I belive every DAW that counts has this feature. Even Tracktion Waveform 12 free edition:
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Simple suggestion here folks:
- Rather than just making an argument about why a feature is not needed, explain other ways to accomplish the same thing. Never assume you know every use case for a feature
- Rather than say Ardour should have it because every other DAW has it, explain what you feel the feature helps you accomplish, and then feel free to use other DAWs as example workflows to accomplish the task.
For the record, there are at least two functions that have been mentioned in this thread that are not accomplished by ‘rerecording’ or ‘get better talent’.
One is the creative use of modifying audio over time, somewhat accomplished by the existing time stretch functionality, but the existing functionality is incapable of handling ramps in speed etc. Things I have done before on an old MX5050 Otari Tape machine by spinning wheels or adding resistance, that gets you a creative hands on control of speed.
The other is for uses such as retiming existing audio, not just for music purposes (Tracking vocals or vocal/instrument replacement) but also in terms of movies and ADR where a form of elastic audio allowing for easy modification of timing to the syllable level or more with smooth ramps is nearly a requirement for good quality ADR these days for instance.
Now the trick to this is the fact that it takes a specialized skillset in DSP to code this in ways that are not central to the operation of the DAW. Not to mention that either it has to be written from scratch, or an existing open source library provide such results (I don’t know of one as good as the commercial options at the moment but I confess I haven’t looked into it in some time). So where a closed source DAW can license a library from an external developer (And for the record most do license one or a very few number of these libraries instead of writing it themselves), open source options can’t do that in the same way and an open source solution must be developed.
Seablade
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It’s a well-needed feature to work in audio production and has nothing to do with the artist’s talent, this feature is used in many applications, I think that the best Linux DAW**(Ardour/Mixbus)** should have it.
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Feature request for time-stretching to left, along with a simple patch to implement it, at 0009365: Allow time stretch to extend regions to the left - MantisBT
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Hello good morning, I think the same as seablade, let’s not assume that a specific tool is not necessary, not all of us are musicians or do not have access to musicians to create our musical creatures.
I was a sound technician, not an engineer or a musician and today I try to create music with my little knowledge of music theorists (while I’m trying to solve that weakness), I usually create music with the help of midi (with software synthesizers or with my 3 old synths hardware (yamaha tg55, kawai kc10spectra and waldorf blofeld).
On other occasions I use samples and with percussion sounds it is “relatively” easy to adjust, but with melodies it is much more complicated, one solution is to know the notes and recreate the melody and play it directly, but it is not always easy to recognize the notes or chords , the other solution is the subject of this thread we can call it warp or elastic audio or timestretch, although the same is not necessarily achieved, using the different tools.
Reaper is a true Swiss Army knife for many things (it’s a real beast), although for my taste the set of parts is better integrated into Ardour, Reaper has certain tools that I still don’t know very well and that have to do precisely with the This topic concerns us with adjustments in audio samples, the truth is that for these things I am using Reaper and once the samples have been adjusted, I transfer them to Ardour where I do the rest of the work.
Certainly any improvements to any of our beloved Ardour tools are welcome, a good warp or elastic audio or timestretch tool to either tweak or use creatively helps to stay in Ardour.
Reaper has certain very interesting and practical note and chord recognition tools that, together with those of warp/timestretch, which greatly facilitate the creative use or adjustment of samples, are things that Ardour can improve more than anything in its handling or functionality. .
I have known Ardour since version 3 and for a long time I have used it as an audio editor, because audacity has never fully convinced me, and since version 5 of Ardour I use it as a sequencer.
I came from the windows system where I used wavelab, and almost all DAWS, even an Amiga from time to time, but also cubase/nuendo, protools, logic, and some others and when I switched to linux in a short time I found among others Ardour and here I continue, it will be for something.
Let’s all improve Ardour, already a good DAW, any tool or part of Ardour that can be improved or complemented is welcome.
With all due respect to all, greetings.
text translated with google from spanish to english
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Please people gatekeeping because “there’s only one true way of doing music” is toxic and doesn’t add any value. Ardour is a fantastic DAW and when people request features they do to extend the capabilities of this amazing software.
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From the initial post:
It’s crucial to work with vocals from different singers.
There definitely isn’t one true way of making music, but specific techniques associated with making music are rarely crucial, except to that particular way of making music.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting audio warp to help change a human performance, whether for artistic reasons or simply as error correction. The only problem comes from insisting that such features are crucial or required, when the history of recorded music shows that they clearly are not.
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I agree and disagree at the same time.
features are crucial or required, when the history of recorded music shows that they clearly are not.
History of recorded music shows that the clip launcher is not crucial or required either. I’m trying to say that you can say the same about (almost) every single feature… maybe except recording and gain staging 
. But time is moving forward, the world is moving forward… Music making today is different than it was years ago, whether you like it or not. And the world is full of fantastic applications that make it easier than ever before. We all want Ardour to be among these tools, full of modern features. So don’t get it wrong when someone ask for a feature that would make Ardour even better than is today. 
