Draw a preview while stretching an audio region

Community Ideas for Ardour
#1

Hi,

When for example mixing rap tracks, I need to stretch the vocals regions just a wee bit from time to time, and it’s really hard to do without seeing a preview of a waveform (at least to me)

I’m not sure how exactly it’s implemented in logic (that’s currently my main daw), but I’ve got a feeling that they are just rendering a picture of a waveform, and stretching the picture, while the audio region is being stretched. Because after it’s applied, the waveform seems to be regenerated, and it doesn’t correspond 100% to the one that was previewed. But it’s helping a lot to see where approximately the downbeat is.

I haven’t found anything like that in ardour atm, might be that I’ve missed something in the config. But if it’s not there, would it make sense to have such a feature?

Thanks

#2

Can you provide a screenshot or gif of what you see in Logic so we can get a clearer idea of what you’re describing?

#3

Yep, sure
logic

1 Like
#4

No feature exists currently for it as stretching audio in Ardour doesn’t currently work like this, sorry.

Seablade

#5

The problem with this approach is that it is just stretching the visual representation.

What you see is not what you will hear.

It is visible in your video, the transient at bar 2 looks different after mouse-up, when the stretch is applied.

So there is little to no value to seeing the waveform while stretching.

#6

That’s exactly what I described in the request. I use stretching in logic pretty often with vocals, and even though I understand that it’s just an approximate waveform, it’s working out for me almost always, so I would not say that it has no value, at least not to me.
But I think I got the point, thanks

#7

I agree, an approximation would still be better than pure guessing.

#8

I would disagree there is no value, but you do have to keep in mind it is not precise yes.

Seablade

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#9

I already hear complaints that transients don’t line up or are either cut off, or still partially audible after splitting by eye…

One person’s feature is another person’s bug :slight_smile:

Anyway now that, thanks to Audacity, there is some reasonable free/libre software time-stretch algorithm, it’s imaginable to spend time working on this.

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