I hadn't detected any particular difference between the Elastique Time stretch between Vegas10, 11 or 12. [except for the last build of VP10_64bit which had a bug and increased the output level of the Elastique by around +6dB whenever the 'Pro' setting was chosen]

Sure, "pitiful" isn't a very technically accurate word, is it. We seem to be experiencing different effects on different workstations (which vary on processors and sound cards). All workstations are now running Win7, whereas some PCs were running XP before. But, generally, the problem is a phasing effect or ripples in the audio. It certainly is not as clean as in prior versions of Vegas.

the time stretching preview on playback changes quality depending on how easily the project can be played

If your processor / hard drive is struggling it will degrade

I've found that vegas 12 is much harder on computers than previous versions

But I've found that even hearing this pitiful timestretching in preview, the renders turn out fine.

Funny..
Didn't see this until now. I had just contacted Platinum support about this issue today. I use the compression/expansion throughout the day for producing movie trailers. I have been using Vegas 8 for quite some time, I tried 12 and had the abnormalities. I just upgraded to 13 and it's just as bad if not worse. The support person tried to feed me some rubbish about the source file, blah, blah, blah... I advised him regardless of the file type, it worked pretty flawlessly in 8 and is completely unusable in 13. He rambled on and asked for a session with examples in each which I provided. in both I gave an example of the original 44.1/16 .wav and then again compressed to 114%. Vegas 8 was great, Vegas 13 was an abortion. And if your wondering what that means, it sounds like it's been reduced to 8 bits and completely hollow like a very bad mp3. Now, 114% may sound like a lot, but in V13 just compressing from 100% to 98.7 yields the same results. To me, they obviously changed the algorithm somewhere along the way with poor results. What killed me was that the tech made me feel like I was doing something wrong where it's VERY obvious that it's a version issue.

what to do....

Vegas went 64bit with v12 / v13

this is why it can't do what the v8,9,10,11 32bit versions did

There's something wrong with 64bit versions and ASIO drivers - It just can't handle it like the 32bit versions could.

If you switch to non-ASIO drivers the time-stretching quality goes back to normal

I've been using nothing but v10 for all my projects eventhough I was a bit of a sucker and bought v11 and v12

I saw something about multi-threading audio, which I was hoping was something new for v13

For me, it doesn't matter which driver I use, I get the same crappy result. Asio, Microsoft Sound Mapper, Built-in, Wavedriver, External.... Very disappointed, again especially with the support teams handling/logic of the issue.

Problem is that everybody with a similar setup isn't getting the same problem. Maybe difference between machines is the ' Re-sample and Stretch Quality' setting in Project Properties ?

With newer computers there would seem little reason to ever use anything other than 'best'.

Also, is it only a Preview thing, or is the nastiness apparent in rendered results ?

geoff

I'm able to reproduce it on every machine I have.. PC desktop, laptop, Mac bootcamp, parallels, etc. And yes, set to "best". And again, it's fine in every version with the exception of 12 & 13

... and only a Preview problem, or nastiness still there when Rendered ?