User Manual

53
Time Shifting Overview
As mentioned back in Chapter 2, in order to do
its time shifting magic, Auto-Tune 7 must first
create a copy of any audio you wish to edit.
As you might imagine, these audio files can
be quite large. Unlike the pitch data generated
by the traditional Track Pitch function, which is
always stored with the instances of Auto-Tune
in your session, the audio recorded for time
shifting by the Track Pitch + Time function is
saved as one or more separate files elsewhere
on your computer.
You will find detailed information about these
files in the Tracked Data Management section
below, but here are some basic guidelines to
keep in mind:
•
If you always work on one computer
and never transfer your projects to other
computers, you don’t really have to worry
about this. Everything will typically take care
of itself.
The one exception is that’s it’s wise to delete
any tracked audio files once you no longer
need them (after bouncing or freezing a
processed track, for example), as they will
otherwise end up sitting on your computer
forever, just taking up space. See below for
details.
•
If you do transfer your sessions to other
computers, any tracked audio files must
be transferred with them. Again, see the
Tracked Data Management section below for
instructions.
•
If you know from the beginning that you
won’t be doing time shifting on a track, use
the Track Pitch function. There’s no point in
recording large files you’ll never need.
•
If you will be doing time shifting in only a
small region of your track, use Track Pitch
+ Time only in that region. You can do a
separate Track Pitch pass for any other
regions that only require pitch correction.
•
Auto-Tune 7’s time shifting is completely
nondestructive. Since Auto-Tune 7 works
on a copy of your audio, time editing always
leaves your original audio intact. At any point
you can simply switch off the Time Control
Enable button to instantly return to your
track’s original timing.
Time Shifting Limits
For both of the time editing tools described
below, the total amount of time compression
or expansion that can be applied to a range of
audio is limited to a 10:1 ratio. That is, a range
can be expanded up to 10 times its original
length or compressed down to 1/10th of its
original length. Once that limit is reached,
further compression or expansion (depending,
of course on which limit we’re talking about) is
not possible.
NOTE: The compression and
expansion limits are cumulative.
So, if you find yourself unable to
make a small time shift, it will almost certainly
be because the region you are editing has
previously been shifted to (or near) its limit.
Computer Power and the
Data Error Indicator
In addition to the limits
described above, there are
a two other related issues that can affect the
useful range of time compression: computer
speed and session complexity.
When performing time compression, Auto-
Tune 7 needs to process the audio at faster
than real time. At the limit of 10:1, audio must
be processed at ten times its normal rate.
Our tests have shown that computers that
meet our published system requirements