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The good news is that Arodur can already do this, the bad news is that there is no GUI for it, and more bad news is that the free/libre library (rubberband) for time-stretching is not very good for time warping.
To toy around: Select a Region and the run the “Swing It” Lua script [1]. Try it on an existing song with a steady beat.
The beat position of selected audio regions is analyzed, then the audio is time-stretched, moving 8th notes back in time while keeping 1/4-note beats in place to produce a rhythmic swing style.
The quality of that is nowhere near the industry standard [2] that pretty much every other DAW uses.
–
[1] Menu > Window > Scripting. From the dropdown, pick Action > Swing It (Rubberband) and press Run. – or alternatively right-click on one of the Script Buttons top-right in the Editor’s Toolbar and load the script there.
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Is Rubberband 3 any better (or is it already using v3)? Have you discussed this particular use case with the developer? Perhaps they have some suggestion for how it can be accomplished.
Ardour is already using rubberband v3, and no, I have not specifically discussed time-warping with Chris. A large part of the problem is to decide which algorithm to use for a specific section. Rubberband does not do this automatically. Perhaps machine-learning can help, but it sounds like a couple of PhD theses.
The Elastique API is open (and zplane offers binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux), so Ardour could in theory add support for it and someone could license it for their use. It is unlikely that we’ll go that way, but it is an option.
Anyway, now that tempo-editing works nicely (again), stretching audio along with MIDI moved up a bit on the ToDo list.
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…and we have merged it. It is available as of Ardour 7.4-240 (current nightly.ardour.org, and for upcoming 7.5). Thanks Colin!
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“What do you call a singer that can’t sing? … A sewing machine.” --J Perri
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Thanks, I Agree in some point, but the audio-warp feature has nothing to do with the artist’s talent solely, this feature is used in many other applications like conform audio, align vocals, align instruments etc,
I think that the best Linux DAW (Ardour/Mixbus) the only one in Linux you can trust a project in, should have it.
I agree that decent pitch correction is needed. Every serious commercial DAW either has it built in or facilitates it via ARA2. The line of reasoning that “it isn’t necessary if you’re an awesome vocalist who never requires a bit of touch up - great recordings were done for almost 100 years pre-Melodyne . . .”, doesn’t fly with me.
Where Ardour is open source and relies on donations, it’s possible that it is too large and overwhelming a task for a small group of developers to successfully undertake. Personally, I would much prefer an honest answer like that instead of the “oh, good singers don’t need it”.
That same line of reasoning precludes sample libraries, VIs, and amp sims too, huh? After all, why should some guy with a midi keyboard be able to play in realistic horn parts, authentic sounding drums and whatnot? After all, 50 years ago it required REAL drummers , playing live kits in large drum recording rooms. . . Heck! Why even have a DAW? They didn’t use those 50 years ago at Abbey Road or Muscle Shoals.
I appreciate your support of Ardour, but to straight up say it’s the best in Linux is rather optimistic. Perhaps for you personally it is the best. On the other hand, I find it somewhat clunky and counter-productive as compared to Tracktion or Reaper. Then again, I come from a Cubase and Studio One type of workflow so my perceptions and influences are directly related to working in a different type of DAW space. I started out with Cakewalk Pro Audio v1, Cakewalk Pro (‘89 or ‘90), and Cubase v1 way back in the day - I’m not a newbie.
I also find that Ardour and MixBus are rather CPU demanding as compared to Reaper, or even Tracktion. Whilst using the exact same audio configuration (buffer, sample rate, nice values, and et cetera), I’m lucky if I get half or maybe two thirds of the performance and efficiency that Reaper delivers.
When Reaper is configured to internally behave the way Ardour does - namely, to prioritize constant workload, rather than maximal efficiency, so that you do not get surprises when, for example, unmuting things - the difference in performance is minimal (we’ve measured it).
It’s fine to do what Reaper does by default, it just represents a different preference. For Ardour, we prefer to be able to tell you that given your current track and bus setup (including plugins), the DSP load will vary very little to not at all no matter what you do.
This thread is becoming a bit unproductive. There are as many differences of opinions about people’s preferred DAWs as there are DAW users (or at least 25% as many). We will probably lock the thread in another day or two to avoid further loss of relevance (you are still free to debate the pros and cons of different DAWs, just in some other thread).
The task is not too large for us to undertake. The problems have already been identified by Robin:
- the main timestretching open source library is not capable of results close to what zplane can do
- zplane is not open source, and we cannot use it directly
Coupled to that is the question of priority. Since we do, indeed, have resource limitations, we have to identify tasks that we believe provide the greatest good for the greatest number (obviously we sometimes make mistakes with this process). This particular task is not super low priority, but it’s not super high priority either.