jonyoung wrote: Hey All,

Got a tip on this for quantizing audio drum tracks (in apps other than PT, I use Sonar). It's capable of quantizing multiple tracks simultaneously (your mileage may vary), supposed to be comparable to Beat Detective for tightening up drum tracks. I just downloaded the demo, haven't messed with it yet. Looking for feedback from actual users. Anyone wanting a peek, go to:

http://www.beatcreator.com

I'll post opinions after I have a chance to mess with it, like Wednsday or so.

What did you think?

I downloaded the demo and have worked with it for about 4 hours total. I first tried it on one stereo track of a drum mix. It worked very nicely. It was able to pick out the "big" events like kick and snare hits and, with tweaking of the parameters, wasn't messed up by other stuff like cymbals and hi hat. Actually worked with tom rolls, too. I've got PTLE in addition to Sonar and I've done similar tests with Beat Detective LE and have been pretty pleased with the results.

I also tried Beat Quanitzer in multi-track mode. I had to dive into the manual to figure it out, but it's not too difficult. At first blush, I don't know if the results were "better" in multitrack mode than they were working on one stereo track of the drum mix. Maybe with a more complex drum beat, it would be necessary to isolate the kick and snare hits.

I also tried both BQ and Beat Detective LE on a bass line. I was hoping I could tighten up that performance to go along with my newly-quantized drum track. However, I could not get good results. It could not accurately locate the transients in the bass line. I could do it manually, but then what's the point? I can just slice it up and align to measures without these programs.

My conclusion is that Beat Detective LE is going to work fine for me for my drum tracks. At this point I'd rather mix-down my drums to a stereo track and quantize them, running the risk of having to repeat the process if I want to tweak the drum mix itself, rather than shell out $250 for BQ. Maybe at some point in the future when I'm rich and stuff.

All that said, a good performance is worth infinitely more than any of this software!

Thanks for your research, poprocks! I've been so busy doing other things and attending to other needs first, I never have messed around with the demo version. I have other software needs that take priority and am dealing with them first. The project I was contemplating using BQ on...I can do faster manually as there aren't too many mis-hits to deal with. I have the same philosophy (and fortunately, the latitude) regarding quantizing as I do vocal tuning; I'll do it to fix the OCCASIONAL fluke, but I'm not going to use it on a track from start to finish to make someone a star. There's enough of that going on on Music Row here in Nashville already. I'm old enough to be cranky enough to not put up with people who can't sing or play.