Auto-Align Post 2.0.3 Public Beta (including Adobe's Premiere Pro)

davidvelez530 · September 12, 2022, 12:41am

So I have run into a TON of issues… I have 3 systems, a Win 10 PC running Reaper and Cubase, 2 separate M1 MacBook Pro 16”, both with 2TB storage, one is a M1 Max with 64gb RAM, the other is a regular ass M1 with 32gb RAM. Here’s the story with all 3 systems:

I’m using AAP to phase align drums. I have 32 tracks that I’m aligning. Reaper runs great in both Rosetta 2 and Apple Silicon. AAP runs ridiculously fast. It takes, on average, about 5 seconds to align any track. It’s fast, accurate, perfect.

Cubase 12.0.4 however… oh boy… it’s bad. In Rosetta 2, aligning one track to one overhead takes about 30 seconds. Aligning 2 tracks to the snare takes about 5 min. Aligning 6 spot mics to an overhead takes about 20 min. And I use iSTAT to monitor my computer usage, and it clips my processor at 100% usage on all 3 systems… which I have never ever been able to do, even when making multi-cam drum video edits. And if the track has been strip-silenced, like you would do on a tom track, there’s a 50% chance that it will fail and say “Unable to something something or other due to edits.” It’s absolutely atrocious. I bought AAP for a friend to show him how awesome it is, he uses Cubase mostly, and it made me look like a idiot. I had to split a stereo OH track into two mono tracks because AAP refused to align them to a snare. Then after splitting them, I couldn’t align anything with the overheads. It kept showing on the wrong clip when I would open the AAP extension. Clearly, the problem is AAP isn’t managing the files correctly in Cubase, which is probably why it’s taking so long to do anything, when Reaper is so fast. This happened in both Rosetta 2 and Apple Silicon Native, across all 3 systems in Cubase.

Keep in mind that none of these problems exist in Reaper on any of the systems… EXCEPT… I exported tracks from Reaper after using AAP, and dropped them into Cubase, and they all ended up slightly out of phase. I had to re-run AAP to fix them, which is where all these problems happened.

Let me know if you need more details.

sagi · September 12, 2022, 8:14am

Wow, that’s amazing @davidvelez530 , I get the opposite results with my MBP M1, it flies like a rocket, faster than ever and with on-the-sample accuracy. However, I run it with a pre-release Cubase and Nuendo v12.0.50, so maybe there’s an issue with v12.0.40, can’t say as I don’t have those installed to compare.

tal · September 12, 2022, 8:44am

Hi David,
Is this is unique to AAP 2.0.3 or was it the same with 2.0.2?

We’ll try to contact you privately to see how we can improve this situation.

davidvelez530 · September 15, 2022, 7:38am

AAP 2.0.2 in Rosetta 2 is faster that 2.0.3 in Apple Silicon, but the same issue remains. If I’m trying to align 5 tracks to 1 reference track, the 2nd track aligned will take longer than the 1st, the 3rd will take even longer than the 2nd, etc etc.

Also, the message “unable to blah blah blah because of edits” happens whenever I cancel an alignment by clicking the X for the window that says “Analyzing R Kick In 2 1/7” If I just let it finish analyzing, then remove AAP from that track, and then re-instantiate AAP, it works fine.

I can send you the project if you want to check it out. There were also some wild results from a few channels having their audio spliced and moved by a half second or so.

I also have questions about what would be the best way to align all these drum tracks, I’m currently doing what I did when using the original AA, so I’d love to get some advice on it.

davidvelez530 · September 15, 2022, 8:02am

Here’s how I’m using AAP, let me know if theres a better way to get this done.
(Since I used to get wild results aligning the kick to the OHs, I just skip that step)

I have 32 tracks of drums
R Kick In 1
R Kick In 2
R Kick ML-2
R Kick Sub

L Kick In 1
L Kick In 2
L Kick ML-2
L Kick Sub

(Each tom has 2 batter head mics, an Audix D6 and a EarthWorks DM20)
L Rack Tom D6
L Rack Tom EW
C Rack Tom D6
C Rack Tom EW
R Rack Tom D6
R Rack Tom EW
R Floor Tom 1 D6
R Floor Tom 1 EW
R Floor Tom 2 D6
R Floor Tom 2 EW
L Floor Tom D6
L Floor Tom EW

