xchrisxtopher Posted September 16, 2015 Share Posted September 16, 2015 Today I was flexing a drum performance, and during one particular section of just quarter note kick hits with hi-hats dancing behind, I noticed when the flexed the kick hits the hi-hat started traveling all over the stereo space. It would pop up not just on the left (where I had the overhead with the hats predominately panned), but would pop up unduly on the right side, the middle, etc. I found this really discouraging. There always seems to be a quirk with Logic and it's processes. Any chance someone have a solution for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 I didn't realize how much I wasn't paying attention when I wrote this post. Just to reiterate, I flexed some drums. In one particular section of just kick hits and hi hats, I lined up the kick hits to the grid. The hi-hats should be panned to the left of the stereo field, as that's where they're predominantly placed in the over-heads. The issue is the hats seem to be bouncing from left to right, to center, to right, to left, etc. They're not sticking to their dominant side, which is consistent when I turn off Flextime. Strikes me that Flextime is proving not to be phase-coherent, even when instrument tracks are grouped and edited together. Any advice on this phenomenon? I'm starting to wonder if other DAWs such as Studio One handle this better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 Make sure you phase lock your drum group before starting editing or quantizing: Logic Pro X: Tips for phase-locked drum edits Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 18, 2015 Author Share Posted September 18, 2015 Thank you for the reply Dave. My tracks are grouped for phase-lock. Of course I ungroup the tracks when I need to bounce in place each track after I'm done flexing. I can demonstrate the issue with the following links: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7wjrafbu8a856fa/09.18.15_Flex%20phase%20issue.mp3?dl=0 This is the drums with the very obvious hi hat issue. The hats should be sticking to around 20-30 left, but as you'll be able to hear, it's bouncing all the over the place. https://www.dropbox.com/s/8na6gksj00tm7h9/09.18.15_Flex%20no%20issue.mp3?dl=0 As I was examining my issue, I removed my BIP tracks, and started listening to the tracks I had flexed and froze (I always freeze tracks after and hide them). Even without frozen status, the flexed drums sounded how they should. So I thought maybe this was a weird quirk, and rebounced the tracks individually. Not so, because the first file above is from the rebounce. The hats out of phase. Then I returned to my unbounced, flexed tracks, and they sounded out of phase. I turned off Flex status on those tracks (by clicking the purple flex button in the track header), and turned it back on. The result is the second link – in phase. I can't seem to get the tracks to stay phase-coherent. It's being very unpredictable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted September 18, 2015 Share Posted September 18, 2015 Hmmm I'm sorry to hear... I do hear what you're talking about in the Flex issue file. What if you bounced all tracks at the same time? For example setting the output of each track to a bus and creating new audio tracks with those busses as inputs, R-arming the tracks and pressing Record? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 I'll give it a try and report back. Everyone else follow the same procedure with Flex? What I do: - Group drum tracks - Turn Q off for all drums except snare and kick - Ungroup - Open snare and kick in audio editor, detect transients - Turn group back on - Command - F for Flextime, select Slicing mode - Go through and flex my drums to the grid - When complete, I turn the group off - I then select each track individually, and Bounce in Place. For example, snare highlighted, bounce in place. Kick, etc I did just consider the fact that my overheads are on separate tracks. Left over head on one track, right on the other. I chose not to track the two as a stereo file but as two mono files. That shouldn't make a difference I would think. It should be phase-locked either way. And Logic seems to be halfway recognizing what it's supposed to be doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simon.a.billington Posted September 22, 2015 Share Posted September 22, 2015 I've periodically had this issue, not sure why, but I have noticed there are points that if I get too detailed with timing adjustments it can lead to phasing issues. Not through the whole project, just a couple of notes here and there. How I fixed it was removing some of the flexedit points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 22, 2015 Author Share Posted September 22, 2015 I don't ever remember this issues occurring, but in the last update or two, they have seemed to crop up. Certainly aggravating. I've tried to do a Beat Detective style editing, by using the unassigned key commands for "jump playhead to next transient" and "jump playhead to previous transient" in combination with Command-T for splitting by playhead. Chopping up the hits, lining the regions up by the grid and back-filling using key commands. The problem with this approach is that Logic starts to change the region boundaries between grouped/phase-locked tracks. For example, the regions boundaries will be longer/shorter between grouped regions. Even if you're