Third Take

AudioSnap, a new suite of features in Sonar 6, contains several powerful tools for manipulating the timing of audio. There are two main directions you can take with AudioSnap - snapping the global project tempo to existing audio, and quantizing audio, either to the project grid or other audio. It is this last idea, quantizing audio to other audio, that is the most exciting.

A drum part with timing issues forced me to delve into AudioSnap for the first time. At first, I was frustrated because the results sounded terrible; the natural decay of the cymbals was ruined, and the hats were not closing on the right beat. It was then that I discovered the existence, and importance of, the different AudioSnap algorithms.

If you’ve never used AudioSnap before, these videos are a great place to start. Once you’ve grasped the basics of how to manipulate audio timing, you can begin to experiment with the different stretching algorithms.

Sonar 6 comes with six different stretching algorithms. Two are provided for “online” use, meaning that they render the audio during playback within Sonar. These are Percussion and Groove-Clip. The other four - iZotope Radius Mix, iZotope Solo, iZotope Solo Bass, and iZotope Solo Vocal - are “offline” algorithms, only available when you are exporting audio or freezing a track. They are too computationally intense to be used in real-time. You can, of course, use the online algorithms to render audio; that’s how the clips in this article were produced.

Because the online algorithms must work in real-time, they sacrifice audio quality for speed. This was what initially frustrated me with AudioSnap, before I discovered that there were other, better algorithms for mixdown.

To demonstrate the reduction in audio quality caused by the “online” algorithms, here is a series of clips that bring out the worst in the Percussion algorithm, and showcase the fidelity of the iZotope Radius Mix algorithm. This is a drum overhead in the aforementioned project:

Original Recording

You can hear the timing issues in this clip. While I am not a big fan of quantizing drums to make every song perfect, this is a situation where the feel of the track was weird and it was too late to re-track the drums.

Quantized, Percussion Algorithm

After disabling some AudioSnap nodes that were confusing the quantizer, this is the result rendered through the Percussion algorithm. As you can see, the timing issues are fixed, but the hats are no longer closing in the right place! This could be extremely frustrating if you didn’t know about the other algorithms…

Quantized, iZotope Radius Mix Algorithm

Rendered with the iZotope algorithm, the result is much better.

AudioSnap is an amazing tool, and after I learned how to use it properly, it has never let me down. Remember, if the online algorithms aren’t cutting it and you need the sound from an offline algorithm while you’re working on the project, freeze the track. Sonar will render the audio for you using the offline algorithm, and you can get back to work with a great sounding track.