Vocal recordings out of sync - urgent help needed

[yaish2]

 

Hi,

 

I've really messed up, and I can't figure out how to fix it. 

I bounced an instrumental of a song in order to record a vocal session in a new project (the original project was too heavy at that point).

The original tempo of the song is 121bpm. When I Imported the song to the new project I didn't change the tempo, and it was 68bpm. 

After recording 42 tracks of singing and bouncing them, I imported them into the original project, only to discover, to my horror, that they are all slightly off in quite subtle, yet meaningful ways. 

I've tried everything I could think of, including trying to manually adjust the takes, removing original recording tempo from the tracks when importing, SMPTE locking them before importing, checking there's no flex on, checking the sample rate, etc.

Obviously, I would have noticed if the instrumental track was stretched somehow from 121bpm to 68bpm, but that's not the case. The tracks are all subtly out of time.

I would really appreciate your help on this, it could save me a couple of days of work easily.

 

Thanks!

 

[fusbur]

I have this problem a lot with my singer who always forgets to import my backing at the project tempo so I get every vocal track back at default 120bpm!

I drag the tracks in, strip out the file tempo and print the project tempo and that works for me. There's probably a better import method  with Keep/Adapt tempo but I'm not at the computer right now. Others will pitch in I'm sure.

[fuzzfilth]

2 hours ago, yaish2 said:

slightly off in quite subtle, yet meaningful ways

I'm sorry, but this description is not going to suffice in diagnosing and solving this problem. Like, what do you mean by that ?

Anyway. I'll assume the following, please confirm/deny:

- you have created a track-length bounce of the Stereo Out of the source project, which runs at 121bpm
- you imported this bounce into an otherwise empty, new project for vocal tracking, which for some reason runs at 68bpm
- you created track-length bounces of the edited vocals in that vocal tracking project and brought them back into the source project

Now, all this should work perfectly right away if a) you found the proper spot to place the imported vocals (how ? where?) and b) you didn't enable flex in either the instrumental region in the vocal tracking project (which would have stretched the instrumental beyond recognition) or the imported vocal tracks (which would have squeezed them beyond recognition).

Since it doesn't work perfectly, I'd suggest first to quantify that error. Assuming that everything sounded ok in the vocal tracking project, bounce a mix there, including instrumental and all the vocals, and bring that back into the source project. Now you can hear and see what is off and by how much. Do this, then report back for further measures.

Edited September 30, 2022 by fuzzfilth

[yaish2]

Thanks for your considered response.

I was in the processing of replying to you when the simple idea you had of importing the bounce from the vocal session into the original project solved the mystery - so thank you!

It was a simple case of the original instrumental track starting 57ms after the original, no idea how that happened, but I assume that when I cycled it originally for the instrumental bounce, the cycle didn't start at the very beginning.

I can't tell you how much time and effort you've saved me with this, so again - many thanks!