editing the length of a group of regions completely unrelated to a group of regions before or after, the regions before or after will be affected and change. I suggest trying this over the course of a song. "Tab to Transient", chop up the hits, line them up, and then back fill them with the unassigned key commands (might have to dig into the Key Command editor), finesse the starts and stops manually and then add fades. Then turn phase-lock off on the group, and then back on. I'm going to guess nine times out of ten the message will pop up that phase-locking is not possible because of inconsistent stop/starts of regions. Anyways, bumming me out. I love Logic, but these hiccups have me considering that I might need another DAW just to complete editing processes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 26, 2015 Author Share Posted September 26, 2015 I did what you suggested David, and I routed my tracks through busses and printed the results. This did result in phase-coherent flexed drums. To quickly reiterate, when I opened the session, my flexed tracks sounded good on their own. Then I bounced in place, and the soloed bounce was out of whack. So when I returned to the flex version and soloed, the flexed version sounded out of phase. I turned flex for those tracks off and back on, and they returned to sounding in phase. I routed each of the tracks through a bus to an individual track, and they printed fine. I don't necessarily think this issue has been solved, because Logic seems to be wanting to do what I'm expecting. There seems to be a hiccup somewhere though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted September 26, 2015 Share Posted September 26, 2015 I agree with you that some of the behaviors you describe should not have occurred, so I won't mark the thread as solved - meanwhile I'm happy to hear that you were able to make Logic do what you wanted to do. Thanks for reporting back with your results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted September 27, 2015 Author Share Posted September 27, 2015 Thanks so much for the help David! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simon.a.billington Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Seems such a weird issue to be having, for anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted November 6, 2015 Author Share Posted November 6, 2015 I'm reviving this thread, because I'm continuing to run into issues with Logic's Flex-time. Specifically, I have cymbal hits that dance around the panorama, but even occasionally a snare hit or kick hit will suddenly lean to the right or left. For me anyways, Flex-time is proving to not be phase-locked between tracks. Anyone else experiencing these issues? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted November 6, 2015 Author Share Posted November 6, 2015 Oh, it also seemed worth mentioning the following: I noticed a crash decay on a sparse drum performance is slipping around the panorama from right to left. I disable flex, and it's firmly rooted on the left-ish side, if I had to guess, maybe 20-25 to the left. When I turn flex back on, it continues to dance around right to left. So I remove the flex markers with the eraser tool to see if that helps. Instead, now all the tracks in that particular section are completely out of phase. Drum hits hitting in weird succession, as if I had delayed each of the signals considerably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted November 9, 2015 Author Share Posted November 9, 2015 I think I've found the solution to my problem. Haven't tested it yet, so I'll update when I have. However: the last couple sessions I've worked on, I've chosen to track my overhead mics separately, as in two separate mono tracks, as opposed to a single stereo track. The reason is because I like to finesse levels and time delays with Melda's AutoAlign. Anyways, I was reflecting on my latest issues, and was wondering why I had never experienced these issues with Flextime in the past. Namely, again, my overhead content bouncing around the stereo spectrum – cymbals not staying committed to their particular stereo locations, phasing, and drums occasionally popping out on either side. I then remembered my tracking practices lately, and I'm guessing the reason to be that perhaps when overheads are not committed to the same audio file, discrepancies develop when it comes time to flex. Of course, this doesn't explain why when I turn Flex mode off and back on that some of the anomalies seem to lessen. Also, it strikes me that the tracks should be phase coherent regardless. Nonetheless, I've tried flexing multimic distorted guitar, and that's a phase nightmare. Perhaps the high end wash of cymbals is similar in complex harmonic content. Anyways, I'll update soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 Thanks for continuing to update your thread with more information, this is really helpful to the community! