My DAW of choice, Ableton Live, is arguably the best for affecting your audio in terms of timing. You can effortlessly (or near effortlessly) warp your audio in many ways to get it to fit new tempos or fix off time audio. The latter brings us to quantizing audio; if you’re not familiar, to quantize in mixing/DAW terms means to adjust the timing of audio in Ableton live
How to Quantize Audio in Ableton Live
Let’s so for example we recorded some organic claps via a microphone (and our hands).
Some of the claps are right on the beat, others might be a little bit off.
Rather than manually chopping up the clip, we can automatically adjust these claps to perfectly trigger right on (or around) the beat.
Step 1 (Optional) – Consolidate Clips
If you have multiple clips, you may first want to consolidate them to save yourself time.
In my example which you can see in the image below, I have a simple series of recorded claps on the backbeat of the 2nd and 4th quarter notes.
I tried copying and pasting one particular clap which was especially off in its timing just to correct the one glaring issue in the timing, but it could still be tighter.
To quantize audio in Ableton, we do it by one clip at a time, so if I select what are essentially the three separate clips, right click, then click “Consolidate”, the three clips will be made into one single clip:
The timing, level, or any other characteristics of the audio won’t change, this will simply turn the three clips into one which makes quantizing the audio easier.
Again, this is completely optional, but this saves us time when we actually quantize the audio in the next step.
Step 2 – Select Quantization Settings
Once you’ve got all the audio you want to adjust in one clip, click on the clip in the Arrangement View which will bring up the sample editor section for that clip:
As you can see, the claps are typically just behind the beat. Despite feeling like I recorded them in time to the metronome/click track, there’s always a small amount of latency, either human or system (or both) caused.
Right click anywhere in the “Sample Editor” section and select “Quantize Settings”. This will bring up two options:
Quantize To
“Quantize To” determines the nearest note in terms of timing each clap (or your audio “hits”) will snap to.
For instance, if we set this to 1/4, each clap will snap to the nearest 1/4 note. 1/8 note will snap each clap to the nearest 1/8th note (and so on).
For what it’s worth, the “T” that you’ll see refers to triplet notes, so the nearest 1/8 triplet, 1/16 triplet, etc. and even accounts for say 1/8 note PLUS 1/8 triplet.
The larger the note you set (with 1/4 being the biggest), the more of an adjustment each clap will receive in terms of timing because 1/4 notes are much farther apart than a 1/32, 1/16, or even a 1/8.
“Current Grid” essentially follows the specificity of your grid. If you have your grid displayed as 1/16 notes for example, it will snap the claps to those.
Amount
The other setting in the quantization settings is “Amount”, measured and set as a percentage.
“Amount” determines how closely the audio get adjusted relative to the “Quantize To” setting.
So if we set 1/4 as the “Quantize To” setting, but set the “Amount” to 65%, the claps won’t snap directly to the nearest 1/4 note but 65% of the way there, resulting in this:
As you can see, the claps from the earlier example were shifted, but you can still see a small gap between the quarter notes and the claps. The gap is larger between some claps and others because those claps were farther behind the beat than the others.
Knocking the “Amount” below 100% helps to keep some of the human element in the rhythm of whatever it is you’re quantizing as opposed to going 100% which will sound robotic when you hit that perfect timing.
Note that if you simply select “Quantize”, it will automatically apply the last settings or the default settings to the audio in adjusting the timing.
Lastly, note that you can click and drag to highlight specific stretches within the “Sample Editor”.
When you highlight a section then right click, any quantization settings you choose will exclusively apply to the included audio and won’t affect the timing of anything outside of the highlighted section.
Step 3 – Set Warp Type
Note that you can’t quantize audio unless you set it to be warped. Unless we’re talking midi notes which can be adjusted at will regardless of tempo, quantizing raw audio is a form of warping.
As such, you should lastly make sure to set the warp “Mode” to the proper setting for whatever type of audio you’re quantizing and warping.
