gah...

17 years is a long time to remember things.

it's coming back to me. i didn't like the bass part for about a twenty second portion near the beginning. it's two basically identical ten second parts in sequence. so, i deleted one of them and looped it. you can actually hear the splice if you listen closely.

what that means is that the reference file is useless. we're only talking about fractions of a second in the splice, but that's what i'm correcting for. it's not lining up because it can't line-up.

however.

it's a short part. what i ended up doing for the guitars and the bass was setting two points (on both sides of the part in question) and shifting the files so they line-up. that should create perfect time, so i couldn't understand why it wasn't. but of course it isn't - it can't be due to the splice. but, they are in time with the original master, except over that point. and they are consequently in time with each other, which is what is important. if i do the same thing with the drums, it will also line-up in the imaginary position and solve the problem.

i'm glad i at least understand. i've studied a lot of math, and had no question what i was doing was theoretically correct. i thought i was dealing with some kind of floating point error. and, this should speed me up...

actually, i think that i should start this from scratch, now that i have an understanding of what's happening. but, i'm going to skip this for now and focus on the second half of it.