Hi Brett,
I’m sorry to hear about the timing issue with your last show. The good news is that there are some simple steps you can take to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
For audio files that do not contain timecode, there are only two ways to move them on the timeline. The first is by turning off the Lock songs in place setting and dragging on the timeline. The second is by entering a non-zero start time in the songs window.
The Songs drag along events when moved option only works in the way the name implies. It keeps events aligned with the song when the song is moved. It does not cause a song to be moved when events are moved.
To know definitively if the soundtrack for your last show was moved, go to Window > Songs window and check the value in the Start Time field. Anything values of anything other than 00:00.000 indicates the song/soundtrack was moved.
By default, the Lock songs in place Finale 3D setting is enabled. If you are importing a completed soundtrack and have no need to make modifications in Finale 3D, then best practice is to leave this setting enabled at all times. There is no need to disable the setting in order to import music.
Finale 3D exports uncompressed, lossless WAV files matching exactly to the audio on the timeline. When exporting a soundtrack, Finale 3D also allows you to add timecode for every major firing system in the world. Exporting a soundtrack with timecode is the most common way to prepare audio for a pyromusical. The Cobra Audio Box is a unique exception in that it allows you to synchronize the firing of a show and music without using timecode. The Audio Box, and therefore Cobra, is also one of the only (maybe the only) firing system(s) of the 45 systems that Finale 3D supports that requires MP3. MP3 files are great for minimizing file size, but the major downside is that they are highly compressed and lossy, resulting in much lower quality compared to WAV files. That said, for the convenience of Cobra/Audio Box users, I would like to add MP3 export to Finale 3D at some point.
There are currently two known issues with MP3s in Finale 3D:
1) When an MP3 song/soundtrack is imported into Finale 3D, audio artifacts are sometimes introduced. This is a bug that we plan to fix. For more details, see: MP3 audio issues (static, crackling, popping, clicking) when importing songs into Finale 3D
2) When an MP3 song/soundtrack is imported into Finale 3D, the audio is shifted 0.05 seconds (5/100ths of a second) forward in time. This means that every event added to beats in the music is 0.05s late relative to the original audio file. This may seem like a lot, and I agree that it’s unacceptable and needs to be fixed. At the same time, it only impacts shows that are not shot using a soundtrack exported from Finale 3D. Also, 0.05s isn’t actually much in context — firing time propagation delay in firing systems, variance from one firing system to another, and variance from one e-match/igniter to another is often greater than 0.05s.
The solution to both issues is to import your soundtrack as a WAV file into Finale 3D. This workflow has multiple benefits:
1) Ensures no audio artifacts are added to the music.
2) Ensures perfect timing.
3) Reduces the number of times the music is compressed, thus preserving quality. For example, if you create your soundtrack as an MP3, then import it into Finale 3D, then export to WAV then convert to MP3 again, you are compressing the soundtrack twice. Each time audio is compressed, more quality is lost. By contrast, if you work in WAV right up to the point you need an MP3 for the Audio Box, you are only compressing the soundtrack once.
How can I double check the file once I convert it back to mp3?
Import the WAV and MP3 versions of your soundtrack into Audacity. Listen and compare their waveforms side by side at a few points.
When I exported the wav file to compare the two files, the amplitude (db) was significantly lower than the file I originally loaded into F3D? How do you set db levels in F3D?
The audio level for an exported soundtrack is based on the per-song Volume field in the songs window and global Song audio volume setting in File > Render settings.
