Soft-Edge Tips

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Expand view Topic review: Soft-Edge Tips

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Oz Nimbus » Thu Jun 03, 2004 4:38 pm

Yes, I use the "auto record softedge" on every session. What a great system!

-0z-

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Wed Jun 02, 2004 8:50 pm

Just in case you missed it... take a look at the Auto Record Softedge option in the Options Menu... set it up and have every punch-in generate an automatic softedge on both sides of the region.

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Oz Nimbus » Wed Jun 02, 2004 7:41 pm

Bob L wrote: do not be afraid to experiment with 10 and 20ms softedges to just smooth the edge of the region cut... these can do wonders for creating that silky smooth sounding performance.

Bob L
Man, you ain't kiddin'! :)

I used to average about 1-2 hours of edit time, per song, on drum tracks in Sonar, editing all the crap out of the tom mics. Lots of manual cuts & microfades, with their "slip edit" system.

SawStudio cut that time down to about 5-10 minutes per song. It could get even shorter on my next project as I've been experimenting with the channel gates, which are wonderful, BTW.

Anyway, back on the soft-edge thing. Personally, I think it's one of Saw's strongest features. No pops & clicks, just flowing audio. Makes editing a breeze when combined with the 'select' tool, and punch ins are actually fun again. No pops. Ever.

Great stuff!

-0z-



.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Wed Jun 02, 2004 7:02 pm

In most cases I would cut out all sounds that I don't want to hear, and then see if a very short softedge applied to the new region boundaries will solve the noise issue.

Of course this can only work well when there are other tracks of audio to cover up the silence that is left in between the cut regions... in many cases this is the norm.

If you have a solo section with this kind of trouble, then you may have to fill in the gaps with a small section of natural background dead air with the same energy as the rest of the track... in most cases this can be found at the beginnings or ends of the punched areas... make a small region section... copy it into the holes and then stretch the boundaries to fit... a small softedge, like 20 ms or so should smooth it out.

I find that many people feel they have to use 500ms or 1 sec softedges... they are still thinking of them as fades, I guess... do not be afraid to experiment with 10 and 20ms softedges to just smooth the edge of the region cut... these can do wonders for creating that silky smooth sounding performance.

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Wed Jun 02, 2004 6:55 pm

I have noticed a problem Im having when using softedge. I think it pertains to my use of it somehow, I read through the manual many times now and even did some searching for solutions to this one but Im finally going to ask.

I have a track with 3 punchins, all one after the other. At the beginning of each new punch, about 500ms before the performance there is a glitch that's caused by the guitarist moving his hand (something weird he does right before starting his performance, and he wont change it!).

If I adjust the region boundaries, and apply a softedge, the glitch is now present! Of course since it is fading in the region before the region visibly starts, this makes sense. It is also fading in portion of the audio that is not part of the region I specified. If I perhaps had multiple punch-in's and a larger soft-edge, I could theoretically even fade-in from a previous performance since all the regions are in the same file!

What are the solutions? All I can figure is:

1. smaller softedge, which sounds unnatural
2. edit the glitch out permanently, but I cant figure out how
3. insert silence between the glitch and the performace to make the glitch away from the softedge.
4. apply a softedge to only fade out the previous region, but not fade in the succeeding region. this sounds unnatural to me as well.

I've also noted that setting my punch-in points more precisely (right on the mark) would eliminate this problem too, but sometimes performers jump the gun and start early, or start late when they here the effect of starting early. So I've been in the habit of starting punch-ins about 1-2 secongs before the point actually begins. Of course it differs on what you're punching in, many times precise points works well. I think Im going to totally rethink how I set this stuff up tonight. for now I need to fix this darn glitch :)

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Wed Jun 02, 2004 8:00 am

Yura,

I would say that the 2 sec softedge may be where the problem lies... I do these kinds of cuts and splices all the time and perhaps the softedge should only be a few hundred ms... try a few adjustments and the splice can usually be made to sound perfect and unnoticable.

Also, zooming in and making sure the cut did not flip the phase can help a lot... readjust the cut point to make sure the waveform shape actually continues in the proper plus or minus direction.

In the end, I may be able to come up with a way to allow the center cross point to be adjustable... then you can do what you want... not sure at this time whether that will fit into the current algorithm that controls the softedge easily or not... we'll see.

