Elastic Time vs Beat Detective

[Oroz]

With Elastic Time's audio quantizing capabilities we know that it could be a strong Beat Detective's contender. Now that 7.4 is out it would be great that some of you guys that bought the upgrade already did some real world comparisons between the two. Is Elastic Time's audio stretching (audio degradation?) really as good as Beat Detective's sliding audio (no degradation of audio)?

[C_F_H_13]

Originally Posted by Oroz

With Elastic Time's audio quantizing capabilities we know that it could be a strong Beat Detective's contender. Now that 7.4 is out it would be great that some of you guys that bought the upgrade already did some real world comparisons between the two. Is Elastic Time's audio stretching (audio degradation?) really as good as Beat Detective's sliding audio (no degradation of audio)?

check in new products section...just posted some rough examples of 3 different things....

[KEYBEEETSSS]

Hey slutz I did a track for the heck of it & ran it thru Elastic time just to have a li' fun with it...did it (EA) in a matter of 5min. but it turned out pretty kool....It's the 1ST track on my Myspace...JUS SO U'LL KNOW I am versatile & just as I stated did that for fun, PLEASE also listen or glance @ the rest of my music on there....

[tamasdragon]

I think we should not leave bd. Ea is great, but not a subtitute for bd. They are different. For problematic drum tracks, bd is a must, and I think digidesign may think the same as they are upgraded bd's algorithm.
Tamas Dragon

[T_R_S]

If you can hear the sound quality a quater note in a drum tack that been stretched or shrink by 1%, you have pretty amazing hearing and monitors.
After having **used** Elasticed Audio I can tell there is no sound quality loose I have heard in the tracks I have done so far.
FWIW the tracks sound a million times better because the fell is want I want to be now after Elastic Time editing.

[Steve MacMillan]

Advantages to Beat Detective:
Quality of audio is unchanged.
Usually will sound better overall.

Advantages to EA:
Usually faster.
Change tempo easier without being locked in to the new tempo.
Change tempo much further than is possible with BD
Quantize audio and play with groove templates without being locked in.
Inside hats and snare ruffs are not sliced to pieces.
Much easier to groove similar rhythmic elements like loops.

Simpler beats played by drummers with good time will edit in Beat Detective without the edits being too messy. If you like your tempo and just wish to tighten the drums then Beat Detective is the way to go. If you plan on making a big change to the tempo then there are times when the feel of the drums is better maintained with EA. Especially if you edit the Analysis markers. It depends on what you need to do.

STeve

[picksail]

I really enjoy quantizing drums with Elastic Audio.

I was never a proponent of Beat Detective. Not because I didn't like it, but because my old-school method was much faster and my workflow very efficient.

I have seen great engineers edit drums with BD and noticed just how much time was spent getting the trigger points exact.

By the time they had established all their trigger points I had already snapped everything to the grid and was done.

I can usually get a 3-4 minute drum track on the grid within about 10-15 minutes.

I use such an archaic method, but it works works well for me.

It works something like this:
**Tab-To-Transient and Command Focus Enabled**

1) Group all drum tracks together
2) Tab-To-Transient to the transient (usually kick/snare reference)
3) Press the (B) key to separate the region
4) Select a region and press Apple + 0 to snap the region to the grid
5) After everything is on the grid you may have to go through and trim the divided regions together
6) Highlight the entire drum group and press the (F) key to BatchFade

Of course, some tracks may require a little more time to get just right. But this is the method I've used for years.
In most case I would blast through a four or eight bar section (verse 1) at a time ensuring everything was aligned and well manicured,
then continue on through the remainder of the song.
Without fail someone always would drop in, while I was neck deep in drum edits, to hear me playing lightening fast drum rolls on the keyboard. Silly...

Though with EA I am excited to move into a new direction and try new methods.

For me it's all about speed and accuracy. EA seems to make sense to me.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by Steve MacMillan

Advantages to Beat Detective:
Quality of audio is unchanged.
Usually will sound better overall.

