Elasticindex~ as a play~ replacement.

Well I used the regular eleastic~ external and was very happy
with its sound quality. It requires you to load the sound in to
a buffer. Eventually I will probably get elasticindex~ as well.

I own and use it. It is really good, very useful, but unfortunately does not sound completely transparent at normal speed/pitch with it's elastic algorithm on (it can be switched off to become a normal index` essentially)

Transients sound a little blurred, and there is a slight "tremolo" covering the sound. I emailed the elastic~ team about it a few weeks ago, because I know they intended it to be transparent at normal speed/pitch. Not heard back yet regarding a possible cause (if it is my setup that is the problem or a bug in my external, or even just a part of the algorithm etc..)

I do recommend it though, it's freezing/incredibly slow playback at normal pitch granular-ish capabilities are very interesting to use and sound very smooth.

My workaround at the moment is to use it in conjunction with index~, both linked to the same buffer~, and just switch into elasticindex~ when I want something other than normal playback.

I have to rush off to work, but I'll post a .wav demonstrating the sound quality issue I was talking about later this evening.

I buyed elastic~, and i'm not so happy with its sound quality. When you put the pitch is going down (or accelerate) it's ok, but when you put the pitch up, it's still sounds rather metallic for a "patented algorythm" that's supposed to be used in expensive pro-audio soft like cubase. (hear the example sound attached)

I find the gabor/ftm maxmsp package much more powerful on several points: "freezing" effets (see patch bellow) are must more controlable than with elastic~. For slowing down or pitching up mono-pitched sounds, like voice or instrument sounds, gabor's pitch-shift(see patch), will sometimes sounds really better than elastic~ (hear the example sound attached), Plus it have a formant parameter that is great. And it's totally free.

But i'm still wondering is there are some better sounding pitch shift somewhere.. I remember few years ago a dj playing with the speed on rock'nroll standards (Virtual dj or a soft like that), i was impressed by quality... far better that elastic~ i think.

I also note that i questioned the elastic team about their differents packages, and they answered me that elasticx~&elasticindex~ sound was less good than elastic~ sound.

what they said... sounds like something easily done in max. it's no serato or eventide thats for sure... I wish I knew what the magic of those nice shifters was

> serato or eventide

hmm.. just listening to the serato examples it looks 4 time better than elastic~ but... it's 10 times more expensive ! And even not avalaible as vst, only protool. same for eventide i think.

yeah. I'm just holding them up as standards to judge things by. Serato isn't real time at all. in the same spirit as "omx is great but they are no LA-2A"

Yes, Serato Pitch and Time is purely a non-realtime process. The discussion of elastic~ and elasticx~/elasticindex~ sound quality is very informative, but I really was wondering how hard it would be to convert a patch that currently uses play~ (rather different from index~) over to using elasticindex~ instead.

I've never really used play~ so I'm not too sure about that, but as far as I've found elasticindex~ operates in exactly the same way as index~, so you could modify the patch to use index~ and see how tricky it is. Then if you get elasticindex~ it will just slot right in.

My first thought is it would be pretty straightforward, as play~ uses a signal position in milliseconds the same way index~ uses a signal position in samples. The only thing might be that if you're converting milliseconds to samples you might (not sure) end up with the sample index containing occasional floats, in which case you would have to use trunc~.

Going back to the sound quality thing, I really can't complain about elasticindex~. I've only used it for dramatic pitch/time changes, mainly slowing down and freezing at normal pitch. I really like how it sounds for this, its so easy to use, and doesn't require me spending ages making my own granular processor or puzzling over the gabor/fmat objects. If you want the grain position variation quirkiness that could easily be done as well.

I've been using it in a phrase sampler patch, with phasor*loop length as a playback signal. Then just use sah~ to freeze, and you can scrub through a buffer at any speed really smoothly. For a grain position thing, I could just make a little rand~ or crazy lfo signal and modulate the frozen sample value with that. I'm gonna get off the internet and try it out!

-edit- it could even be this simple depending on your patch:

timlloyd wrote on Thu, 06 August 2009 00:47 its so easy to use, and doesn't require me spending ages making my own granular processor or puzzling over the gabor/fmat objects. If you want the grain position variation quirkiness that could easily be done as well.

You're right that elastic is more simple to use than gabor.

But gabor is using "overlap" methods, so any patch using msp objects or elastic will never sounds the same than the gabor example patch i put above, until you put tons of complicated stuff in a poly~.