There were a couple of people complaining late last week about the sound quality of their samples after importing from Ableton Live into Octatrack via USB transfer. [/quote]
that’s nonsense. there is no signal processing going on in a usb transfer. it’s like saying this mp3 sounds better when I play it off of hard drive 1 instead of hard drive 2. it’s all digital.
needless to say, transferring by usb is far faster than rerecording audio in real time. unless you have some outboard gear you want to run your samples through for color or whatever (preamp, compressor, etc), you will be wasting a large amount of your time recording from your computer into the OT. not to mention what a headache saving and managing a large number of files is on the OT is compared to a computer…
There were a couple of people complaining late last week about the sound quality of their samples after importing from Ableton Live into Octatrack via USB transfer. [/quote]
that’s nonsense. there is no signal processing going on in a usb transfer. it’s like saying this mp3 sounds better when I play it off of hard drive 1 instead of hard drive 2. it’s all digital.
needless to say, transferring by usb is far faster than rerecording audio in real time. unless you have some outboard gear you want to run your samples through for color or whatever (preamp, compressor, etc), you will be wasting a large amount of your time recording from your computer into the OT. not to mention what a headache saving and managing a large number of files is on the OT is compared to a computer…[/quote]
It was the guys on the other thread who were claiming that their files sounded great in Ableton Live but sound “flat” in the Octatrack.
As for me, the only audio I foresee myself importing over USB would be stuff I already recorded into Ableton or Logic for a past project, or stuff I whipped up on my iPad and saved in Audioshare or some iPad DAW.
It was the guys on the other thread who were claiming that their files sounded great in Ableton Live but sound “flat” in the Octatrack.
Lives warping is different from the OT, so that might be it if warping / time stretch is happening. Maybe sample rate conversion or word length conversion? Seems like the only fair comparison would be to have the same SR, no warping, and no FX.
Anyway, I’m an OT n00b… What exactly is a Sample Chain anyway? Is it just samples I’m the audio pool, or is it some specific usage?
Currently, I sample with the OT, then load the samples into WaveLab or Live for additional processing. Usually EQ, com/lim, maybe some short reverb. With Live, I plan on doing some warping to tighten up timings, but haven’t gott around to it yet.
A sample chain is an ultra efficient way to both group together and make use of up to 64 one shot samples on a single track from a single sliced sample. Once you’ve sliced it quit out of the sample edit menu and then press FUNC+Down and go to slices mode, you can now page through 64 samples that you can one-shot trig into the sequencer, 16 slices at a time. As you can imagine, this is great for building percussion tracks… The best method is always put certain types of drums in the same places in the chain (like every page, the 1st and second are kicks, the 3rd, 4th are toms, 5th and 6th are hats open, 7th and 8th hats closed and so on…), get a basic loop going by P-locking your kicks (or just trig them in) and then go keep trying different variations (and re sample them).
It is also very useful (and I’m just starting to do this) for trying out tons of singe shot samples and just improvising with various melodies or vocal/FX stuff, live recording and then resampling.
There were a bunch of 64 step sample chains people uploaded to Elektron-Users- that was how I was introduced to them. The links were mostly to drop box so I bet you can still get them.
The d/a definitely has some very subtle coloring to it. At least in 16-bit playback. Specifically with high transient sounds (drums) and somewhere in the highend. Especially noticeable on cymbals / hihats. Not at all pleasant. But manageable in mixing.
Ah… Slices, but not from a loop, individual sounds. I’ve done a little of that with kicks to get variation, sampling the Tempest while twiddling. Resampling complex FX and real time twaks is something I plan on getting into soon.
can you link me to the dropbox please.
Stupid quesion, buy why not…
Anyone know of any software (PC) to create sample chains / merge audio files so they are quantised for easy splitting in the Octatrack?
I have Cubase on the Mac, so can obviously use that, but was just after a very simple tool for the PC.
The new OS (1.25B) fixes an annoying retrigger bug when working with sample chains BTW. YAY! About creating sample chains: I wrote a bash script to create sample chains (for mac/linux): http://www.elektronauts.com/users/vvd
A quick ram saving tip when making sample chains:
with longer samples you might want to transpose them up an octave before transferring them to the OT, then transpose them down an octave once in the OT. File size will be half.
While we’re on the subject of sample chains, I’m preparing some right now in Ableton Live (v8) for an imminent OT purchase and I’m wondering what my best strategy is and how other people are doing this.
I’m making files of, for example, 64 kick drums, 64 snares, 64 closed hats, 64 open hats, 64 foot closed hats, 64 shakers, etc, etc.
Is this my best strategy or are people here finding that creating kits works better once in the OT, eg, a sample of 64 slices containing 4 kicks, 4 snares, 4 closed hats, 4 open hats, etc, etc.
