Logic Pro 9 Why is "follow tempo" soooo bad?

S

Sascha Franck

Logician
I know that for proper time stretching, one should rather use other algorithms, preferably even external ones (flex time very often doesn't cut it), but how can the "follow tempo" algorithm be *that* bad?
Here's an extremely simple sound example of a clean guitar (no plugins or whatsoever running) at 100 BPM, as recorded:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/Logic/RawGit_100BPM.mp3
And here's the same file with "follow tempo" activated, at 101BPM:
http://home.arcor.de/s.franck/temp/Logic/RawGit_101BPM.mp3
Completely inacceptable for anything but perhaps something truly experimental.
In other words, "follow tempo" is not useable at all.
I wonder why anybody would still release time stretching algorithms that bad in 2010 (well, almost 2011).

- Sascha
 
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I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that Follow Tempo uses the last chosen algorhythm you used in Time and Pitch machine.

If this is the case (and I look forward to being corrected), then you do at least have some control, though it would be better to have the choice there at the time you use Follow tempo.
 
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Pete Thomas said:
I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that Follow Tempo uses the last chosen algorhythm you used in Time and Pitch machine.

If this is the case (and I look forward to being corrected), then you do at least have some control, though it would be better to have the choice there at the time you use Follow tempo.
Click to expand...

You might be right, but the algorithms used for T&P are no better.
Admittedly, Flex Time yields quite some better results, but FT has to analyze things first and it's rather CPU consumptive.

I really wish there was a decent stretching/pitching algorithm coming with Logic. I actually have a Radius license, but to be honest, on some material it's not all that great, either. I tried with the same guitar recording and it failed more or less miserably. In that particular case, FT was giving the best results.
It's a shame that there's no even reomotely decent pitching built into Logic, though. I'd say that almost each and every other sequencer beats it by quite a mile.

Cheers
Sascha
 
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Sascha, although a sound like this is hard to transpose and I took your MP3 which isn't optimal either, the results here are quite usable. I tried in the Sample Editor and it worked best with "Serato Pitch 'n Time LE" and maybe even better with "Anything".

The setting labeled "Version 5" was not bad, "Universal" was not good and with the setting "Monophonic" my result was almost as bad as yours in your example.

Maybe you used the "Monophonic" setting?
 
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No, I used polyphonic - but I don't have the Serato addon.
However, as saidm with Flex Time, the results are a lot better - but I really don't always want to use it. Sometimes all I want is a good destructive time stretching and pitch shifting.
This is something a sequencer should offer because it's a lot easier to instantly hear things in context, rather than doing tempo calculations in an external editor.
And it's something Logic users are asking for since over a decade, because the internal algorithms easily are the worst of any sequencer there is.

Cheers
Sascha
 
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I'm with you on this, Sascha....Logic is really lagging beyond in the pitch and time shifting ease and technology. I also use Ableton Live extensively, and it's very impressive what can be done...I've changed the tempo of entire tracks 20 bpm and more and still obtained audio fidelity. Also, Live is extremely CPU efficient...you can change the stretching and beat markings in Live in real time and the audio immediately adjusts, without a glitch.

I wish the Logicians would just license Melodyne or Ableton technology already!

mk3
 
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I've found that to get "follow tempo" to work well, I have to extensively edit Flex Markers. Which means removing ones that are causing glitches. And many times it means removing some of the automatically generated ones which must me done in the Sample editor.
I recently did a project where we tracked a set of fiddle tunes at 2 tempos and then generated 2 other tempos using Flex. The differences between each tempo was 10 bpm.
It took some work but we were able to get fairly good sounding tracks for the Flexed tracks.
So, It takes work, but the Follow Tempo mode can sound very good.

Best,

timrob
 
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