New technologies, Clever Software everything enhancing our workflow

[William_WiLD]

New technologies, Clever Software - everything enhancing our workflow

What's yours guys ?

For people who like to work with sample there's two gems !

I already talked aboutAccusonus REGROOVER PRO

it’s a nice app to extract (depending complexity of the material) exactly what you want to extract or close to… with a little bit of practice you can get something and sometimes you discover layers extracted in a way you haven’t predicted and it gives inspiration.

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More recently there’s attempt to make progress on the “workflow” and finding the right drum sample. Of course, if you have a hardware drum machine there’s chance you don’t need it… But sometimes cycling through in the context of a beat different candidate can help to find the tone you’re after and even more some “characteristics”. You’re Free then to rebuild it in those way (timbre & characteristic)

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There’s few software who fight to be the right tool on the market. I try several and the best for me (it’s also the most expensive) is XO from XLN Audio. And it’s expensive because it’s not only a sample finder. As you can see on the screenshot it’s a full beat station :

But what's interested in **XO**

First it’s for me the best in detecting Tone and Characteristics of a drum sound, for example the red constellation is the kick heroes. on the bottom you have the more sub kicks from distorted to pure subs, more on the right let’s say more acoustic kicks, more on the left more attack, compressed kicks… it’s also grouped in main frequencies.

But when you select a candidate you also have a similarity bar and on it you can select other candidates with the same similarities to hear if it’s a better one to suit your needs.

and That’s the same for all the other drums.
You have a filter you adjust you search by frequencies, by types etc… you can set-up your sample HD and import your own sample libraries.

You can make a beat on the beat programming section, you have groove and shuffle, swap drums and hearing the sequence in the same time. And very powerful editing and exporting features. (in fact there’s a lot more features to make your beat alive and finding variations based on similarities… but hey discover yourself… there’s way more than that in XO)

There’s a 10 days demo. I think you should try that one. It is actually working as expected and maybe better than what I thought it will. it’s a winner to me in this category of software. (it comes also with a midi groove pattern libraries and a bit less than 9000 drums in the factory sample library)

[Anfim]

Yeah I started using XO recently and really love it. Suddenly made my huge sample library accessible. Just wish it had more keyboard shortcuts for stuff like loading samples into its slots.

[William_WiLD]

Yes a resizable GUI would be great two (zoom on the map is ok…) would be good to have both

[William_WiLD]

accusonus Rhythmiq

Hello, a new thing is there from the Regroover Team, Accusonus.
It’s a sort of glitch - Beat Repeat based on their AI with an included simplify version of Regroover to split something in 3 layers. You can also import 3 different Loops if you want.

I didn’t find a satisfying way to use it for now. You can mess and records and find variations with the tools it offer. I will try to use it with different materials than Beats/Drums and see if I get interesting results.

It’s a bit straight on the grid, a shuffle/groove capability would make Rhythmiq less glitchy and probably more interesting to me because I never ever liked those glitchy multi effects (like sugar bytes Effectrix - Turnado… , iZotope Stutter)

Accusonus Rhythmiq is in that’s area but don’t forget Split Stems which is cool. Reverse is very musical in its way and Silence is interesting.

Accusonus Rhythmiq can be a very interesting first mangle effect in a chain where your goal is to get a crazy random but functional rhythmical texture - for now that’s how I see it and how I will probably use it.

Also, that’s the first version, no doubt they will put more effort and propose more power in next version - please add shuffle/groove to get out of the grid. Make it less straight techno, glitch electronic. It’s an interesting VST.

[dcsux]

Like the look of xo for managing samples for the RYTM, but don’t need the sequencer etc.
It is mighty expensive.

Has anyone used Atlas by Algonaut?

Atlas

Looks like it does pretty much exactly what xo does (and was doing so before…) but without sequencer etc.
Keen to know how they compare in usefor sample management.
When I get a sec I’ll download both free trials.

[Anfim]

I’ve been using XO since it was mentioned on here a few months ago, really like it a lot, the filtering is genius and the sequencer is good for setting up sample chains. Drawbacks are only 8 slots and no hotkeys for loading samples to slots, so there’s a bit of tedious mousing around. But it really opened up my messy sample folder.

Had a look at Atlas but it seemed like the UI was considerably more clunky, with fewer options for rapidly switching out full sets of samples.

[William_WiLD]

Atlas (to me) is not replying to the expectation. XO will give you a map of all your drums, it will found it for you… and when you want XO to gives other candidates it will find based on similarities and it will work…

Trust me, i try both… atlas first and XO is more powerfull… nothing to compare. XO will enhance your workflow for real plus it might surprise you in terms of finding ai choosen kit will inspire you… probably for years if you know how to prepare things for it.

It’s for me the best investment for years with regroover pro.

[ammanuel]

is it most useful for drum sampling only?

[William_WiLD]

Hello @ammanuel
Is it useful on short sample. If you, like me focus on drums generally + short one-shots, well organized it will reveal all the power. I hope they will add more patterns at it serve the purpose well.

I will write a bit more on how i use it for those here interested.

Firstly, you may have heard in this last decade the use of Random Max4Live devices, Harnessed Chaos, Chance parameter, Trig Conditions. It’s relatively new, not on how you can make things random because you can play random on a keyboard and I already seen artists or tutorial explaining how cool it can be when you’re at the white page to write.