Any advantages / disadvantages?
@ Rusty: I can’t recommend anything specifically for PC as I’m a Mac man, but try these:
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/win95/AUDIO_SEQUENCERS/Shareware/
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul04/articles/pcmusician.htm
Thanks y’all!
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I like all the same sounds in a chain, makes it more predictable to adjust slice start for fills and such.
Makes good sense.
Thanks Tarekith, appreciated.
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@vvd;
Sorry to have to ask this, but I always run into trouble with the command-line executables…
Where do I need to place sox? I downloaded it from Sourceforge, but don’t know what to do with it. I know, it’s probably very basic, but just can’t wrap my head around it. :-/
@josker it’s not that basic if you don’t have the dependent libraries and also how comfortable are you working on command line?
Honestly the easiest approach as suggested elsewhere is to use a daw or similar that has a grid. Drag your samples onto the grid - this ensures they are evenly spaced. Then join them together - e.g. ‘Consolidate’ in Ableton, or ‘create new sample from selection’ in Renoise.
Start with the Arcade Kid waveforms as they are already clean single cycle, trimmed etc.
After that, try some other prepared hit libs like gold baby, driven machine drums etc.
You may want to trim some of these but I don’t think it’s really necessary - it seems the main requirement is the even spacing between samples - any daw grid will give you that.
Once you get comfortable with above, start sampling your own stuff, add to grid, consolidate, done.
The command line tool/sox stuff works great, don’t get me wrong, and is a bit more convenient from a batch processing point of view - just my 2c.
Thanks, that’s solid advice, as I’m not very fluent with command line stuff.
With the AKWF waveforms, you’d probably want to eliminate any gap between them to avoid looping issues… this seems a bit tedious in Ableton, where they aren’t imported like that by default… Will investigate.
Edit: You can import them all at once and with no gaps by disabling the grid, but as the AKWF waveforms are tuned D+2 cents, tuning them down will make them overlap… damn.
@josker - I may not be understanding correctly - but that’s what ‘consolidate’ is for - doesn’t it join all the single cycles together and eliminate the gaps?
Tried it quickly - it seems just join the clips to one big clip, and to insert silence in the gaps. So unless I’m missing something, it doesn’t do what I want to accomplish.
I am assuming you are using a mac.
Copy the files “sox” and “soxi” from the archive into your PATH (like /usr/local/bin/). To see what your PATH is set to type “echo $PATH” in the Terminal window (case sensitive). You can use any one of them, but one with “local” in it is preferred. It is also a good idea to put trimpad into one of these.
Take a look at this tutorial video I did 2 years ago (time flies !!)
i go over slices, why you would use them, and some applications.
Since then, it has become the standard way to operate the OT. Slices offer an incredible amount of flexibility when programming.
Remember, you can create chains of any length that your CF card will allow.
You can have chains with one shots, or loops, or full tracks. One might for example create a chain of 64 bass takes, that you could scroll through on the fly.
The fact that one can apply LFO’s to the start point (effectively the slice number when in Slice mode), or randomize slices, opens up an incredible world of discovery, once you have created some chains.
Also, chains do not have to contain the same family of sounds. You could have bass sounds, percussion, vox hits and sax hits in the same chain. Place a few trigs, assign an LFO to start point, and get ready to record some mad things 
Using Ableton to create chains is perfect, I tend to stack at least 3 tracks of sounds together before bouncing, to get nice stereo spread and evocative sounds. I also have my “common” chains of 64 kicks/snares/hats for super quick beat making
Hope this helps !
Cheers
Using Ableton to create chains is perfect, I tend to stack at least 3 tracks of sounds together before bouncing, to get nice stereo spread and evocative sounds.
@secretmusic - yes Ableton seems to work fine and folks use it successfully to make chains (me included) - but it sounds like some people are getting confused by some technical details, like
do the samples need to be cropped to remove silence?
Should there be no ‘gaps’ between samples in the chain?
Do individual samples need to be the same length?
Does the grid resolution matter? e.g. 16th x 4 bars for a 64 slices chain
When you ‘consolidate’ the samples should you consolidate the whole track or just the samples?
Should you slice to zero markers or not?
I don’t know the answers to all of the above, but if you look at this thread and the old EU threads you will find conflicting answers to some of these…
My understanding is that really the only requirement is that samples are ‘evenly spaced’ - this is because OT is slicing mathematically (not by transient detection) - so if you create 16 slices from 16 evenly spaced samples (created on a grid), OT performs a simple divide by 16, and you get 16 slices that hit on the start points exactly, individual sample length doesn’t matter, there WILL be silence in some slices if they are not all filling the DAW grid cell length but you can control this later with the Amp env parameters if you need to, or fine tune the slices in the OT editor.
Discuss and tell me where I got it wrong in order to help me and others