Advantages to EA:
Usually faster.
Change tempo easier without being locked in to the new tempo.
Change tempo much further than is possible with BD
Quantize audio and play with groove templates without being lock in.
Inside hats and snare ruffs are not sliced to pieces.
Much easier to groove similar rhythmic elements like loops.

Simpler beats played by drummers with good time will edit in Beat Detective without the edits being too messy. If you like your tempo and just wish to tighten the drums then Beat Detective is the way to go. If you plan on making a big change to the tempo then there are times when the feel of the drums is better maintained with EA. Especially if you edit the Analysis markers. It depends on what you need to do.

STeve

I was "Beat Detecting" a track using EA last night, for the first time - since then I've been watching the videos today (not much to do on this assisting gig!). I found, although it was taking me just as long to EA as to BD, this was more down to my dual G4 taking ages to process any moves by the time I was halfway through the track. I was happy with the sound of EA, and the end results were really great sounding.

I'd consider myself a pretty experience BDer - I'm one of the anal, check every hit, type people. I'd be interested to hear a drums-only mix of your results picksail - whilst I can slice drums like that, without the crossfades, unless the drummer was really quite tight in the first place, there's going to be glitches all over the place. Also, that method doesn't allow for iterative gridding.

Where EA is going to be VERY useful even when beat detecting is sorting out all the little ruffs and ghost notes that get f'ed up and cause a right PITA at the moment.

[picksail]

Let me see if I can dig something up.

I assume you want to hear something to see if I perform a hack job at editing.
I can assure you that this isn't the case.

Those who know me know me as the anal-retentive-seemingly-neurotic-nut case.

So I too am a wacky OCD editing type. Actually with everything.
When house-keeping arrives at the studio everyday I decline their service, because I derive enjoyment from doing it myself.

[AMIEL]

Originally Posted by tamasdragon

I think we should not leave bd. Ea is great, but not a subtitute for bd. They are different. For problematic drum tracks, bd is a must, and I think digidesign may think the same as they are upgraded bd's algorithm.
Tamas Dragon

agree!!

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by picksail

Let me see if I can dig something up.

I assume you want to hear something to see if I perform a hack job at editing.
I can assure you that this isn't the case.

Those who know me know me as the anal-retentive-seemingly-neurotic-nut case.

So I too am a wacky OCD editing type. Actually with everything.
When house-keeping arrives at the studio everyday I decline their service, because I derive enjoyment from doing it myself.

I'm sure you're not - I just don't know why that wouldn't work for me!

Occasionally (or more than occasionally), even with well captured drums, Tab-to-transient misses the exact start - sometimes you won't notice this, sometimes you will - so I check every hit.

I can fly through things when the playing's tight-ish - when it's a bit looser, and/or busy, it's a different matter. I just struggle to believe you can get through whole songs in a quarter of an hour! Surely it slows you up when there's some serious push/pull, or a hit's just too rushed to extend it out?

[picksail]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

I'm sure you're not - I just don't know why that wouldn't work for me!

Occasionally (or more than occasionally), even with well captured drums, Tab-to-transient misses the exact start - sometimes you won't notice this, sometimes you will - so I check every hit.

I can fly through things when the playing's tight-ish - when it's a bit looser, and/or busy, it's a different matter. I just struggle to believe you can get through whole songs in a quarter of an hour! Surely it slows you up when there's some serious push/pull, or a hit's just too rushed to extend it out?

I totally know what you mean. I was merely generalizing about the method. Really just stating the steps.

It's really hard for TTT to distinguish a bass guitar transient. It usually responds to the initial finger noise prior to the actual transient.

As you well know, there's a lot of hand/eye coordination required. You usually start out flying through the transients then quickly discover that you may have missed or 'miss triggered' one. Then you have to Option+Tab back a few.

