Clickup Machines

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

does anyone remember any previous discussion threads on here or E-U about pickup machine clicking (yeah, I do know about Fin and Fout! and i’ve tried internal and external searches)

i’m sure i wouldn’t be the first to comment as it’s pretty (to me, so far, unusably) clicky !

in all the years of using looping gear i’ve never once noticed any being this bad for that (particularly on drone/pad layering)

i’d love it to be something i’ve set up wrong, but i can’t think of anything except varying the Fin/Fout and they don’t do it

when the material is staccato or abrupt it’s naturally less obvious, but when it’s quiet filtered droney stuff it’s distracting at best and a bit disappointing tbh

i’m wondering if these other devices employ crossfades that fractionally extend beyond the defined length of the loop or whether it’s just not been fine tuned enough here assuming i’m not missing something ?

i’d been saving getting into pickup machines as a treat until i got the rest sorted grrr !

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#2

I don’t use pickup machines a whole lot but according to the manual, the fade out when recording to pickup machines happens after the loop start.

I have found that using long fade times is good for avoiding clicks on pad/drone type sounds but I have another problem; sometimes I get a weird digital noise in the loop that seems to last for the fade out duration. Then when I overwrite with the exact same settings, it doesn’t happen. This unreliability is very sad because the pickup machine would be cool otherwise. (Actually if you have shorter fade out times, your “click” might be a very short example of the same noise I am getting)

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#3

I wasn’t planning on making much of it, but the PIPO mode is unusable because of the transitory glitch noise it makes, it doesn’t sound like it’s the natural result of the reversal process and certainly not like it’s been mitigated in any way to make it less jarring !

#4

hey - typed at same time there: i tried extending the fade, but then the fade itself became noticeable, but perhaps i’m hearing some artefact too and i should try stretching the fade further - i think i need to see a recording of the process to gauge what is going on - i’ll do some capturing - but i get no such issues with any other audio looping technique - even when i record nothing it’s clicky (although subtle), usually in the right channel !

glad to know it’s not just me being fussy, it’s a shame and seems like a thing that could be addressed if there was enough evidence that it’s affecting certain material !

#5

i haven’t specifically tried pickup machines with seamless loops without effects, percussion or other loops on top, so i don’t know if it’s possible, but i kinda recall making some or at least not jumping out at me…i have gotten the digital noise resampling though.

it does sound like a bug that recording nothing is clicky…a lot of times i prep machines with a blank file or record silence, i don’t remember clicks.

but some ideas…

try different gain staging. like if your input is really loud try turning the volume up after and vice versa.

are you sampling from the inputs or resampling? if from the inputs maybe there is some dc offset in your signal?

do you still get clicks with regular sampling and loading it into a flex machine?

what happens if you load a loop that you know works elsewhere and overdub on top of it?

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#6

related: anybody know what the master/slave deal is regarding a Pickup machine that has both marks on it simultaneously - so unlike in the manual my Master has Both marks on it simultaneously - seems clearer, but is there a significance to this !?

I have also had slave pickup machines re-dictate the tempo, i thought that was against the grain ! I’d been messin’ with Len, think i’d tried off ! Even though they were off, there was still some ‘master’ scheme that dictated the lengths, so interesting independent lengths could not be dialled in (polyrhythm stylee)

for all my criticisms above - i’ve found it a useful method

manual >>

i get this >>>


#7

i think that i’d been trying something that’d be arguably simplest, but in retrospect pushing a pure unmodulated tone through it actually reveals the issue more readily - it’s purely a function of the manner with which the fading is handled, with certain content and to be fair even doing neat topping and tailing in an audio editor you will get clicking or more probably jarring interruptions, when you do something nice 'n busy or jangly it’s really not an issue - but my experience with other hardware has been far more satisfying with drone/pad material - i’m not giving up hope it can be improved but i am not sure it is trivial
i had been sampling from the A4 and all the levels were as good as you can get
like all the nuances of the elektron gear, the good soon outweighs the ‘apparent’ bad :slight_smile:

#8

I really hope the chaps can give the PickUp machines some refurbishing.
IMO a lot of somewhat wasted potential - especially with non-sequenced instruments. I’d love to use them more but stopped digging further and even considered purchasing a cheap looper…
shouldn’t be needed for a performance sampler me thinks

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#9

Strange, I’ve hardly noticed clicking when looping my viola using the pickup machines, to try to make drones:

The FIN and FOUT settings were just the minimal ones (0.063 or something like that) recommended in the pickup machine tutorial.

