MD - poor quality of internal sampling?

Elektron Gear Machinedrum
#1

recently tried internally sampling some layered kicks, and found the quality of the resulting sample to be really poor - unusable

it’s been a while since i sampled with the MD, and that was usually external sources, but i dont’ remember the quality degrading so much.

rate is set to max and i’ve experimented with the level/s - anyone else had issues, or got tips?

i’ve tried eliminating feedback and making sure the sample isnt’ triggering while recording, but i’m stumped!

(reason i need to sample the layered kick (3 tracks) so that i can mute/unmute easier in a live situation)

#2

is your sample memory nearly maxed out ? the MD 's ram machine will sample at a quality relative to the remaining memory…

could be something else but check this first…

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#3

ah, of course! i have an almost full samplebank so that’s probably it… will make some space later and give it a try -

many thanks :slight_smile:

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#4

just getting back to this after a long break. the project i’m working on is only using 7% of the samplebank memory, and yet internal sampling is still lacking in quality.

the sample rate is set to max, external input turned down, and have experimented with various internal volume levels too.

it’s quite frustrating - i was assuming that i’d get an exact copy of the sound i’m hearing from the original.

the sound i am resampling is 2 layered kick drums. it’s quite subby - not sure if that might be contributing to the problem?

any ideas of anything else to try, before i resign myself to giving up on resampling layered sounds? generally i don’t mind leaving things on seperate tracks, but i wanted to resample my layered kick so that i can keep it on one track for easy muting, whilst triggering another track, routed to individual output for sidechaining my basslines… :confused:

#5

I’ve never been able to achieve this with the MD, even playing drum samples sound different on the MD vs computer. It adds a liittle bit of lofi grit to the sound.

#6

that’s good to know, even just to rule out dumbness on my part!

i’d expect some 12-bit grit when sampling external sources, but you’d think that internal sampling would be able to make a pretty accurate digital copy.

in this case, i’m losing all the ‘thwack’ and character of my layered kick :frowning:

#7

fwiw, the md does crank out a lot more sub than might meet the ear, depending on your speakers.

if you don’t end up finding a resampling solution, a workaround would be to set up your first (nonsampled) kick to trig the second one’s track, and only sequence the first one. you’d still be able to mute both by muting the sequenced track.

#8

it’s still subby, just losing quite a bit of character and going a bit ‘fuzzy’

cheers for the tip - i’m already trigging the secondary track from the first - the problem is that i also need to send a ghost-kick to one of the external outputs, to drive the sidechain on my bass-synth’s compressor.

i think i found an old tip from shagghie on EU that’s going to help me out - using the LFO of the first track to control the volume for a third track which has the ghost-kick for the compressor. going to try it when i get home…

does that sound like a goer?

#9

haven’t tried that myself, but shagghie’s never steered me wrong :wink: let us know how it goes!

#10

will do! really hoping i can get the desired result, as i’ve got a load of tracks with 2 or 3 layers on the kick that i now want to drive the sidechain with…

#11

Do you have the MD compressor on by chance? If you are compressing the original, resampling it, and then sending the resampled kick back through the compressor again, it would sound different and perhaps fuzzy and whatnot. Especially if fuzzy means “my transient is all weird”.

#12

sadly this didn’t work - seems like track trigs fire the LFO regardless of mutes

#13

it was on, but i tried turning it off before and after sampling, and it didn’t make much difference to the resulting sample.
ditto using external inputs.

however i noticed that adjusting the sample rate isn’t making any difference either, which seems odd. i should be hearing some difference if i reduce the recorder rate to the minimum, right?

i might try some experiements over the weekend with a completely new/empty project and just a few kick samples, check that it’s not this project behaving weirdly.

or i might just put ghost-kicks on a track on every pattern and put up with the ducking when i mute my kick :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#14

The Machinedrum records and plays back samples at 12 bit.This is likely whats causing your problem if the bank is not full!
-Chris

#15

just 2 days ago I was externally samling kick snare claps , base line, and a voice track into the MD UW + …

for whatever reason, when recording the kick, it sounded bad 80% of the time. repeating the recording process a couple of times brought exact high quality to light … no idea what happended …

a guess on the clap and tom samples was: it is too short , so some components in the MD while sampling get things wrong … far fetched idea …

however, the vocal track sounded pretty much exactly the same as the original … weird behaviour, ghost in the machine …

(also, i made sure we had midi send OFF in ableton, just in case MD was receiving some midi cc data from ableton)

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#16

i’ve had similar experiences in the past, but it’s so long ago i’d forgotten! almost as if the MD is miscalculating how much RAM is spare (even though it’s displaying only 75 used, in my case).
but getting the same result no matter how i set the RATE parameter woudl suggest something odd is going on.
i haven’t done any experiments with a completely empty/black project yet - will try tonight. might also try clearing the RAM slots in the about project too, see if that helps at all.

#17

i get this - it’s just that as TranbanT says, sometimes quality is almost perfect, other times it’s baaad, even with lots of spare RAM available.
also, using internal sampling, and the MD architecture is digital, surely non-external samples should just be a copy of the data in the mixbus at that point, rather than some kind of resampling of it?
(i.e. quality should drop right down when internally sampling)

#18

So is the 12bit sampling as good sounding as the classic vintage Akai S900/S950
1:As good as?
2:Almost as good as?

thanks

#19

It’s good.

#20

Have you read the ‘Prepping samples for MD’ thread?