Confused when editing Audio data

R

rvriccardi

New member
Hi all,

I may be having a mental block, I'm not sure, but I'm having major audio editing headachs.

I'm using Sonar 4 Producer to record my drums. When I record my drums I record 2 tracks simaltaniously, 1 track for left channel and 1 track for right channel both comming from the outputs of my mixer. I have 7 mic's going into the mixer just for the drums.

My problem is getting the audio data to match up with the beats/measures in Sonar's track view. I hadn't been using Sonar's metronome when I recorded my drums so the drum beats don't match up the the beats/measures in the track view. Needless to say editing the audio is a nightmare.

Is my only option to re-record my drum tracks using Sonar's metranome?

I've tried Quantize, but it only seems to move the clip either left or right in the track view, it doesn't change the placement of the beats within the clip.

Am I going about this wrong?
 
The problem is, unless the tempo of the audio is really precise, there is no one setting. The true tempo will shift about. Also, if the real playing is done with stylistic feel -- notes are swung, bass is on top of or behind the beat -- then the information inherent in th audio is not a true reference to the real metronomic pulse that's going on.

There is a way to do what you want but it's complex. It involves the software going in to the audio files and looking for obvious periodic transients (such as snare drum hits) and trying to infer tempo information out of that. Depending on how isolated your audio tracks are this might work well or not at all. For example, if it's one audio track with everything in it, the transients it can work with might be obscured.

Go into the help system (or in the manual) and look up Extracting Timing. That'll tell you all you need to know.
 
I've NEVER been happy with the results I got from trying that.

Best of luck, maybe it'll work for you.
 
Hmmm...yeah.....

my 2 cents is this:

It would be more worth your time and effort to re-record the drums to Sonar's metronome. By the time you get your existing tracks all cut up and matched to the beat/measure markers you could have re-recorded it already. Besides, it just doesn't sit right with me to record something off tempo and digitally "fix" it later. But to each him own......
 
I agree, I just started re-recording using the metronome and editing is much easier. I should have done this from the beginning. Thanks for the response.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top