OH L, OH R, Room L , Room R, Room Mono
L HiHat, R HiHat, L Ride, R Ride, Bells

Step 1:
Ref: R Kick In 1 → Align: R Kick In 2, R Kick ML-2, R Kick Sub
Ref: L Kick In 1 → Align: L Kick In 2, L Kick ML-2, L Kick Sub
Render (“Bounce Selection”) all those tracks

Step 2:
Ref: Snare Top → Align: Sn Bot, OH R
Render tracks

Step 3:
Ref: OH R → Align: OH L
Render OH L

Step 4:
Ref: OH R → Align: C Rack Tom D6, R Rack Tom D6, R Floor Tom 1 D6, R Floor Tom 2 D6, R HiHat, R Ride, Bells
Ref: OH L → Align: L Rack Tom D6, L Floor Tom D6, L HiHat, L Ride
Render all those tracks

Step 5:
Ref: L Rack Tom D6 → Align: L Rack Tom EW
Ref: C Rack Tom D6 → Align: C Rack Tom EW
Ref: R Rack Tom D6 → Align: R Rack Tom EW
Ref: R Floor Tom 1 D6 → Align: R Floor Tom 1 EW
Ref: R Floor Tom 2 D6 → Align: R Floor Tom 2 EW
Ref: L Floor Tom D6 → Align: L Floor Tom EW
Render all those tracks

Step 6:
Ref: Room L → Align Room R
Render track

I don’t align the mono room nor the kick to the OHs because it was occasionally moving my kick around by multiple seconds.

zmix · September 18, 2022, 4:11am

David,

I’m curious to know why are you using AAP for this, rather than standard Auto-Align?

-Chuck

davidvelez530 · September 18, 2022, 12:16pm

AAP on drums has been a revelation! The results are vastly superior to using Auto-Align.

It’s faster… wayyyyyyyy faster. Aligning 32 tracks of drums takes literal hours with Auto-Align because I have to find a good spot for AA to analyze the track, then set a noise floor, then compare the results and see if I screwed up, then try the other results and A/B them to see which is better. It takes forever. In Reaper with AAP2, since I can align more than one track at a time, I can align 32 tracks of drums in less than 10 min and the results are almost always flawless. The only flaw I have found with AAP is that sometimes I get wild results when aligning Kick In mics to the OHs, so i usually just skip that process. I mostly work in metal-ish genres and the OHs are always high-passed around 400-800hz, because the music is usually really fast, so Kick/OH phase doesn’t matter much.
the workflow is much more intuitive, so you don’t get lost when aligning a bunch of tracks, especially when I have to align tracks to other tracks that have already been aligned.
This is by far the most important reason Mics get hit by drummers when recording, happens all the time. If you’re applying phase correction to an entire song, based on one small section, and a mic gets hit, you’ve just messed up the phase relationship for the rest of the song where the mic has moved. But using AAP in Dynamic mode solves that problem… all without me having to think about it.

glenn98827 · October 7, 2022, 9:32pm

Hey David,

Since you are also using Reaper, Have you had any issue with opening a project and the alignments being lost with AAP?

davidvelez530 · October 10, 2022, 3:10pm

As soon as I do an alignment, I right-click and use Render to Mono Stem Track, then delete the old, not-aligned track, and slide the newly rendered and aligned track into the empty space. Because all kinds of weird things happen if you move a rendered track or do anything to it, so I don’t even mess with that.

I’ve always wondered if there was a faster way.

glenn98827 · October 11, 2022, 5:34pm

Thanks for your input David. I’m doing something similar to avoid those weird things as well, usually rendering to a take so I can access the unprocessed audio for any reason. It’s not the worst workflow, but it would be great if ARA and AAP updated along the way while working.