DAW for tempo smooth transitions

[VladaK]

Hello,
I'm looking for a DAW to mix a set from different recordings. In addition to the basic editing of recordings, I want the smoothest possible transition between recordings by smoothly blending the tempo of subsequent recordings and using fade in/out.
Fade in/out is more or less applicable in all DAWs.
Adjusting the tempo is a bigger problem. What I'm looking for is the ability to slow down/accelerate the tempo in the transition of recordings from the 1st recording tempo to the 2nd recording tempo . Some DAWs can hardly do it, and for those who do, there are differences in the comfort of work and in the fact that some totally desintegrade the tempo of the whole song.
What tool would you recommend for this task?
Thank you for your ideas and experience.

[shufflebeat]

Would Reaper's "change tempo gradually to next marker" (possibly not verbatim) tick the box?

i.e., set a tempo marker, set a second tempo marker at a different rate, go to first TM, right click (or do whatever ritual dance Mac users do), set point properties, tick box.

[James Perrett]

This is something that I thought would be possible in Reaper but I can't seem to see any way of gradually adjusting the playback speed of individual items - only the whole project. You can set pitch envelopes for individual items but not speed as far as I can see.

To get around this you could use multiple stretch markers to gradually change speed which also allows you to visually match beats. You can also easily adjust the play rate of each item in the Item Properties dialog (hit F2 to bring it up).

Reaper's time stretching is fairly transparent - you can easily go 25% either way without too many artefacts and, if you do hear artefacts with the default stretch algorithm, you can always try a different algorithm.

[Drew Stephenson]

Yeah, I would have thought a combination of the project tempo change and time stretches for individual items would give you a good start.
You can download the trial version of Reaper for free and see if that's going to do the job for you.

[The Elf]

I can't speak for other DAWs, but this is pretty trivial in Cubase.

[James Perrett]

I can't speak for other DAWs, but this is pretty trivial in Cubase.

I checked in the Reaper forums and Logic was also mentioned as having this feature. It seems to be one area where Reaper falls down.

[shufflebeat]

Sorry, I may have misunderstood the question. If I now understand correctly this sounds like an item (musical content) tempo issue than a project tempo one, which would suggest a "playback rate" approach.

[DC-Choppah]

This comes up for me when comping tracks that were recorded without a click.

So maybe I had 3 takes and each take was recorded at slightly different tempos, and then I want to comp the tracks into a composite. The main song has its own tempo map that the tracks have to fit into.

In Protools, you can just select the region in the comped track. Since it has the wrong tempo for the track, it will be too short or too long for the portion of the timeline it is supposed to occupy.

So now you have a region that does not fit within its allotted time window. You can now apply various plugins like X-Form, or use TCE trimmer tool to expand or contract the region to align the region to the time slot. Then, you can cross-fade and edit the transition.

If you need to do lots of these, the Beat Detective is what you use. Beat Detective automates the process of these kind of edits and gives you a composite track that conforms to the tempo map. You can go back and tweak all of the edits manually if it does something weird in a few spots.

[Martin Walker]

I know we're primarily talking about changing the tempo of the audio itself, but it's still probably worthwhile mentioning that many plug-ins that feature tempo-sync options react badly to gradual tempo changes, giving rise to audio glitching and stuttering.

On various occasions I've set up a perfect rallentando using a tempo map, but then had to abandon it due to these issues, instead inserting the required amount of extra bar space at that point to accommodate the slowing down, while leaving the project tempo constant.

[n o i s e f l e ur]

Learn something new every day - previous to your post Martin, I hadn't heard the term "rallentando" before - even though I had cause to use the sister "ritardando" here on the forum a while back.

It hasn't made me any smarter - but it might help me to pretend better!