Otherwise my tried-and-true method to avoid clicks in long looping samples is to trigger it over and over while scrubbing thru the sample with the “start” and “end” points and using your ears.
Just listen for where the click is the most quiet or disappears entirely; it’s in there somewhere. That’s your zero-crossing. Then set the “loop” point where the best-sounding “start” point was, and set the sample start back to 0 (or wherever you want it to start playing).
It can also help, while click-hunting, to detune the sample as low as you can, so the click stands out more.
Sorry for 3 replies in a row but 1 more quick thought…
In cases like this, where you’re scrubbing thru to find a clickless loop point, a shorter sample is often better than a long one.
Because the controls have the same number of divisions no matter the time length of the sample. So the longer a sample is, the more coarse your Start, End, and Loop controls will be (due to more time/data between each point on the knob).
The shorter the sample, the higher the effective resolution of each control dial is, and the easier it’ll be to find a good cross point.
Yep. Definitely a trade off. I just mean that a sample with a really long tail may seem like a good idea at first, but they can actually be harder to work with.
The only way to solve this is using 2 voices. Ableton Live’s samplers all click when mono too. It’s not exactly a given that clicks are gone in DAW world.
Check out how Bitwig solved it with their Sampler’s Digi Mono mode, which alternates 2 voices for a tiny, fast fadeout of the ‘outgoing’ voice but keeps it mono - it’s the best solution I’ve seen in any sampler. Elektron should borrow this!
Here’s a quick vid showing its ‘normal’ True Mono mode (clicks galore) vs the clickless Digi Mono mode. You can see the ‘Playing voices 1/1’ flicker to 2/1 at note-on where the tiny fadeout occurs…
Can you name a single music technology company that releases complex digital hardware that is actually completely finished, bug free and has all the features you want?
Sadly in today’s market, that is not a viable way to run a company. There is just too much value in putting things on the market early and fixing them after release. This is true of all complex software endeavors these days. It sucks, but if you ran an electronics company like they did in the 80s before you could do firmware updates, you would take twice as long (or longer) as all the competition to get to market.
Agreed.
Because of the instant gratification we all need we have created a world where we are beta testers simply because we cant wait. I dont see the fault in the Dev`s side but in us, the consumer.
Also a philosophical question of course. If everybody did it it would be viable
very nice. I have tried so many times to „want“ to switch to Bitwig from Live but i never have the nerve to take the last leap.
I have simply too many years of practice in Live and it does more than i need.
To this click issue, the difference of a daw to the DT2 is that i have many solutions to suppress the click. Be that with a gate, compressor, eq etc . In DT2 i many times will lowpass the track so the click becomes less but it does not behave the same way as ableton. I can´t bend my head around why it is different but it is.
Still love this little bugger though. Such a great machine this Dt2 is
Yeah, this is the aspect of markets and electronics device competition that I find really off-putting. There is so much competitive advantage to releasing complex things as half baked because it is difficult to extract how good their actual functions are compared to the marketing spec sheet.
I don’t have a DTII but I messed around with it on my DT and I can get this to work (for a while but not indefinitely) if you set the wave to “RAMP” instead of “SQUARE.”
But yeah there seems to be a bug in 1.5 onward where the audio cuts out after the first ping-pong. Weird. I’ll report it.
Similar on DT2 … it runs for a while. I’ll carry on experimenting. I’ve tried using velocity mod to swap play mode, but it seems velocity is only transmitted on a real trig, not a trigless trig, so that’s no good as you need the sample to keep looping.
I was just going to say, you can still get the ping-pong tapehead to work in the sequencer (NOT playing live notes) by creating trigless trigs that swap the Play mode from reverse to forward. Basically manually recreating what the LFO should be doing.
Fine for sequenced lines but still not much of a solution if you want to play in the notes or perform live.
So @kryten42 came up with one solution a while back, which you can also accomplish with no DAW by resampling a single back-and-forth pingpong in the box:
Another way that doesn’t involve resampling but uses both LFOs, is to use the second LFO to “catch” the first LFO before it lets the playhead get all the way back to the beginning of the ping-pong, since that point seems to be where the bug occurs. You can do this by modifying the SPD or MULT value with the second LFO. Here are some settings that worked for me:
LFO 1—Moves Playhead:
SPD: 16
MULT: 16
FADE: X
DEST: SAMP PLAY
WAVE: SQUARE
PHASE: 0
MODE: TRIG
DEPTH: MAX
LFO 2—Mods LFO 1:
SPD: Above 8?
MULT: 1
FADE: X
DEST: LFO 1 MULT or SPED
WAVE: SQUARE
PHASE: 127
MODE: HALF
DEPTH: Between .5 and 1?
(The exact depths & speeds & rates depend on the length of the sample its pitch, but start with the above and see where it gets you?)
All this said… I don’t know if all this fanciness with. is LFOs really neccesary.
So, I don’t own a DTII and I don’t know anything about its engine, but I gotta say . . . on my DT I’ve pretty much always been able to get a long droney or ambient sample to loop without any clicks—though finding the right loop points can take time, patience and practice, and sometimes the loop isn’t where you wish it was.
But if I slowly hunt around for the best Start, Len, and Loop points using my ears, it seems like I can always find somewhere with no click, especially at slow speeds. Maybe occasionally there’s a problem sample where I just can’t find a good loop point, but then I use the filter.
Maybe it’s just from the hours I spent hunting for clicks while preparing samples on the ES-1. Like jogging with leg weights.
Interesting lfo trick but for me no trick can replace pipo looping if you want to change sample pitch and length on the fly.
I have to give it a try though…
There’s often going to be the odd bug, yes, but not a raft of them. Are our expectations so low now (for this amount of money) that we defend this?
As to companies, maybe I’ve been lucky - or not an early adopter - but these companies / devices have been good for me:
RME Audio Interfaces; Electra Syntrx MK2 (I think it had one small bug that was fixed in weeks); Empress, Chase Bliss, Montreal Assembly and Drolo pedals; Make Noise 0-coast / Strega / 0-Control…I’m sure there are others if I think about it.
Maybe some people have had issues with the above but the point for me is that it seems more and more companies are putting out kit that is riddled with bugs or unfinished and customers are actually DEFENDING THIS as acceptable and ‘the norm’ (Teenage Engineering, right!)
I don’t necessarily feel that the DTII fits that description but I do think there are features we could reasonably expect and that would be easy to implement, especially for the price - and crucially - that aren’t there because they don’t want to as it would jeapardize their other product lines.
It’s the fact that the DTII is SO good that these missing features stand out that much more imo.
