KVR Audio

Cordelia · Post by **Cordelia** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:12 pm

To my ears, ACID time stretching is slightly better than Live, but I wanted to use time stretching inside my host (FLStudio). Beat Slicer is great for rhythms, the granulizer plug-in worked, but there were a few too many artifacts on complex tonal material. My friend Dan swore by Intakt, I wasn't too impressed.
The Elastique time stretching in FL 5 is pretty amazing. I've changed tempo, without changing pitch, faster and slower by 15 to 20 BPMs on acoustic guitar, vocals, complex pads, and full mixes with very few artifacts. You have to hear it to believe how smooth it is. The only time stretching that I've ever heard that's come close is Prosoniq Time Factory, and I think the Elastique engine beats even that. I don't think it's true to say anymore that time stretching will always make your audio sound worse, I think FL 5 just raised the bar.

topaz · Post by **topaz** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:17 pm

im with SF, yes mpex is in SX and it totally rocks
(when used correct)

I stretched a full track from 106 upto 127 without any audible difference.

the track was incognito's version of dont you worry bout a thing. try it.

the guy that made Beat Burner, Ronnie also has an amazing stretch algo (anyone remember stretch_3.1023.10)

afaik he has not released it, or maybe he has ?

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:20 pm

Sascha Franck wrote:
To add to this, I think the absolutely best timestretcher for monophonic signals has got to be Melodyne - but only because you can actually control timbre artifacts and the likes in realtime.

But insn't a program like melodyne based on an additive (re)synthesis kind of engine ?

l mean , in a way that rather than working with the audiofile itself, it work with the datas created from it, after fft analyse

I may be mistaken because i'm maybe not enough experienced but i assume that it probably isn't the same kind off process in this particular case

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 2:34 pm

Krakatau wrote: But insn't a program like melodyne based on an additive (re)synthesis kind of engine ?

Maybe, even most likely. I'm no techhead either.
However, I found the results from Melodyne on certain monophonic material being the best I've ever heard. Most likely due to the fact that it doesn't only stretch material, plus it's giving you options to easily adjust the stretched things to your likings.

But you're correct of course, Melodyne doesn't do time stretching the "classical" way. And it doesn't work as good as, say, MPEX 2 on polyphonic material either.

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 4:54 pm

Melodyne is a great app, probably the best Iv heard.

But, Iv found when working with beats the best method is to slice up the hits, then time stretch the ambience decay portion of each hit to the correct length. This leaves the important parts un touched, and works a treat!

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 5:41 pm

tee boy wrote:Melodyne is a great app, probably the best Iv heard.

But, Iv found when working with beats the best method is to slice up the hits, then time stretch the ambience decay portion of each hit to the correct length. This leaves the important parts un touched, and works a treat!

this is to be adviced to the recycle developers, i think !

vastaire · Post by **vastaire** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 10:29 pm

But, Iv found when working with beats the best method is to slice up the hits, then time stretch the ambience decay portion of each hit to the correct length. This leaves the important parts un touched, and works a treat!

!!! I can't believe I never thought of that! I came close the other day by looping the ambience decay portion, but now I'm going to try stretching it!

If you want your beat to go faster then chopping up the loop with PhatMatikPro or alike is the best way to do it.
Time stretch will allways make the sound worse in some way unless you like the "new" sound

Ok so what do you do about the gaps in between? I'm talking about samples without drums. Like I'll chop the melody into bars or 1/2 bars and then play the chops on beat to metronome. Then there are gaps in between. That's where my problem lies. I can definately chop up drums and just sequence them to whatever BPM I want no problem.

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 10:42 pm

I do all my timestretching in Sound Forge, and it isn't perfect, but they offer 20 or so different algo settings, which work better with certin kinds of sounds. Extreme timestretching (more than 100%) is always going to sound artificial.

You could investigate Csound or the Composer's Desktop Project. Lots of research has already been done with both, Csound especially has a lot of different algos around to try (brassage, granular, etc)

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 4:04 am

Like I'll chop the melody into bars or 1/2 bars and then play the chops on beat to metronome. Then there are gaps in between

FL will slice (or read slices) and timestretch the drums to fill the gaps if there are gaps. Now unless there are big gaps it's better without.

Jaeson Merrill · Post by **Jaeson Merrill** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 4:35 am

tee boy wrote:Melodyne is a great app, probably the best Iv heard.

But, Iv found when working with beats the best method is to slice up the hits, then time stretch the ambience decay portion of each hit to the correct length. This leaves the important parts un touched, and works a treat!

FL5 basically does this

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:09 am

Yeh, Im sure there are programs out there that will do this kind of thing automatically. Its just the way Iv become used to working. Say if i imported an old vinyl break or whatever into Cubase, Id first find the tempo, chop it up roughly, then find the attack transients and move them into line with the grid, and finally time stretch the ends to fill any gaps. Another useful trick is to crossfade the start and end of certain hits - for example, if you had a snare with an essential pre attack, then you'd find the attack transient, move this into time with the grid, then pull out the pre attack before the hit and crossfade it with the end of the previous hit (usually a hat).

Seriously, I got into this method when my old system starting playing up with the midi stuff. This pretty much rendered my old Akai sampler useless, so i start doing it all with audio in the sequencer. Funnily enough, i read somwhere that BT had the same trouble and is currently writing a book on the subject

Should be... interesting!

As for time stretching algorithms - I use the ones in Cubase SX, they sound great imo. The Waves Transform bundle has a good one, but hardly worth the money. If you have PT then 'Pitch n Time' is amazing, and comes in TDM and RTAS on both Mac and PC i believe. This allows you to stretch on a curve -its possible to stretch say 90% at the begining and 10% at the end. This could be really useful for drums again cuz it would allow you to stretch gradually more as the hit decays.

I hear good things all the time about apps like Recycle and Acid, but never used them myself. They up to much?

Krakatau · Post by **Krakatau** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:37 am

tee boy wrote:
I hear good things all the time about apps like Recycle and Acid, but never used them myself. They up to much?

I think that recycle is basically a very clever concept...
( the first beatslicer-type of audio editor as much as i know )
... and i'm persuaded it would really benefit of the integration of a serious dedicated time-strecher engine

efluon · Post by **efluon** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:04 am

the timebandit standard in sx2+ sounds very good to me, slightly better than mpex2. but it may destroy the rhythm of the audio, as well as being a little inaccurate concerning the resultlength. i tried a demo of the elastique stuff by z-plane, which i believe is used in fl5, this seemed very good, too. and then there#s that algo for protools, serato time and pitch, people say that is the best. but i got to check mpex3 and that rules, one try i did was stretching to 200%, there were almost no artefacts. than i pitchshifted a monophonic classical guitar line by -16 semitones. this resulted in something sounding like rubberbands but again without those conspicuous artefacts. dunno which app has it already integrated though..

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:12 am

Krakatau wrote: I think that recycle is basically a very clever concept...
( the first beatslicer-type of audio editor as much as i know )
... and i'm persuaded it would really benefit of the integration of a serious dedicated time-strecher engine

Most likely - especially since you could then somewhat work with sliced loops containing things such as overlapping cymbals as well.
Not too sure, but I think that's the way Stylus is handling things.

efluon · Post by **efluon** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:25 am

also i think dp4 and protools have that beatdetective- slicing, where you slice multiple tracks with the same cuts, so you use your drums as a guide and cut all then stretch the individual samples, so rhythm stays as it was.. or you use sx3 and edit the realtime stretching to your liking, then "freeze" that using mpex2

Why is time stretching so useless?