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted November 9, 2015 Author Share Posted November 9, 2015 Absolutely, thanks for also checking in on it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MilesManglos Posted January 29, 2018 Share Posted January 29, 2018 I'm so glad I found this thread, as this issue has been driving me insane for months now. I stopped using Logic altogether because of this issue and others. Does anybody know if this has been fixed in any of the updates? (I'm still on Logic 10.2.2) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simon.a.billington Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 I'm so glad I found this thread, as this issue has been driving me insane for months now. I stopped using Logic altogether because of this issue and others. Does anybody know if this has been fixed in any of the updates? (I'm still on Logic 10.2.2) That’s the thing. I haven’t actually noticed it for quite some time. I do recall it Flexitime had some attention paid to it with 10.3.x, again with 10.4. Although I haven’t been able to use the latest Logic just yet, I would say the issue no longer exists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wessnyle Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 6 years later and I’m still having this problem. I often do stereo acoustic guitars and it seems like every single time I try to tighten them up, I end up having to find a happy medium between timing issues and phase issues. Why can’t they just figure this crap out man? I’m getting so over this issue I’m seriously considering switching DAWs and I NEVER thought I’d say that. It sucks man, I love logics work flow. If they would just spend a years worth of time and resources to really perfect it I think it would be hands down the best DAW out there. But I did learn of a couple things to try in this thread, so I’m gonna send my flex tracks through a bus and reprint them and see what happens. I’ll report back for anybody else still having this issue in 2024 that comes across this feed.lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 6 hours ago, wessnyle said: 6 years later and I’m still having this problem. I often do stereo acoustic guitars and it seems like every single time I try to tighten them up, I end up having to find a happy medium between timing issues and phase issues. Why can’t they just figure this crap out man? I’m getting so over this issue I’m seriously considering switching DAWs and I NEVER thought I’d say that. It sucks man, I love logics work flow. If they would just spend a years worth of time and resources to really perfect it I think it would be hands down the best DAW out there. But I did learn of a couple things to try in this thread, so I’m gonna send my flex tracks through a bus and reprint them and see what happens. I’ll report back for anybody else still having this issue in 2024 that comes across this feed.lol Just for clarity, are you typically working with two mono tracks (one panned L, one panned R) or an interleaved stereo recording? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xchrisxtopher Posted February 29 Author Share Posted February 29 (edited) 7 hours ago, wessnyle said: 6 years later and I’m still having this problem. I often do stereo acoustic guitars and it seems like every single time I try to tighten them up, I end up having to find a happy medium between timing issues and phase issues. Why can’t they just figure this crap out man? I’m getting so over this issue I’m seriously considering switching DAWs and I NEVER thought I’d say that. It sucks man, I love logics work flow. If they would just spend a years worth of time and resources to really perfect it I think it would be hands down the best DAW out there. But I did learn of a couple things to try in this thread, so I’m gonna send my flex tracks through a bus and reprint them and see what happens. I’ll report back for anybody else still having this issue in 2024 that comes across this feed.lol I’ve been digging in deep with Flex a lot lately and have learned that Quantize-Locked editing is not what many of us had thought it to be. Quantize-locked audio ensures that the transient markers of Q-reference tracks are applied at the same location across a group of tracks. In the case of drums, the transient marker for a snare selected as the Q reference is applied to the kick, overheads, etc for locked editing and quantizing. While this works well for Slicing and okay for some other modes, unfortunately this falls apart with Polyphonic mode. Sure, Quantize-Locking ensures transient markers of Q references are applied across a Polyphonic group. But as I’ve found, it doesn’t mean edits will result in perfect phase coherence. Just try hard panning your stereo guitar tracks, group the tracks together, and then quantize with Flex. I bet you’ll hear the sound of the guitar shift around. Throw Voxengo’s free Correlometer on the Stereo Output and watch the signal go in and out of phase at different frequencies. An unfortunate bummer! The workaround I’ve found is to bounce multimic signals together into a new file/region, then edit the new region with Flex. I hope this helps! Edited February 29 by xchrisxtopher 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oscwilde Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 @wessnyle Logic version / MacOS / Mac spec? Resurrecting a zombie thread on ancient versions of Logic is fine if you're using an older version/OS/Mac....but may no longer be pertinent to newer/current tech. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 29 Share Posted February 29 3 minutes ago, xchrisxtopher said: The workaround I’ve found is to bounce multimic signals together into a new file/region, then edit the new region with Flex. Cool (and easy) workaround indeed. Thanks for sharing Chris! 🙂 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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