Sync Tempo, etc... features

Maybe I'm just out of it, but I can't seem to find the answer to this. What is the difference/function between "Sync Song," "Sync Machine," and "Sync Tempo."

I was playing around and it seems like Sync Song will basically shift the entire song up or down if the whole thing's universally off by a little bit...but I was more interested in Sync Tempo, but I couldn't figure out how to use it.

I usually set the tempo by sticking a note on the first beat of each measure and turn clap on, and push/pull the tempo as necessary. I was hoping Sync Tempo was an option to do something like that, but just get it in the ball park, and then actually hit the notes at the right time and have it adjust the tempo accordingly...but when I was messing with it, nothing I pressed seemed to register as a "sample." Could anyone clear this up for me?

You're better off using Audacity to sync songs. Open up a song, add a new track. Generate a click track starting on the first beat with a guess of the bpm. Check whether the beats on the click track match the beats of the music visually. Adjust your guess until it's perfect for the whol song.

Hmm interesting, but I'm not sure how that would work... No matter how good the guess, the song(s) are played by human beings most of the time, and they aren't machines even if they have excellent rhythm hehe....well unless we're just talking about techno or fruity loops :-P.

But anyway, appreciate the feedback, but my question was what do those sync options in Stepmania do/how do they work? Particularly sync tempo.... If it doesn't work well, no big deal. It's not like it's difficult to do manually. I was just thinking if it could adjust the tempo to whatever I input as the song plays, that would save a lot of time.

syncing songs that aren't recorded with a metronome or remastred through a computer are almost always just gonna drift everywhere and be a nightmare to sync (see: shit ton of older rock songs).

sync song is probably song offset, sync machine probably global offset (I could be completely wrong here though). I'm so used to syncing on oITG though so I don't know what exactly has been changed on SM5 besides the decimal limit being something way better now for stops/weird bpms.

This thread is a good starting point to understand waveform syncing that kyzentun is mentioning (something like REAPER imo works a lot better for finding bpms than audacity; I use the later more for song offsets).

Thanks for the info. However, at this point, I'm really only interested in my original question--what the deuce Sync Tempo does...and how do you use it? I don't mind if it isn't very good at it and may as well not use it; now I'm just bubbling with sheer curiosity LOL. Someone must know this...someone developed it... How did this happen and yet I can't find any documentation on it via google or this site...unless I missed something.

As for waveform syncing and all that...really not interested. I sync songs just fine all the time without metronome recording, remastering, etc.... It just takes an hour or so, that's all, so I was just curious if that feature was a way to speed up the process. I would not want to make the song's tempo perfect even if I could in most cases. When I write steps to a song, I think of using the steps as a percussion to go with it. Some of the fun/drive to a lot of songs is in the tempo changes anyhoo.

Sync tempo is just for adding bpm AFAIK

The point of waveform syncing has nothing to do with remastering audio but to keep simfile sync as accurate as possible (which you really should be doing, bpm errors of even 0.02 can easily cause a file to drift outside the marvelous/fantastic window).

Some of the fun/drive to a lot of songs is in the tempo changes anyhoo.

If you mean like half bpm slowdowns (or similar simple multiples) then that's fine, but putting weird bpms that don't correlate well with the actual song bpm is not exactly recommended.

I'm not sure what you mean by "adding bpm." Anyhoo, I guess it's not really important...but seems that the documentation and stuff is pretty disorganized. Ah well, I'm still fine with the software.

When I mentioned remastering audio, I was only referring to what you said in the previous post, in reference to recorded with a metronome or remastered through a computer. I assume you meant to the end of making the song a uniform tempo.

I did not mean stuff like half bpm slowdowns or purposely not correlating with the song...almost the opposite lol. What I mean is songs that have tempo changes in them--it's part of the song...and sometimes a singer will be a little behind the beat or something, and it's a little like syncopation, just kinda goes with the music and resolves (I think of this like a rhythmic version of a major 7th to the octave lol). I just meant I would rather take the time to sync a changing tempo to a song (or if it's just a measure or something, offset the notes a wee bit) than have the song artificially at a perfect tempo.

I suppose in such cases, it's damn near impossible to get it "laser" to the point of guaranteed to .0001 seconds on every note ("marvelous" accountability, as you say), but that's not my objective either. When you get to that point, even sound card latency comes into play, and the compensation process for that is human/manual. I am after the fun workout. I suppose that level of precision might be "handy" if one is playing with hands instead of feet, but that ain't for me. I can't imagine a bigger waste of time, we nerds don't need to get fat too LOL.