Syncing up tracks in CEP

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macca166

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Hey guys,

I recorded three songs on a roland workstation. Each song had about 9 tracks. Someone was going to mix these songs, and they did a crap job on it. So now it is up to me to remix.

I'm a big fan of CEP, but I'm not 100% positive how to do what I want....I'm hoping someone can help. What I would like to do is to convert the tracks from the roland into individual tracks in CEP. For example, I'll play track 1 out of the roland into track 1 into CEP. Then repeat the process for track 2. Then track 3.

Once this is finished, I can mix and then mixdown the tracks any way I see fit using CEP's fine tools. Only problem is, I can't get the tracks to properly sync up.

I tried doing this once before....same idea, except with a 4 track recorder. What I did was I recorded a loud pop noise (simply by banging on a mic) in one of the tracks in the first two seconds. Then I would always include the first two seconds of that track while transfering each track to CEP. That way the pop shows up in each track. From there I thought I would be able to match up the pops in each track to sync them all up. I couldn't get it to work out right.

Is there an easy way to go about doing this? I'm hoping there is some kind of snyc feature that I am missing or some program somewhere that can do this real easily...
 
Well now I feel like an idiot for not refreshing my memory about smtpe or whatever its called.

Unfortunately, the roland mixer does not support that protocal. I could buy a converter box, but I do not want to invest any money in this as it is three simple mixes and then that's it. Is there any other way to do this?
 
if you have a S/PDIF out you can use the embedded clock signal. and no it will not work with a motor driven unit. I did not sync through th embedded S/PDIF signal but still got reasonably good results
(don't dub a kick or whatevere cuz it will not sync perfectly you will slowly hear an echo that progressively gets worse.

The reason is that you r word clcok (the "time"data) is not the Roland but your soudncard and thus is a LITTLE different each time you transport tracks.

Good luck
 
I would think that if you would zoom in on that pop you made with the microphone and cut the wave off of each one at the exact point it ends they would match up.
 
Unless you use a SMPTE stripe (or some other sync'ing mechanism), there is ALWAYS some drift - even with digital signals.

The drift is much more significant with analog based gear however - usually due to the inherent non-linearity of motor mechanisms.

The only way to get accurate transfers is to use some form of sync, and making sure all digital I/O is being clocked by the same master clock.
 
I am in the process of figuring out the exact same thing.

I have a vs880 and CEP and do the "pop" trick but I'm trying to set up the MIDI syncing.

The Roland unit will Master or Slave to MTC.
I believe CEP will only Slave to MTC but I'm not entirely sure.

Depending on what type of sound card you have (i.e. # of inputs) you can send up to 4 tracks at once.

If you hard pan the tracks to send you cand do 2 through the master stereo out, 2 trough the aux outs.

Its kind of a pain to set up the mixer in the unit but it works.

Of course you would need a 4 input sound card.

-mike
 
mike,

are you saying that you CAN get the pop trick to work? If so, how do you accurately line up the different tracks? Is there some kind of function that can do it automatically? Before when I tried I couldn't seem to figure out a way to get them all perfectly in line.

Unless I can figure that out, here's what I think I'm going to do. I have two sound cards in my computer with one input each, so I think I'm gonna mix right on the roland and just send the outs into my computer...the left channel on one track and the right channel on the other. So it will be a little tough to do the live mix to feed right into CEP, but I guess I don't have any other options.

Unless....mike? It'd be great if I can get that pop idea working because then I could spend some time with the tracks and put noise gates on certain tracks and actually work with each track to make it sound good for the final mix. It would end up making the final mix sounds 10x better than if I mixed from the roland...given the time constraints I will have.
 
Unfortunately the "pop" trick is manual.

At least as far as I do it.

I basically try and hit the play on the 880 and the record in CEP as close to the same time as possible.

Then I slide the "reference track" so it starts at 00:01:00.
I do this because if you end up with a track that you need to slide back farther than where the reference track starts then you dont have to trim anything (yet).

I find the spike on the "pop" and place the bar there.
Write the time location down for reference incase the curser gets moved.

I then zoom the height to max and the resolution to not quite max but just about where you start getting sample resolution.

It is a little teideous but it is not so bad really and sometimes you may get one track not quite right but its easy to adjust.

I use to first send a stereo rough mix in as the reference track and then solo each individual track with the mix to double check but I dont do that much anymore.

One question though............you say you have 2 soundcards each with one input.
Each sound card should have one STEREO input yes????

Becaus if thats the case you can, for instance, pan track 1 on the roland hard left and track two hard right and record two tracks at a time with each pass for each soundcard.

If you only have a single stereo input jack then you will need a y-cord.

...or two as you could also send track 3 and 4 (hard panned left and right) through the AUX outs ONLY to the other sound card.

-mike
 
Mike,

Well that got me thinking. I can load my computer up with 5 soundcards total...using the Y cable that could give me 10 simultaneous tracks. That way I wouldn't need to use the pop trick at all... every track would come in on time because I'm using less than 10 for each song.

Now there are two big issues standing in my way. The first is, does the roland have a direct out for each track on the back of the unit. If it does, then boom I can plug those suckers right into my computer and get a total of 10. If they don't, then like you said, I can only get 4 tracks at a time using left and right for the mains and left and right for the aux.

The second question is can my computer handle 10 simultaneous inputs. I'm running Windows XP at 600Mhz with 128MB of RAM. If RAM is a factor I can remove some from another computer and probably juice it up a bit.

What are your opinions?
 
Running a bunch of soundcards like that won't work unless the cards are digitally synced (with special drivers and cables).

Why don't you just do a MIDI sync like FZ fist mentioned?
 
Well I looked through the cool edit pro manual again and I don't see anything about syncing using MTC? All it offers it SMTPE... is there a way to do it with just the roland and some midi cables?
 
Okay so I went in on saturday and I got the SMTPE/MTC to work. I had cool edit setup as the master device and it was controlling the roland fine. Sweet.

But...of course there was a huge problem that forced me to abandon the tracks I copied over. Every once in a while in each track, the pitch would suddenly bend down and then right back up again, as if a tape were slowing down then speeding up to catch back up. For a 4:00 song it happens only about 2 or 3 times per track, but its noticeable enough to have ruined the tracks.

Now I'm hoping there is some kind of setting that I can change to prevent this. I did not change any of the default SMTPE settings in cool edit. At first I had it on SMTPE 30 fps and then I changed it to SMPTE 24 fps to see if that would fix the problem. It didn't. I of course made the appropriate adjustments on the roland too.

Does anyone know what would cause this problem and how I could fix it? I am planning on heading back on Thursday. What I am hoping to do this time is go in with my one sound card and record two tracks at a time into cool edit...I've got a stereo signal coming into the sound card so I'm gonna hard pan one left and one right and set cool edit up to record that way. But I can't do this unless I fix this SMTPE problem. Does anyone have any ideas?
 
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