I have been working on a virtual choir project and have spent a lot of time on it using the time-stretch tool (the pointer with the clock - the tool name escapes me!) by cutting the words etc. on the hit point and dragging them using the time-stretch with the appropriate snap set, to align to the required bar or beat, and the other side also snapped and stretched so that they meet at the same point. I had hoped that by doing it this way, there would be no click between cuts as the samples would meet. I am however getting clicks and pops. I wonder if this is the nature of time-stretching, if it is due to the cutting of the audio (I’ve also tried overlapping and cross-fading as well as fading out the end of sections and fading in the new section but to no avail), or, if there is a better way of doing this? It sounds much tighter and in time, but the pops and crackles are unmanageable.
I’m using Cubase 11 Pro (with whatever the latest update was)
On a side note, there are so many features of cubase that I haven’t used, and don’t know anything about. Are there any good books anyone would recommend that I can use to learn specific things (rather than reading beginning to end, or a book which contains irrelevant things like recording technique). Is the manual my best bet?
I’m surprised, that fading and cross-fading you described didn’t remove the clicks - so I wonder if there’s something else going on:
e.g. is the Audio Performance Panel maybe showing an overloaded audio system (because of all of the extra time stretching calculations)? – If that’s the case, try increasing your ASIO Buffer Size.
Side note: I’ve been doing that kind of work many times and for detail vocal (or other audio) alignment, I mostly use the AudioWarp functionality in the Sample Editor with the Free Warp tool selected. And only when the audio has to be moved by a lot, do I slice the audio event in the Project editor. But your way should work, too.
p.s. I do my learning mostly with web searches and YouTube videos. The main trick is to find the right search terms and that can involve a little extra trial and error until one figures out the commonly used term for the process to be learned.
I’ll give that a try too. Could it be because of all the tracks that have slightly different time stretches simultaneously? For this particular project, there are about 20 individual vocal tracks all with their own processing (eq, deess, compression etc.) going into a stereo bus for each part (SATB), with gates and further processing on the bus, plus backing track made of audio tracks and midi (VST instruments).
So if all 20 vocal tracks are being adjusted using time stretching tool, but in different places, could that be putting more pressure on it? It happens not only on playback but on mixdown too.
I have no experience of the sample editor. How does Cubase manage timestretch? Does it do it in realtime, or after an adjustment, does it change the actual audio?
It’s generally non-destructive editing with on-the-fly calculations. So you can reverse or change the time stretches later.
You can however choose to “freeze” audio tracks after you’re done editing on a specific track for a while, which reduces what the CPU needs to calculate real-time.