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Yura » Wed Jun 02, 2004 6:35 am

Intetresting...

Robert and Bob,

actually, there is all absolutely understood what are your remarks about.

But I had not explained exactly what I ment talking about -3 dB before.
indeed, Robert, you not guess what my -3 dB needs was caused of. If I would work on music aplications only, maybe I will not to touch thought of -3 dB too.
it is not strange, but I FELT need of it when I had deal with hundreds of activations of crossfades
in each of 12 sessions.
so, the question remains only what I was crossfaded?
so, here we have solid track of sound of car (or some another engines). and we must
1) cut little area inside this track, 2)then make boundaries butting, 3) make the crossfade on this
buttsplice for bruring result. If you start to experiment on sounds like that, espessialy with
drone-like sounds, you will do the next findings:

1) if you make very short crossfade (about 1 - 100 ms), that may be resulting very fine. but.
in 50 % of your work due to DIFFERENT enouth character of sound on sticked boundaries
(that happens with these types of "noises"!) you will hear the jerk of noise that is malapropos.
and then you need have to carefully search for others of slice-points to prevent it.

2) if you make more long crossfade, you will take result of collapse of level inside crossfade
in 50 % or even more of your work. this collapse is about -3 dB. and it is very corresponds to
well known for you formula about square-law dependency between sound's energy and its volume.
very sorry for incorrect english grammatics in this dufficult area.

what is Very important in this phenomena, hearing of this collapse may very vary due to character
of the sound' spectrum. it is more appreciable in drone sounds having more spectrum energy
in area that is most receptive for an man's ear.
if you will experiment the same with sounds that have very different spectrums, you will notice
no collapse at all. that is exactly with the musical sounds.

so there is no much people may need this option because all of SAWyers are working in music sphere.

if you need some simple practikal proof of what I have said all there, and what your ears hear,
please check next.

get the one track of white or rose noise, 5 seconds about.
mark area about 1 second somwhere in the middle of it.
hit Shift+Del.
make crossfade through buttspliced point about 1 or 2 seconds long.
listen from begining to end.

the next questions is: how to do with it if there a lot of it with very comfort and fast?

AudioAstronomer wrote: I like it at -6 for everything Ive tried, but I can see how one may wish to have a more gentle fade if working quickly, or running out of tracks.
you quite right here, Robert!

Bob, maybe if SS's using area will grow out of only music aplications in the future,
maybe question of -3 dB will be more actual.

Here is my hand to you, friends.

Y.O.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:11 pm

That's when two tracks are needed to truly control specific fade details...

Crossfades can sometimes need complete individual attention... use two tracks and do whatever automation moves you require to get the desired effect.

SoftEdges are just that... edges that blend and blur together... multiple styles just doesn't seem necessary.

Tip: Consider using SoftEdges on all ending regions of a multitrack session that has an ending, instead of a master fade on the main Output Track to fade down the decay to silence... cut each track's end boundary at a slightly different place depending on the instrument type and then use a SoftEdge to ramp the audio down to infinity... with each track decaying and disappearing at a slightly different rate, the result can be very realistic as to the natural decay of real instruments instead of everything decaying mechanically as the master fader is pulled to silence.

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Tue Jun 01, 2004 9:00 pm

Perhaps Yura's idea is applicable for when there is a fade out, followed by a sharp attack on something like drums, where splitting to 2 tracks each is not quite practical?

I like it at -6 for everything Ive tried, but I can see how one may wish to have a more gentle fade if working quickly, or running out of tracks. just my two cents.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Tue Jun 01, 2004 3:25 pm

Yura,

Try for once letting go of your numbers and calculations and just sit back and listen with your ears... the ride can be much sweeter my freind. :)

The SoftEdge crossfade is mostly designed for blurring splices... crossfades of a few milliseconds to a few hundred millseconds... of course you can do a 10 sec crossfade between two songs also... but then who needs specific measurements or algorithms for that... and if you want more... simply place the critical signals on two tracks and create the most elaborate fade out and fade in you could ever dream up... and then save that in the Automation Gallery and use it 100 times more at the click of the mouse.

