AudioSnap

Cakewalk’s AudioSnap engine and tempo analysis features give you unprecedented rhythmic and tempo control over your audio. Employing sophisticated transient detection technology, the AudioSnap engine automatically analyzes all recorded and imported audio files for rhythmic content to determine where the beats are in the music.

AudioSnap is completely non-destructive, similar to Groove clips and V‑Vocal clips. AudioSnap, V‑Vocal, and Groove clips are mutually exclusive. Groove clip markers are typically placed at a zero-crossing point before a transient; AudioSnap transient markers are placed where musical changes occur, but may not be exactly at a zero crossing.

What is AudioSnap?

AudioSnap is not a single feature, but rather a collection of different tools that can be used for different tasks. The AudioSnap palette ties it all together in a task-oriented layout.

AudioSnap does several things, in a variety of ways:

Stretches audio clips to fit project tempo or for quantizing.

Changes project tempo to fit audio or MIDI clips.

Copies audio rhythms for groove quantizing or doubling sounds.

Figure 351. The AudioSnap palette.

How does it work?

AudioSnap works by finding the transients in audio clips. Transients are the areas in an audio clip where the level increases suddenly. These make good locations to shrink, stretch, or split a clip, without changing its sound quality too drastically. Cakewalk contains a variety of high-quality stretching algorithms for different kinds of material. You can choose a lower-quality algorithm for real-time playback of your edits, and then choose a better algorithm for mixdown or bouncing to track (see Algorithms and rendering).

Cakewalk lets you define the default online and offline algorithms via the AudioSnap palette, and you can override the default algorithm(s) on a clip-by-clip basis.

Note: The online algorithm is for preview purposes only during playback. The final audio quality will be greatly improved after the offline algorithm is applied during mixdown/export.

The transients also make it possible for Cakewalk to calculate a clip’s tempo map (see Editing a clip’s tempo map).

Figure 352. Audio clip.

Figure 353. Audio clip showing transient markers.

AudioSnap finds transients automatically, but the transient markers don’t always appear exactly where you might want them for the kind of editing you want to do. You can edit the markers by moving them to new locations, adding markers, filtering out markers, deleting markers, and promoting markers (protecting them from being filtered). For information about editing transient markers, see Editing transient markers.

Why would I use it?

Here are some common uses for AudioSnap:

Aligning measure lines and tempo to audio or MIDI tracks that were recorded without a metronome (see Synchronizing audio and the project tempo).

Fixing timing errors (see Fixing timing problems in audio clips).

Synchronizing the rhythms of out-of-sync tracks (see Making multiple clips/tracks groove together).

Doubling existing sounds with other sounds (see Extracting MIDI timing information from audio).

Changing the tempo of existing projects (see Changing a project’s tempo).

Snapping both audio and MIDI edits to audio beats (see Snapping edits to audio beats).

Fixing timing errors in multi-track recordings while maintaining phase relationships (see Adjusting the timing of a multi-track performance while maintaining phase relationships).

If you want to edit audio right away with AudioSnap, see Synchronizing audio and the project tempo and Fixing timing problems in audio clips. If you want to learn more about all the AudioSnap tools and options, see the following links.

AudioSnap transient detection algorithms

The AudioSnap transient detection method can be specified in Edit > Preferences > Project - AudioSnap under Transient Detection. There are three methods:

Magnitude

Spectral (default for legacy projects)

Multi-Resolution (default for new projects)

Multi-Resolution is the default transient detection method for new projects, and Spectral and Magnitude are the older legacy modes. The Multi-Resolution transient detection algorithm provides improved transient analysis that works well with most audio source material.

The detection mode is stored in the project and older projects will continue to use Spectral until changed via Edit > Preferences > Project - AudioSnap.

 

Note: The Multi-Resolution transient analysis will not be used by default on pre-Cakewalk 2021.09 saved projects. You must explicitly pick the Multi-Resolution algorithm from Edit > Preferences > Project - AudioSnap before this will take effect for that project. Once you resave the project with this change it will continue to use the new algorithm for all audio.

When the detection method is changed, you will be prompted that project audio waveforms will be recomputed. After regeneration of the waveforms are complete, the new transients will be visible when switching the edit filter to Transients. The default transient threshold (available in the AudioSnap palette) is different for each transient detector mode. Note that any edited transients are retained when switching the transient detector mode.

 

See:

Using global tools on AudioSnap transient markers

Editing transient markers

Using the AudioSnap palette

Synchronizing audio and the project tempo

Fixing timing problems in audio clips

Extracting MIDI timing information from audio

General editing

Using the Pool

Algorithms and rendering

 

See also:

VocalSync automatic audio alignment