Topic: Help! - SBE issues with Adobe Audition

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Couldn't find this in a search so please direct me elsewhere if it's already been covered.  I'm currently trying to mixdown and track a recording I made (on an R-09 @ 24/48) in Adobe Audition 1.5 on an XP machine and I've run into a problem that I've NEVER run into before in the many times I've used this program to do exactly what I'm doing right now. 

In a nutshell, when checking the resultant dithered, downsampled and cut 16/44.1 tracks with Traders Little Helper (v2.2.2), I'm getting SBE's for all the tracks.  I'm doing my cutting with the time format in Audition set to 'Compact Disc 75 fps', so theoretically, there shouldn't be any SBE's.  I've tried cropping a bit off the beginning and end, changed my edit points and retracked the show 3 times all to no avail.  Yes, I could have TLH fix the SBE's, but I want to know what's going on and, being a bit anal, would prefer that the tracks were SBE-less to begin with.

FWIW, the master is all one track in 24/48 and comes out to about 1.99GB.  Knowing that the R-09 splits tracks at the 2GB mark, could this be causing some issues?  Any information, suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated; I'm pulling out what little hair I have left!  Thank you.

[tgakidis]

Couldn't find this in a search so please direct me elsewhere if it's already been covered.  I'm currently trying to mixdown and track a recording I made (on an R-09 @ 24/48) in Adobe Audition 1.5 on an XP machine and I've run into a problem that I've NEVER run into before in the many times I've used this program to do exactly what I'm doing right now. 

In a nutshell, when checking the resultant dithered, downsampled and cut 16/44.1 tracks with Traders Little Helper (v2.2.2), I'm getting SBE's for all the tracks.  I'm doing my cutting with the time format in Audition set to 'Compact Disc 75 fps', so theoretically, there shouldn't be any SBE's.  I've tried cropping a bit off the beginning and end, changed my edit points and retracked the show 3 times all to no avail.  Yes, I could have TLH fix the SBE's, but I want to know what's going on and, being a bit anal, would prefer that the tracks were SBE-less to begin with.

FWIW, the master is all one track in 24/48 and comes out to about 1.99GB.  Knowing that the R-09 splits tracks at the 2GB mark, could this be causing some issues?  Any information, suggestions or solutions would be greatly appreciated; I'm pulling out what little hair I have left!  Thank you.

No familiar with Audition.  I use soundforge to track > extract tracked wave files > TLH to encode to flac.  I know there is a box to check in TLH when encoding to flac that aligns/fixes the SB's in addition to a section to fix flac with SBEs.  Flac frontend has a align SBs box too.  Does audition create flacs or waves that then need to be encoded?

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Thanks for the quick response.  Audition creates WAV files and these resultant WAV files are what I'm now checking with TLH.  The first time I checked for SBE's, I'd processed the tracks all the way to the FLAC stage; boy, lesson learned!    I know I can use TLH/FLAC Frontend to fix SBE's, but I'm trying to figure out where the original problem lies.

[tgakidis]

Pretty sure the problem lies with the program used to convert to flac and how you convert them, although I could be wrong.  It very well may be the program used to track.  That's why you see a lot of people resample/dither with one program and track with another like cd wave editor.  I found that I am quite happy with Soundforge (track, Fade, Dither, Resample) > TLH (Flac Encode w/ Align SB, Testing, FFP, MD5, etc.).

Wait until after 5pm EST and I am sure Smokinjoe will chime in and explain it alot clearer then me.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Yeah, the SBE's are showing up BEFORE I even convert the WAV files to FLAC: I check them after I've done the mixing, tracking, resampling/dithering still in WAV format.  I've used Audition dozens of times in exactly the same manner without issue which is what has me scratching my head.  I used to use Soundforge, which is a good program (but in the versions I used made Nero unable to burn tracks to a CD if you left the cue points in), but switched to Audition because my intro to daw's was Cool Edit.  My work process is very similar to yours (daw > TLH/FLAC Frontend) except that my SB's are usually spot on before I encode to FLAC.  I'm hoping that I've overlooked something simple that someone will be able to point out to me. 

[Brian Skalinder]

The first though that comes to mind:  what's changed since you last successfully used AA in this way?  Upgraded Audition?  Other software?  New recorder?  Anything at all?  Are you certain you're using AA the exact same way as before?

Second:  out of curiousity, have you tried re-tracking (removing/re-adding or "editing" each track marker by moving it slightly) after converting to 16/44?

[Fried Chicken Boy]

The first though that comes to mind:  what's changed since you last successfully used AA in this way?

Absolutely nothing.  That's what's so puzzling.  I had successfully edited and tracked the master of another show with no problems the day before.  In between working on the two shows, all I did was power down the computer and then turn it back on the next day.

Second:  out of curiousity, have you tried re-tracking (removing/re-adding or "editing" each track marker by moving it slightly) after converting to 16/44?

I have not.  I normally don't mess with any edits/tracking after I resample/dither to avoid just such a problem.  I do all of my edits and tracking in 24/48 and then, using my cue points, copy and paste each individual track into blank 16/44.1 workspaces where the resampling/dithering is done automatically as it pastes.  I haven't had a problem with this method before.

What I'm thinking of doing for this particular master is all my edits, fades, etc. in 24/48, resampling/dithering the ENTIRE master to 16/44.1 and then do my tracking in 16/44.1.  Will the quality of the end result suffer due to tracking in a lower resolution?  Thoughts, suggestions, solutions?

Thank you so much for the help, folks.

[tgakidis]

Worth a try.....or just fix the SBE and be done with it

[Fried Chicken Boy]

True, true.  But, as I posted earlier, my nature makes me want to pick at the scab.    If my experiment as previously outlined doesn't work, I'll probably wind up just fixing the SBE's with TLH or FLAC Frontend.

[busterr]

I do not know how Adobe Audition handles such things, but I was always under the impression(maybe wrongly so ) that any editing, including resample & dithering after tracking will result in SBE's in the final mix, regardless of which editing software used. Tracking is always the last thing I do. I have never found any SBE's, and even still, I always check the box in Frontend when flac'ing to "align on sector boundaries" just to be safe.
Although it's quite possible there are some editors that are able to account for post tracking editing. To be honest I don't even know how to go about tracking in any of my editors(soundforge, wavelab, reaper) I have always found CDWave to be the easiest and most reliable way for myself.

If you are concerned about having to track twice(once for 24bit and again for 16 or vise/versa) I'd recommend purchasing CDWave(you can try it free for 30 days), only if Audition doesn't allow you to save cuesheet's that is. Then you can just track the 16bit and save that cuesheet for use with the 24bit, that's how I do it anyway.

[rsimms3]

SBEs only exist in the 16/44 realm, not in the 24 bit realm so if you track first, then dither/resample SBEs can occur, at least that is my understanding.  I always do all fades, edits, volume increase etc. in 24 bit, save the file, convert to 16/44, save to new file, and take the 16/44 to CDWave for tracking.  I have NEVER had an issue with that work flow.  I also check "Fix SBEs" in FLAC Frontend and the only track that has SBEs is the final track because it does not end in the right spot, but it gets amended which is no big deal, it's at the end. 

[Fried Chicken Boy]

FWIW, my "experiment" worked.  I did all the mixing/editing in 24/48 and then converted the entire WAV file to 16/44.1 and tracked it out there.  Voila, SBE's are all gone.  As I posted before, in all my time working with Audition and with my particular work flow, I've never encountered this issue before.  The only thing that comes to mind that may have caused this is that the original file was just about at the 2GB point on an R-09 which has a 2GB max file size.  Perhaps that caused an issue but who knows...