The Softedge is set to cross at -6db so that level shifts do not ocurr when using it for what its designed to do... blur dialog edits together to remove breath noises... or smear the splice of two guitar solo takes into a seamless perfect solo... the -6db keeps the transition level consistent.

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Yura » Tue Jun 01, 2004 11:48 am

So, nobody never felt the shortage of -3 dB in crossfade?
it is very srtange.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Mon May 31, 2004 8:24 pm

Irfanview huh? Ill try that...

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by RobertV » Mon May 31, 2004 8:18 pm

In reference to not wanting to load realplayer "bloat and take over your computerware" there is an alternative!
You can configure Irfanview to play back these type of files, in adition to all the other good things it does! :rolleyes:
Cheers....robert V

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Dave Tosti-Lane » Mon May 31, 2004 4:50 pm

One thing I've found extremely useful in teaching new users in SAW products is to have the "Quick Reference Guide" and the "Quick Key Reference" portion of the help manual printed up in largish type.

Also, I like to copy those out to a word document, and select the top 20 or 30 commands, and the top 20 key shortcuts, and have those printed on a single page that can be posted right by the monitor. Over time, you can modify what you put on the cheat-sheet, as you find many of the shortcuts become automatic.

You could also do this without printing by making a large font version of the top 20 idea, and making them into PDF or even just text files that you could keep minimized and pop up when you need the refresher.

Dave Tosti-Lane

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Mon May 31, 2004 9:34 am

On one note, I found out kinko's quoted me wrong. they only want 20$ (!!) to print it. So Im happy now :) And I ure EVERYONE to goto kinkos.com and check out their online services. I just sent them the manual in PDF, set options, paid by secure credit. Will pick it up at the store in an hour (!). Took me 5 minutes. They deliver as well.

Im having a ball with the U and ctrl-U commands. That is genious :) Since I already set-up markers for transitions (punchins normally occur 4-8 bars before that point), I just hit a marker, ctrl-u, X. With grid on and set to tempo mode I can create a perfect crossfade in tempo without even thinking twice.

I really think Im getting the hang of this :) Really do wonder why no other software can do this stuff, its one of those things thats so obvious it seems absurd to not have something similiar

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Mon May 31, 2004 9:02 am

Bob L wrote:You should be able to print the pdf manual directly from Acrobat Reader...

Or do you not have a printer?

Bob L
No printer. And that would cost even more as I have no use for a printer other than the manual :) We, proudly, do completely handwritten invoices :)

Perhaps it maybe time to move into the age of typographic print, im a few hundred years behind :)

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Yura » Mon May 31, 2004 8:57 am

:) Here I am of those who have not a printer at all :)

I looked in the demo 3.7...
So much smart improvements about soft-edges! for faster inserting them and more!
(I keep quiet about the other!)
Is not came a time for option to possibility of changing cross-fade level to -3 db?

Y.O.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Bob L » Sun May 30, 2004 11:41 pm

You should be able to print the pdf manual directly from Acrobat Reader...

Or do you not have a printer?

Bob L

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by AudioAstronomer » Sun May 30, 2004 10:34 pm

u-key update with ctrl modifier rocks my world.

That just cut my editing time in HALF!!

Things are so much clearer when you explain them bob! :) I read the manual for the last 20 minutes or so and must have totally passed over this feature. I really wish to hear the tutorials, but realplayer installs with various forms of spyware, and is nearly impossible to fully remove form your computer, so In my stubbornness to maintain very clean computers I wont install it and therefore cant experience it :(

Quicktime also is persistant-ware, very hard to fully uninstall and operates as spyware for apple :( So this also takes away from my ability to eperience the obviously great tutorials available. Ive already learned quite much from the steven lee videos.

I shall still do my best, im continually amazed! Everytime I find something new I just cant wait to find the next amazing thing. Getting work done so fast, so fun and sounding SO good its a dream come true.

Re: Soft-Edge Tips

by Ben Hall » Sun May 30, 2004 10:24 pm

Yeah, the F-keys are definietly a winner. I have completely changed the defaults becuase I do mostly 24 track orchestral editing.
Interesting that I don't use the scroll for zooming - I use the keypad and +,-. This is probably a carry over from SAWPro and the older products. However, using the scroll for hottrack selection while using the wide view is a great way to quickly change compression and eq across different tracks and keep the feel of how it all works together.

Ben.

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