[macleodgrant]

i did EA on an entire drum track and my findings were as below rendered with X-FORM. real-time or rendered with rhythmic or polyphonic i got extra hits or some hits were a bit earlier or later but X-FORM appeared to be very accurate

my process was to analyse the transients individually for the snare, kick, toms and then group the drums and go over the entire drum track and manually warp the transients to the grid, listening to each edit. sometimes i had to just shift a tom or snare forward or back ungrouped and this worked well

i noticed that the kick drum sounded seriously smeared so after i EA'd the entire drum track, i tabbed to transient for each kick drum and replaced them with the best of the non-elastic audio original kick
this made the track sound alot more natural with a lot of depth

i was able to do all this in about 8 hours but then it was perfect and i am a real perfectionist with this kind of thing

NOTE: i noticed that EA worked better with less warp markers and i got unexpected results otherwise. e.g. i prefer to leave the transient untouched and just warp the sustain part but when i did this i got weird artifacts. EA worked best when the entire transient with sustain was stretched - i think the algorithm expects a transient at a warp marker

[ToneRexx]

I think Elastic audio with real instruments like bass , guitars and acoustic guitars sucks!!! I use it with an acoustic guitar just doing quantizing...and sucked big time in all modes!!! horrible! can u imagine? just with quantizing!!!! imagine time streching changing the BPM!!!

Used beat detective....that worked!!!

I think Elastic Audio is way inferior than Sony ACID technology!!!
I think PT users rave about EA because they never used ACID !!!

[Steve MacMillan]

Originally Posted by macleodgrant

NOTE: i noticed that EA worked better with less warp markers and i got unexpected results otherwise. e.g. i prefer to leave the transient untouched and just warp the sustain part but when i did this i got weird artifacts. EA worked best when the entire transient with sustain was stretched - i think the algorithm expects a transient at a warp marker

It is my understanding that the Rhythmic algorithm works by not stretching the first bit just after the warp marker, then after x number of ms. the audio starts stretching. This is designed to preserve the transient. I'm not 100% sure about this.

STeve

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by macleodgrant

i did EA on an entire drum track and my findings were as below rendered with X-FORM. real-time or rendered with rhythmic or polyphonic i got extra hits or some hits were a bit earlier or later but X-FORM appeared to be very accurate

my process was to analyse the transients individually for the snare, kick, toms and then group the drums and go over the entire drum track and manually warp the transients to the grid, listening to each edit. sometimes i had to just shift a tom or snare forward or back ungrouped and this worked well

i noticed that the kick drum sounded seriously smeared so after i EA'd the entire drum track, i tabbed to transient for each kick drum and replaced them with the best of the non-elastic audio original kick
this made the track sound alot more natural with a lot of depth

i was able to do all this in about 8 hours but then it was perfect and i am a real perfectionist with this kind of thing

NOTE: i noticed that EA worked better with less warp markers and i got unexpected results otherwise. e.g. i prefer to leave the transient untouched and just warp the sustain part but when i did this i got weird artifacts. EA worked best when the entire transient with sustain was stretched - i think the algorithm expects a transient at a warp marker

I was liking the sound of EA (haven't had the chance to get back to it yet - been on a session for the last few days), I just found it took longer to do properly than people had me believe. But then I've heard people boast about being able to do BD really quickly (not you picksail! agree with you point above) and then you pick over it and it's nothing like as tight as I could do in a longer time.

The way I was doing EA was to choose an 8 bar region, quantise it, then go through in grid mode in analyse, and those hits that were wrongly detected, to delete all the mistriggers and put just one in the right place. Then, when I'd fixed all the hits, to unwarp, and requantise, which then takes notice of all the fixed triggers.

Sometimes, I found it easier (as someone mentioned in an early thread) to shift the whole 8 bars a bit later or earlier before quantising.

I suppose instead of going through and fixing markers, I could have just grabbed warp markers and moved so the hit was on the grid - but I hadn't watched the videos when I started doing this!

