Hey Chris,
Glad you got this going. I was going to give a crack at aligning it
myself, but I see that all is resolved.
I can sympathize with you on this one. I worked a couple of weeks ago
with a hip-hop artist who gave me a track with the same problems. I
was supposed to play guitar on a track for him, and the stereo mix
that he sent me was in wav format, but it was obviously an MP3 which
had been up sampled. I mean the sound of this thing was so degraded!
I have never seen anything like it. I had told him that I wouldn't
work with an MP3, so he just converted it into a wav file... Another
request I usually make with these guys is that they must give the
tempo, and have the project time correctly in sink.
In the end, I had like 4 guitar tracks to send back, and I could only
guess how it would turn out when they dropped them into the
session... All worked out for them though, or so I understand.
I must say for the record, that this guy is no amateur. He has had
several number 1 hits on Billboard, and is in the Death row camp. He
obviously isn't an engineer though.
When I sent the tracks over to the studio, I called the engineer and
told him what he would be up against, according to him these
activities are par for the course.
Shawn Brock
----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Smart" <csmart8@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2011 10:11 PM
Subject: [ddots-l] Sonar: Simple Track Alignment Problem
Hi folks. I'm having a strange situation here that I hope someone can
help with.
The Scenario:
I'm doing a freeby for a local hip hop "artist".
Despite my protesting, he sent me one mp3 containing the instrumental
mix, and a second mp3 containing his vocal with a note saying that
the vocal should start at around 11 seconds in. I know, very
professional. But, it's my job to make it work, so here we go.
This should be fairly straight-forward. I should be able to load them
into Sonar, select the vocal track from start to end, and nudge until
things line up nicely.
Except they don't!
He assures me that the instrumental track he sent me is exactly the
one he rapped over, and you can hear lots of speaker bleed in his
vocal track as proof. And yet, I can't get things to sync up.
Here's a link to a zip file containing the two tracks, plus my
attempt at alignment. You'll notice the first chorus is out of sync,
then the first verse seems really in sync, then things drift out again.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8551100/Hip%20Hop%20Alignment%20Problem.zip
I've checked Sonar's nudge settings and things are set to absolute
time, and a nice small number of ticks, so I can at least get close
to the target.
Is it possible this guy's vocal performance is just all over the
place time wise, or am I missing a setting somewhere in Sonar that
would cause a strange time drift issue like this?
I've never had trouble nudging before, but that has always been
limited to moving tracks a few milliseconds this way or that.
I guess if I need to, I can mute out his breath sounds, then start
highlighting individual phrases and moving those around. That seems
like it could get complicated in a hurry though.
Any other suggestions on how to remedy the situation gratefully
received. I'm off to reread all the tutorial lessons on audio clips
in preparation for what I imagine to be quite the cut and paste
operation tomorrow.
Thanks for reading, listening if you have a moment, and any suggestions.
I should warn you that the instrumental mix track is already super
compressed and right up against 0dBFS. You'll need to drop it a fair
bit and bring up the vocal to even here it.
Chris
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