I recently did an overview on how to warp in Ableton Live, and in that tutorial I covered the 4-5 “modes” of warping in Ableton Live.
As I mentioned in it, each warp mode is typically ideally suited to different types of audio, so let’s do a quick recap on each type:
Beats
“Beats” as a warp mode is best suited for rhythmic, “hit” types of audio, like percussion or claps (in keeping with our example):
You’ll note when the mode is set to beats, there’s a dedicated setting for preserving transients and to what extent or percentage. Transients are those initial percussive sounds you hear on virtually any sound (see what are transients for more information).
Think the high frequency “crack” of a drumstick hitting the surface of the snare which precedes the body of that snare.
Transients are important for keeping an instrument/track assertive in your mix, so it’s generally best to leave this set at 100. You’ll find that you can cut your audio off early by changing the loop type (arrows) and turning the number down to taste.
As you might expect, percussive/drum/beat/hit related raw audio works best for quantizing as it’s the simplest in terms of its timing with its typical one-off nature.
For more complicated audio, you need to manually warp it as I detailed in the aforementioned guide on how to warp in Ableton Live.
Tones
“Tones” are suited for single audio tracks playing monophonic, meaning single melodic notes at a time. While you can use this mode on a single vocal track, bass track, or any instruments playing a single note at a time, I typically prefer to either “Complex” or “Complex Pro” modes.
Texture
If “Tones” is monophonic, “Texture” is best suited for for polyphonic audio, meaning you have multiple notes playing simultaneously. Once again, the manual states this is best suited for orchestral music, atmospheric pads, or even noise or droning sounds.
Re-Pitch
“Re-Pitch” is for altering the pitch of your clip’s audio relative to the tempo. Doubling the tempo of the clip raises its pitch an octave and drops it an octave if you halve the tempo.
Complex
I just referenced “Complex”; I like this mode for any instrument which isn’t percussive. In other words, anything musical regardless of how simple or complicated it is outside of vocals.
To put it another way, anything which isn’t vocals or drums, I find I get the best (meaning most natural) sounding results with “Complex”.
Complex-Pro
“Complex-Pro” works very much like “Complex” but offers additional parameters in allowing you to adjust your audio clip’s “Formants” and “Envelope”.
Whenever I have ANYTHING related to vocals, whether that’s a single vocal or an entire mix with vocals (and sometimes an entire mix without vocals), “Complex-Pro” yields the best results.
With vocals in particular when you warp them they can sound a little unnatural, even on this setting, when you change their pitch or adjust the timing or length of samples within the clip. Fiddling with the “Formants” and “Envelope” parameters help to smooth out those changes so they’re less pronounced or unnoticeable altogether.
With my clapping tracks, I would use “Beats” for the best sounding results because they are percussive and there’s nothing musical there.
Quantizing midi tracks in Ableton Live is just as simple and intuitive; you simply right click within the “Midi Note Editor” (the midi equivalent of the “Sample Editor”) and select your preferred quantization settings as discussed earlier.
Of course moving midi notes around doesn’t result in any warping because these are digital midi notes which can be freely adjusted regardless of the tempo as opposed to raw audio, but quantizing recorded midi notes saves you time just as it does when it comes to quantizing raw audio.
Quantize Audio in Ableton Tips
- Quantizing audio in Ableton automatically adjusts the timing of the audio in the clip(s) of your choosing to the timing of your choosing to get tighter audio relative to the beat while saving yourself some time.
- Percussive or “hit” type raw audio lends itself best to adjusting the timing because of its relative simplicity and one-off notes.
- To quantize audio in Ableton, right click in the “Sample Editor” window for the clip you want to adjust the timing of and select “Quantize Settings”.
- Selecting a more granular level in these settings like a more precise note (16th, 32nd notes) coupled with an “Amount” below 100 yields better i.e. more natural sounding results.
- When quantizing, set the warp mode to the appropriate corresponding option for the best sounding results, as well, like “Beats” with percussive raw audio.
