About to convert/manage all my samples (big undertaking)...pitfalls to avoid?

Elektron Gear Digitakt
1

Hi all,

This is a well worn topic I’m sure, but long story short I have a rather large collection of samples that I’m getting ready to move to my Digitakt. Obviously they won’t all fit at once, but I’d like to at least have them locked and loaded. The three main categories are typical: one hits, drum breaks, and melodic loops. Before I start on hours worth of work however I’d like to make sure I’m understanding things correctly…

Bars: I will be cutting up my loops in Ableton. I’m assuming it’s of course best practice to have everything squished in to an even amount of bars (regardless of the BPM). I’ve typically been working everything in to either 4, 8, or 12 bar loops. Anything to keep in mind here?

Time limit: Time limit on the Digitakt is 30 seconds, if I’ve read correctly, so I’m keeping everything 30 seconds or below.

Stereo: A lot of my breaks and melodic loops are stereo. Should I simply pan them all the way to one side in Ableton? Convert to mono in Ableton? Let Digitakt figure it out? There’s also a few that I’m precious about and will want to keep in stereo. For those I’m thinking I’ll dump two samples in to the Digitakt, one of the right channel and one of the left to be played back in tandem.

Again, this is gonna take me a big chunk of time, so I just want to make sure I’m understanding everything correctly! I probably won’t be using “sounds” at first, for whatever that’s worth. I’ll just have a folder for each category, and if I’m lucky the occasional BPM or Key in the file names. Input very much appreciated : )

2

Sample time limit is 33 seconds. Much longer samples can be transferred to the digitakt with the transfer app.

Oh and c3 is base note if your doing one shots of synths and stuff for chromatic mode

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This all sounds pretty solid. I wouldn’t worry about flipping the samples to mono too much, the DT actually does a pretty good job of this.

As for your stereo samples it would be better for you to record each side in separately because if I’m not mistaken the DT only captures left-side info so if you load a right channel sample there could be some unwanted side effects although this probably isn’t likely; more of a precaution and I could be completely wrong about this.

I also believe the 30s limit is only for recording samples, I believe you can load longer samples into the DT through the transfer app but obviously this will take more space on the +drive and could limit your samples per project with the DT only having 64mb or ram.

Otherwise you’ve got a solid plan, homie! Much luck :+1:

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Thanks, guys!