping does that. The tone warping is better because it tries to put those "glitches" in other places, like during silence and stuff.

Hmmm. I wonder what would happen if I Recycled a melodie and then quantized the MIDI. I have to try.

[Gravity]

I guess I don't understand - can't you simply record into Live without warping?

That would get your take in sync.

Hmmm. Well, it gets warped automatically, true, I haven't tried recording without the warp at all. I'll try that.

I mean, maybe there is a piece of sofgtware out there that will automatically time compress all the audio when you change the tempo - but I can't imagine it would ever do it correctly - somehow you have to tell the computer that a certain point in the audio file corresponds to a certain beat, in order for things to stay in sync.

But the thing is that the software knows that, because it knows what the beat was when I recorded it. and Live will automatically set warp markers during the recording. It just sets them more and more off...

But only having to manually warp if I decide the tempo is wrong is a workable solution, I'll try recording with the warping off, thanks.

I record guitar tracks in Live and have never had any issue with them going out of sync with the rest of the mix. If they are set to warp, then they change tempo along with the rest of the mix. Something sounds screwy. Are you sure they are warped before you change the tempo?

Yes, and they are out of sync before I change tempo too.
l

4. Tracktion's time stretch is horrible, and not improving any time soon. Forget about that as an option.

Time stretching is a nice extra feature. Sync is not. Tracktion is still an option, but I would need either Live or Reason to do the beats.

I've never had any problems recording my electric guitar, tin whistle or violin when playing along with midi drums and bass. But I do two things:

1.) I've adjusted Live so that the latency offset (The value you can change in "overall latency" in the audio preferences) was set correctly.

2.) I only record each section of the song (i.e. verse, chorus, bridge) at a time.

Could it be that you havent made proper adjustments for latency?

No, those are fine now, and it syncs well in the beginning. But you are right, I only noticed it when I sat down and did the guitar for a whole song.

OK, I got some things to try now.