I was recording by manually pressing buttons, rather than using a foot controller, so any abruptness was probably the Octatrack trying to trim silence between me pressing a button and starting to play the viola.

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#10

i didn’t get clicking either but some very odd glitches (almost like a very short drop out) just by playing the recorded loop and having it armed… prolly 1 out of 50 plays or so. never managed to reproduce though

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#11

wow- that was compelling listening, hauntingly beautiful before you started going more into the machine tricks, very filmic ! if you were not playing at either the start or end of an initial loop it’s not surprising you don’t get the characteristic clicks !

the clicking i get is very definitely whilst audio is flowing at both start and end of the initial pass, the OT doesn’t look for zero crossings, it just starts capturing and stops when you tell it

JSZ pointed out that both the fades happens at the start (effectively) of the recording - they happen in the same space, so depending on the nature of the sound and frequency and phase you might get lucky with the fades

it makes me wish the OT had a toggleable mode whereby the Recording/overdubbing/playing/wiping icons could be magnified to half screen size for hands free stuff !

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#12

Thanks for the kind comment, avantronica!

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#13

i meant it too, it’s impossible to skip through stuff like that, it was arresting in the way that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQcE4_7-X78 stuff is, made me feel a bit like this does although the mood of your piece was lighter (the cello is a bit buried in that track of theirs) - i’d do loops with guitar in that melancholic style but you don’t get the richness of timbre or expressivity that you do from a cello, keep at it !

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#14

I hadn’t had too many issues with pick up clicks until the last couple days when I now can’t seem to record a single loop without an awful pop-- this, even when no sound is being played. Anyone had any luck with getting these working smoothly? I’m working mostly in layering ambient pads and textures so i know the territory is ripe for clicks but my tried approach of bringing sounds in slowly from silence is moot when even silence causes the problem :head_bandage:

#15

what source do you record from?
I had this trouble of clicking even with 0.63 in and out when I tried to record from ableton.
I never got it to be in sync, too much latency…
No proper loops…
I ended up kicking ableton and to keep the OT and other hardware…
Since then I do get audio just the way I want it…
And yes, I tried latency compensation… a lot…

#16

For synth pad loops type you need to apply a kind of crossfade with fade in and fade out, in Overdub mode. Doesn’t work with Ot in slave.
I could layer without clics several loops.
You can try to increase fades, but they are exponential, not very smooth. You have to be careful with the level differences between the beginning and the end of the loop. You can start to play in the middle of a loop if you start from silence.

#17

I’m pretty sure there’s no cross fading or ‘kind of’ cross fading :wink: … just fading

there are some thoughts in this thread which may help with the underlying reasons for the clicking

Click-Free Loop Fin Fout Setting is Part-Based
#18

I’m pretty sure that if you overlap a fade in with a fade out you have a kind of crossfade. :wink:

#19

I’m extremely sure you won’t be able to demonstrate that the :elot: does crossfades on its captured loops in connection with Fin Fout

Here’s a screen grab from an edit of a captured loop with a pre-existing Fin & Fout - it is re-sampled in the OctaTrack and gets a new Fout of the same value (file start is not shown here) - you can see that the looped file is not applying crossfades - as Fin and Fout of a captured loop don’t overlap

crossfades.png1802×700 43.1 KB

Seamless Live Looping - Ambient
Fade out selection bug(?) in os 1.25h
#20

I had the same issue when using the pick up machines. I always used a boss DD-7 for drones and sometimes encountered subtle clicks, but for the most part it was easy to mask. But on the OT no matter how many times I tried I’d get the clicking and it sticks out. Reading thru the thread it doesn’t look like this has been fixed, but a crossfade would have been huge.