Why Groove Doctor and not multitrack Warp Time?

[Mr Coffeehouse]

Wondering why the Tracktion team chose the approach of slicing, sequencing and then cross-fading the slices as opposed to doing a similar thing with Warp Time, where there would be no need for slicing and cross-fading. Any thoughts?

Thanks, Michael at The Coffeehouse

[AGreen]

Probably because it was concieved as a tool for correcting drum timing and it's better to avoid time stretching if possible because it does degrade the sound to some degree. Drums don't really need to be stretched in order to quantise them. There's a time stretch option coming to Groove Doctor soon I believe which will make it more useful on actual audio material, though it will still involve splitting I suspect.

[Mr Coffeehouse]

My handful of attempts to quantize multitrack drums (originally tracked by a loose drummer playing to a click) using the Groove Doctor have not been very successful, particularly at the crossfade stage of the process.

I’m wondering how others of you are having success or not with similar attempts unifying and solidifying the groove of multitrack drums, etc.. using the Groove Doctor.

[AGreen]

It's based on Pro-Tools Beat Detective and intended to be used in a similar fashion. See these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE4zlj2_RrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKWQf3R5OP8

[dRowAudio]

Can I ask what you mean by "have not been very successful"?

Please check out the video we posted on how to use Groove Dr. Part 1(in the previous post) as quantising multi-track drums is relatively involved. Groove Dr. makes the process extremely automated and streamlined but you still have to choose some options to suit your material.

[TSC]

Here's some background info as to why this process works the way it does

The main use case for this feature is fixing timing problems with multi track recorded drums

The reason you cannot simply fix each track in isolation, is because of the spill of each drum to multiple microphones

If you fixed each track separately, you would end up with residual drum spill out of synch and the results may not be very desirable

In this process, you pick target tracks for the correction, then apply the edits to all the tracks. By doing this, all the tracks stay in synch

Time stretching could also introduce synch problems as the gaps may vary

It's a really well proven feature in PT where its used heavily - we have improved the process of course!

[Mr Coffeehouse]

When diving into working with multitrack acoustic drums with the Groove Doctor, I made sure to follow the Video tutorial Vol. 1 (looking forward to Vol. 2 ), so, phasing issues between the multitracks wasn't the issue.

Maybe I just need to spend some more time woodshedding with the program, and I promise to do that. I appreciate everyone's responses.

I will say though - I really like the workflow and logic of the WarpTime feature, and I wish that I could manipulate the timing of multitrack acoustic drums' tracks together in that manner (making sure not to move single tracks within the drum's multitracks - creating phasing issues), with some of the beat detection and sequencing features of the Groove Doctor added to that.

No harm in dreaming
Thanks, Michael at The Coffeehouse

[Mr Coffeehouse]

Oh snap like magic there it is - Part 2:

https://youtu.be/tzYOUZoXfEI