[Steve MacMillan]

It is my understanding that the Rhythmic algorithm works by not stretching the first bit just after the warp marker, then after x number of ms. the audio starts stretching. This is designed to preserve the transient. I'm not 100% sure about this.

OK, I just did a test with five second cymbal crash sample. I put the cymbal on the top of bar two and consolidated back to bar one. I duplicated the track, and phase flopped the dup. I put the dup into Rhythmic mode and manually put an Analysis marker right at the top of the cymbal. Then I warped the cymbal so that it started at the same place but extended out to 7 seconds.

Play both and there is total cancellation for 1 second. Then you can hear the stretch work. This is a really great algorithm. The cymbal transient cancelled completely. You should not experience any smearing of the transients.

In my experience of correcting a couple of drum kits, there were a few spots (mainly very open crashes and hi hat scoops) where I could hear the transition from transient to stretch. This was a 250ms kind of flangy moment. I found that by manually moving the warp marker's placement to the left and then pulling the warp maker left until the audio lined up on the grid. I was able to shift the transition to a better place.

STeve

[Steve MacMillan]

One more thing. Should you decide to render with the X-Form plug-in, it no longer cancels at the transient. But the standard render does. So maybe the standard render is more suitable for rendering drums.

STeve

[AMIEL]

Steve did you tried it with acoustic guitars???? I also quantized a 4 bars acoustic rhythm and did not like it...

[Steve MacMillan]

Originally Posted by AMIEL

Steve did you tried it with acoustic guitars???? I also quantized a 4 bars acoustic rhythm and did not like it...

I just tried an acoustic guitar in polyphonic mode, it sounded pretty good. Nothing weird about it. If I needed to quantize it, I would have no problem using EA. It locked to the grid right away. If I had to do it manually, it would have taken at least an hour and its debatable if it would sound as good, with all the edits, etc.

I'm sure you heard something you didn't like, but the bit I just tried sounded fine to me.

You will definitely hear some weird wavy stuff at the end of long sustains in Rhythmic mode. Sometimes the decay setting on the plug-in can fix that, but Polyphonic and X-Form both do a pretty good job with the slow stuff. Long cymbals are going to sound best in Polyphonic (or X-Form). Rhythmic is great for preserving drum transients. Use Monophonic for single vocal tracks, and some solo instruments without chords.

STeve

[macleodgrant]

Originally Posted by AMIEL

Steve did you tried it with acoustic guitars???? I also quantized a 4 bars acoustic rhythm and did not like it...

i initially tried quantising but i really never got a good result at all with any algorithm or any source! i then decided to try manually as a last resort and eventually got it to work great. i found though that only X-Form kept the timing on the mark as the waveform appeared using a realtime algorithm whereas rendering the other algorithms and seeing the waveform overview the timing was in cases way off off. that's why (until they fix it) i'm using X-Form

that's really good news about the rhythmic algorithm, going to need to check that out!

[Oroz]

OMFG! I finally have been quantizing drums with Elastic Audio (isn't called Elastic Time ) and I can't believe how easy and fast it is to achieve great sounds perfectly on time. Awesome! . I've been using something similar to picksail's way:

Originally Posted by picksail

It works something like this:
**Tab-To-Transient and Command Focus Enabled**

1) Group all drum tracks together
2) Tab-To-Transient to the transient (usually kick/snare reference)
3) Press the (B) key to separate the region
4) Select a region and press Apple + 0 to snap the region to the grid
5) After everything is on the grid you may have to go through and trim the divided regions together
6) Highlight the entire drum group and press the (F) key to BatchFade

Of course, some tracks may require a little more time to get just right. But this is the

I don't think that I'll be using Beat Detective any time soon.

[Stiff]

Originally Posted by Oroz

OMFG! I finally have been quantizing drums with Elastic Audio (isn't called Elastic Time )

When elastic pitch arrives it will be

[Stiff]

Wo-ho! My 1000th post! Drinks are on me!