What quantise for DAW?

Hey guys,

I record my MPC compositions into ProTools and I am really struggling to find the correct quantize to suit the MPC. Anybody know whats the closest quantize to use once in the ProTool domain? The MPC is set to its default quantise which is:

Swing = 50%
Strength = 100%

50% swing 100% strenght it's hard-quantized on the time subdivision chosen.

I think you should as a first thing set the same BPM on the MPC and on Protools, then record and trim your track so that it starts on the first sample of the first quarter of the first bar AND ONLY THEN quantize (lock the time ruler to an exact subdivision of the chosen tempo).

This way you'll be able to cut perfect bars out of your sequence and rearrange. If the bars won't be sliced (to further editing in PT) you could stick to the largest chunks offered by PT quantize function... if it allows you to lock the time ruler on bars go for it, quarters will be good too.

Should you want to slice smaller parts of a bar, E.G. to combine the first half of a bar with the second half of another, go for 1/8 or 1/16...

PEACE

That's not the problem getting the MPC recorded and synced up is easy. PT can go up to 64's but it's getting the correct quantize for the MPC beats once its in PT.

So I can quantize to many different kinds of swing in PT, Logic, Cubase, Feel, a few others and MPC BUT, PT's MPC quantize swing is wrong. Every time I quantize using PT's MPC swing it shuffles the beats on the recorded audio so it means the swing is out and by quite a bit. I want to keep the original swing and shuffle that came from the MPC. Problem is, once I start writing more stuff in PT, if I use PT to quantize it'll be slightly out from the MPC's. If I don't it'll be out as well.

There's 2 ways of getting around it, you can extract the swing using beat detective but its a hit and miss affair or you can manually warp shift every transient on every loop to match the MPC's groove which is very time consuming.

So just wondering if anybody has found the right quantize setting in PT, it must have about a hundred or so so one of them must have a similar groove.

This will give you a better idea of what I mean. Now one would think the MPC Style would match the MPC but its a lie

Let's clarify:

Once you got your MPC tracked out, you apply quantize. OK.

But if your MPC was set to 50% swing, there will be no shuffle to apply on the part you record from your VSTs...

It is not clear to me if you can apply quantize just to one track... because in this case you already have the solution.

If the quantize options in PT for the MPC swing are not accurate, extract it from your MPC track, save it and apply it to the rest... next time you'll be working with the same swing on another track it will be already there.

If the quantize on PT is always applied to all stems, just do it at the end, after extracting the groove from your MPC track.

In your case what I think you're experiencing is the discrepancy between the swing applied in the 960ppq virtual "grid" and the actual placement of the transients.

E.G.: If your kick has 3 samples in front before raising its transient, applying the same groove quantization to an event in PT could end up with your kick back of three samples from the REAL quarter.

That's even more evident with snares, for the fact they are often chopped with some air in front. The snare will not fall square on the 2, even if hard quantized. Using the same swing settings on a slow attack sound leads to a different perceived placement than applying the same groove to a fast transient sample.

Take also into account that it could be that PT got an higher (or lower) resolution than your MPC. This could lead to the swing settings in your MPC and in PT to be different. Or it could be that the PT groove templates are issued from a MPC 60 (96ppq) and since you're working with a 5K (960ppq) they don't match perfectly.


To get precise IN-THE-POCKETNESS (!) out of this scenario, go for manually wrapping the transients of all your loops to the transients of what is actually recorded from the MPC.

PEACE

Funkydrops wrote:Take also into account that it could be that PT got an higher (or lower) resolution than your MPC. This could lead to the swing settings in your MPC and in PT to be different. Or it could be that the PT groove templates are issued from a MPC 60 (96ppq) and since you're working with a 5K (960ppq) they don't match perfectly.


To get precise IN-THE-POCKETNESS (!) out of this scenario, go for manually wrapping the transients of all your loops to the transients of what is actually recorded from the MPC.

PEACE

I think this may be whats happening. Man that's a pain

It is well known that this kind of jobs are better handled under Ableton LIVE.

Yeah I have Ableton Live, I used to perform live with it but the engine isn't great. Too crunchy for the stuff I want to do. Great for Live though

Plus ProTools Elastic engine is quite a bit better than Ableton's Timestrech, the algorhthyms are a lot cleaner. Ableton just mushes everything together where PT keeps everything clean and sharp.