First off, I don’t have an AR, but really, really, really want one.!
I’d like to make sample packs for the AR, but want to know if I have to specially “prepare” the samples for optimal usage in the AR’s sample engine.
With the MDUW, I always found that I had to push the ROM track volume way up (and sometimes add DIST) to get a decent level, despite my samples being nearly at 0dbFS.
So, do you have to do anything special to your samples or do you find the AR puts out enough volume (or perhaps too much)?
I find the sample playback volume of the AR to be good. No need to boost them or anything like that to be able to keep up with the volume of the analog machines. Regular nice volume samples works just fine out of the box. Converting to 16 bit 48Khz mono is probably the safest way since that is what the sample engine uses and it also, in most cases, keeps the sample size down. (Got to save the precious +Drive space and each project can hold a maximum of 64mb in memory.)
With samples that I really want to give a “deluxe treatment” before loading them into my AR I do the following:
Convert to 16 bit 48Khz mono.
Normalize the volume to 0dbFS. If there’s some crazy transients that ruins the overall volume of the sample I add a compressor (Cytomic “The Glue”) and a limiter (Fabfilter Pro-L) compressor to fix the problem.
Edit start and end of the sample so they start and end at zero crossing. Crazy short fade in and careful fade out.
Listen and compare the original with my new version to hear if I managed to mess something up.
So far I’ve been this anal with a bunch of my favorite samples to get the “most” out of them. The correct word here is probably overkill…
This is exactly what I am doing. Done about 100 samples so far. Although I just render to 44.1 mono 16 bit as they are 44.1 to start with. If the Rytm wants to convert them thats up to it.
Playback volume is fine. Out of all the samples I uploaded, I only normalized a few that were a tad quiet. Of course, I used high quality samples from Wave Alchemy and Goldbaby so they take care of most of the grunt work for us.
GoldBaby samples are compressed and mangled with expensive outboard gear by someone who knows exactly what he is doing.
In my humble experience mixing by trying to adapt all channels to the loudest one is pretty much impossible. You quickly run out of dynamic range and in the Analog Rytm you will run out options. Using overdrive sounds kind of drastic if you ask me unless thats the sound your are after of course.
An alternative is to lower the volume of the GoldBaby samples in the Analog Rytm instead of boosting your own.
I meant that if a goldbaby sample is at a level of say 50 it will be louder than a drumdrop sample at 50. I guess implied in my comment is the question of whether samples are louder/softer based on the one doing the sample. Im assuming there is some way to boost a samples volume before going to the AR but I would imagine that’s inadvisable…
But in any case I still should learn how to mix properly so im sure it’s manageable with some effort.