Rain Recording

Everyone knows about the Pro Tools Time Compression/Expansion function in the tool submenu at the top left of the edit screen. By selecting it, you're able to speed up or slow down your audio track without affecting pitch. Fine. But, have you ever stretched its limit by doing it so drastically that you begin introducing strange artifacts in your audio? The kind that make it rendered useless? Or, you have to and get a better performance because you just can't fix it in the mix?

Luckily, you just might have another shot. If you have any other plug-in bundles installed, such as Waves or Serato, you probably have alternative TC/E plugins to choose from. You just may have forgotten about them because you're only noticing the plug-ins in your I/O. However, if you go into Preferences, then select the Processing tab, you'll see the TC/E Plug-in selection box. The default is Digidesign TC/E, but check to see if you have any others. If you do, you may just be in luck, and here's why:

The logarithmic functions in the Digidesign TC/E version are only really suitable for dealing with voice and dialog. It doesn't take much to make your audio sound very bizarre if you are dealing with musical instruments. The Waves plug-in for TC/E, however, deals with instruments much better and may just get you closer to where you wanted to be without having to go and hire the musicians again.

If you don't have any other TC/E options, try taking your decent sounding compressed/stretched audio and recording it back into your rig via your busses, and attempt the TC/E once more. You probably won't get too much closer, but it's applying less drastic expansion or compression to a single clip, and is at least worth a shot.