Then, A fact for me and my taste is you should use it a certain way so it’s serve a purpose instead of forces you to borrow a musical direction that is unwanted, no consented, or from your own creativity.

XO is a tool and to me the magic is on the subject of Dynamic and Colors. You prepare a bit some folders from your sample collection and get every one-shots, hits, notes, noises, stabs, chords, … fx etc… (short sounds) you verify there’s no long hits, notes, multi-sample - (that’s better in a sampler to use)

You can add another step for the XO Filter if you wish, like music genre (Techno, Jungle, House etc…) So you can in XO check/uncheck the results regarding what you’re after.

You start a project and find something interesting musically, or a groove, or a soundscapes… You start XO, you find a pattern matching you starting materials. And then you use XO to find a cool dynamics and a great color. You can adjust and target even better with find similarities. When you have something sounding nice and inspiring. You export everything and work as usual. The point is started with a more original/better/interesting Drumkit (included short tonal or noise sounds…)

I don’t know why but it’s unleash/unlock something for me. It’s like someone gives me a drum kit to remix and I really like the parts ! and I can’t wait to start.

So to me it’s a fuck*** good investment

[ammanuel]

fantastic…thanks for sharing the process.

[William_WiLD]

You know you welcome to me my friend !
it will maybe serves more people now. But I took the time especially for ya
Cheers @ammanuel

it’s like taking the time (painfully) to select your favorites, making lots of drum racks and scanning through … except the Ai, here will save you effort and time. And it will spice the things even better

Check the Youtube Tutorials from XLN Audio

[ammanuel]

very kind of you and appreciate you attention my friend @ [William_WiLD] :)(/u/William_WiLD)…planning on setup a hybrid system and using Live …I dont have M4Live but this is sounding interesting…

[William_WiLD]

The magic is in the Sample combiner and Beat combiner drop down menu when you know how to use XO Have a nice day @ammanuel

Master coloring distortion can be very tasty as well

[ammanuel]

I will check out the demo and look at those options…another fun day

A good day to you too my friend …good health and spirit.

[William_WiLD]

OK I now there’s a web conspiracy on Best VST series (I’m kidding) and each time you’ll get Omnisphere, Diva, Serum…

As it will be soon the Black Friday period I will advise anyone to check if Kilohearts make something cool on its Toolbox ULTIMATE (499€)

Why ?
Because to me it’s not Serum is killed (that’s not what I’m intend too with that post…) it’s just when you have the Ultimate bundle you will get a lot ! without speaking about every effects as VST you will get 2 amazing things called “PHASE plant” it’s a modular VST and it’s probably the most powerful VST Synth I have ever seen. Of course it will be intense on your CPU. But it’s a sound designer ITB Dream, really.

As source you can get Analog, Wavetable, Sampler and Noise. There’s no limits and routing is drag and drop. Modulations is click and set. And you can put every effects from Kilohearts. The sampler is very powerful so you can combine and layer waveform, wavetable and sample as you want. Routing is probably the most powerful it’s a bit like Avenger but with effects on steroids

And “SNAP heat” kind of Rack with innovative things like Pitch tracking and that’s so nice - you can build your own SurfEQ with it, it’s incredible.

So if Black Friday is 50% OFF spend it on that Ultimate bundle from Kilohearts it’s kind of space at the beginning because of the design and UX but trust me it’s easy and way powerful ! I’m sure you will get the most of it in few days and enjoy sound design with every little gems they made

[jb]

what an absolute dream to use with ableton and a launchpad. i’ve been saying they should implement this exact concept in a VST forever, I tried making a cloud from my samples when I found the google infinite drum machine but I couldn’t get it to work so i’m hyped this exists. seems like the only logical way to organise thousands and thousands of one shots plus the sequencer pushes it over the edge

[Zacrous12]

Generally, I think speediness of workflow is important to capture the bits of creative ideas that come out of nowhere. Realizing a beat in 10 minutes has always been more real than making one and working on it for hours, though both methods are productive and worthwhile

[William_WiLD]

XO - 1.1 update (November 19th, 2019)

XO is 1.1 comes with a lot of new cool features see bellow

Originally XO is at 179.95 (yeah it’s pain a bit) Don’t miss it for Black Friday at -50%
At that price it’s a very good deal ! € 98.97

XO 1.1 What's New :

• Playlists
  The preset browser has been entirely redesigned to use what we call Playlists. You can group presets into playlists, mark presets as favorites, drag/drop presets to add them to playlists and favorites, etc.
• 100+ new presets They are all nicely collected in the “New in XO 1.1” playlist. Go check them out!
• Additional file type support In addition to .wav and .aif support, XO can now read samples in the formats .mp3, .flac, .wma and .ogg.
• Stem Export
  The export panel now allows exporting stems for each slot, one by one or all at once. Perfect if you want to mix your beat your daw or if you only want the hi-hat groove etc.
• Live file system monitor
  The system we use for monitoring the file system for new samples have been much improved, and now immediately tell you if you’ve added or removed samples and you need a fresh rescan. The performance of adding samples is also improved.

[William_WiLD]

With XO better to use an SSD for drums indexing.
kind of obvious - but for those who found this process taking quite some time an SSD should really reduce it.

[djadonis206]

Looks like Algonaut Atlas 2 is out. I’m playing with the trail version and it’s really fun. Crazy.

https://algonaut.audio/whats-new-in-atlas-2-0/