Anyone stretch audio successfully?

[Bulls Hit]

GT Pro has an audio tempo calculator/stretch function.

Other versions of Cakewalk have this?

Anyhow my timekeeping leaves a lot to be desired and if I'm cutting and looping bits of a drum track together there will be tempo fluctuations between clips.

The audio stretch function works well at pulling the tempo back in line, but it creates additional noise. Like a single snare hit will become a flam.

Are there any tricks to this or is the technology just not quite there yet? Any other plugins that do something similar?

[moskus]

Originally posted by Bulls Hit
GT Pro has an audio tempo calculator/stretch function.

Other versions of Cakewalk have this?

Yes, every cakewalk-program has this. But it should not be used, because it sucks. If you you want to time-stretch something, then may I suggest Groove-Clips?

[Bulls Hit]

Thanks man I'll check it out

[moskus]

Just remember that in longer clips, setting the beats-per-clip can be a pain...

[Bulls Hit]

Moskus, who makes this Groove-Clips?

AltaVista's not returning anything useful

[Qwerty]

Groove clips are a part of Sonar -- I think from v2 onwards. You make a clip a groove clip by right mouse clicking on it and then selecting GROOVE-CLIP LOOPING.

Now, double-click the loop to open it in the loop construction view. This will show a window containing your clip with lines put onto it to show where the beats are. You tell it how many beats are in the clip, what key it was recorded in and away you go. As you change tempo, you clip will respond accordingly.

If it is just a little bit here and there, you can split the clip, drag it forwards and then use slip editting to fill in the gap. If you do this, you MUST line the clips up so they overlap completely and use a linear in - linear out crossfade. If not, you will hear a "blip" over the cut.

The other thing you could look at is the EXTRACT TIMING command which is meant to detect the actual tempo of a recorded track..... If you can get it to work properly, I'll buy you lunch

Q.

[Bulls Hit]

Ah yes well that's the thing isn't it. I don't have Sonar, so I guess I'm stuck with what's in GT Pro.

I'd have thought that someone somewhere would have a trick little plug in that would do the job

[Qwerty]

Hey Bulls -

I don't have Moskus' walking talking Cakewalk encyclopaedia capacity so I can only comment on Sonar.

It is possible that this feature is in your product but you would need someone else to confirm it. If you can't find it in the manual, that would be a fairly good indication that it isn't there....

Try the Extract Timing things - I may just be stupid in being unable to make it work. From what you are saying, that would be the best feature to use as it would create a tempo map based upon your original recorded track. That way, when you plonk MIDI drum data against it, everything will play properly.

There's an old tech tip about this on the cakewalk site from memory.

Have fun!

Q.

[moskus]

There aren't Groove Clips or Extract Timing in GT Pro (it's an audio-only program), so if you want to use Loops, Bulls Hit, then you need to do it the hard way: Find loops that fit with your tempo, or stretch them. You can use SoundForge and/or e.g. Acid for this, but then you would be better of just upgrading to Sonar or HS.