Project complete backup?

Hi there,
I am searching for à Way to backup an entire project of my RYTM, project samples included (some friend of mine have once been robbed so i m extra vigilant and backup everything).

Could anyone explain me What to do about that?

Tnx :slight_smile:

I’ve only had mine a few days but from what I read in the manual , you can do a dump, including the whole projects.

Whether this includes all samples etc ? I guess so and guess it would take a long time. I assume you can use any midi utility, but Elektron let you use the C6 utility.

It is all there in the manual I seem to remember.

If you haven’t already downloaded C6 from Elektron that’s the first thing you have to do.

Running C6 on your computer you can go into the sysex dump menu on the AR and select to do a dump of “whole project” to C6. This will transfer an entire project to your computer including patterns, kits and what not.

However, the thing you’re not getting over to your computer is the samples you have on your +Drive. So if your project is using anything other then the factory samples you need to keep manual track of the samples you sent to your AR on your computer.

My way of keeping track of the samples I have on the +Drive is that I’ve got a “AR+Drive” folder on my computer where I’ve put everything I transfered to the AR with the same folder and subfolder names.

EDIT : The Elektron Transfer application makes it possible to copy samples from the +Drive to your computer. When I wrote this post it didn’t exist.

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Nice info Lars thanks.

Would of been much better if you could at least of kept the 127 in the project to be backed up.
Can you not write over the factory samples then ?

Ok but is it possible to backup samples too in a way or another?

Nope. If you lost the original on your computer you’re screwed.

So you’re saying that if I use STROM to upload samples to my AR, I need to have the originals somehow accessible from my iPad, in case I ever need to backup the projects where those samples are used? :astonished:

yep!
personally I’m not losing any sleep because of this.
+Drive storage has been reliable for me so far.

I hope that AR will be able to send samples at some point though, for sharing beats…

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Ok, but those two gigabytes won’t be enough forever… Sooner or later, we’ll need to be able to archive older projects from the AR just for disk space cleaning purposes alone…

The suggested solution (ie. “use AR like a USB drive from the computer”) would IMO be the best one to fix this.

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i dont get this either.
The backup is worth nothing if the samples used cant be reloaded with the project. Do I have to manually note them in which slots theyve been. Im still having a hard time knowing where the come from when I use them. Are they in the project or from the drive. I assume in order to re-load the project, those samples must be exactly in the same slot.

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i did some testing and the following happens:

projects are backed up without samples.
when you use a sample in the project, you use a sample slot, into which you load a sample.
if you want to use a sample from your computer, send it via sysex. then you gotta rename it letter by letter. then you gotta transfer it into a sample slot in the project. if later on the sample isnt found or deleted from the drive or renamed, then the project wont play it. if it loads again then via sysex (im talking about the backuped project), it wont say which sample is missing, it just says: off in the sample display. so the only way to do it is to send samples, note somewhere manually in a text document which sample is used by which drum track - and what its manually given name on elektron was. then connect these names to the names on your computer - best is to rename computer samples to short names before sending and then use the same names in analog rytm.
Obviously its meant to be used with samples on the + drive that never get changed! unfortunately, this + drive can’t be backupped, you can not send any sample from the analog rytm back to your computer in os 1.02!
if you want to restore something or transfer it to another machine, the worst is that you need to rename every sample manually on the elektron after transferring, cause samples arrive there as 0,1 ,2 etc.

after doing this, i realized a sample called “1” which i loaded into a project sample slot that i backed up before showed a mark with the sample slot it was used before in after i sent it back to the drive via sysex. …but didnt show up in the sampel slot.
i wish at least i could use some export of the names and slot numbers used in the porject instead of manually having to write down samples used in the project

any concrete suggestions for improvement? no feature listing niceness please, just things that have been tried out and prove to work…

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^ this points out the complexities with the sample / project structure nicely. I’m not aware of any tricks which make this easier…

what I’m hoping will be implemented is full access to the +drive sample library & project sample pool linkage via sysex…

then it would be possible to grab all samples which are linked by a project.
it would be feasible to make a tool which does all of this automatically.

what would be really cool & useful, in addition:

a method to compare samples in the +drive to samples on the computer without first downloading them, e.g. by requesting some sort of hash identifier for the samples.

as well as a “does this sample already exist in the +drive?” method, by sending a hash to the AR.

so you could, before sending a sample, check if it’s already on the machine. if it exists, just link it to the project, otherwise transfer & link… etc… it would also work the other way around, check if you have a sample which is on the +drive already on your computer.

this would potentially save a lot of redundant sample transfer time.

the hashing algorithm could be something like an MD5 checksum over the raw PCM data. but the samples which are on your computer would need to be in the same exact format as they will end up in the AR after converting internally, to yield the same correct checksum…

ok. even if this is done, it can still be complicated if you want to e.g. share a kit/pattern/samples/soundlocks combo.
getting all these things into one file wouldn’t be very hard, but if you want to e.g. transfer one beat, including samples, to another project, or send to another Rytm owner, and even if the tool would figure out nicely which sample / sound slots are unused, and send the samples / sounds to free slots only, sound locks & sample slots can still be defeated if e.g. an LFO is used with sample slot as destination.

things are complicated. :smiley:

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@greenman: Are you getting sample names on your AR that are just numbers? If that’s the case you need to download the latest version of C6 and select “extended SDS” option. This makes the computer sample file names transfer nicely to the AR +Drive.

Regarding the connection between +Drive, sample slots and projects;
Looking at how the Elektron sample packs work it’s not all that painfull to restore an AR given you have the samples on your computer. (If you don’t have the samples on your computer, well that’s another story.)

As long as you have the project backup (a sysex dump) and the samples used within that project on your computer you can restore the project and the samples without having to worry about what samples goes to what sample slot in the project RAM.

Sample packs for the AR sold by Elektron so far has always contained the samples and a project sysex dump file. You load the samples to the +Drive into whatever folder you want and you create a new project and dump the project sysex into that project. All sample slots will at this moment be populated with the correct samples. This should work just the same with a project sysex dump that you have done yourself and a bunch of your own samples.

I suspect that there’s some checksum going on perhaps in combination with the sample file name that makes the current sample packs for the AR work as they do.

Sysex dumps of kits or sounds does not have this behavior, they rather seem to “only” keep the sample slot used for a track and doesn’t care if there’s a sample there or if the sample loaded into ram at a specific position is something totally different then the time you dumped the kit to your computer.

Edit: If it the AR finds samples using file checksum it’s a really good idea to keep track of the original samples.

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yes, right, thank god and Lars Erik, i found the checksum thing. Thx void too.
I havent found time for another try yet though.
I think Im still gonna buy it, Im currently testing it for a video thats being done. I was wondering if I should go for Octatrack or MD UW as Im a sample junkie, but I also bought sds1 from 2001 and were really happy with some beats I made, which I recorded through a Mackie 3208 though.
I like the sound of Analog Rytm, instantly got me a beat I liked. Although Id like to have some optional additional hp filtering at the end of the signal chain of the sounds or/ and before the compressor. I know the compressor can act frequency specific though, at least a little bit…cant have the Mackie at home, I have an analog summer, but those dont have HP Filter. I have a Behringer 1622 with filters, but I wonder if its good enough sound and basswise (haven’t really tried much out yet with this). I guess Ill upload a few samples and keep them on. Never ever will I delete a sample from my elektron folder that Ive ever sent to the Analog Rytm. If it would automatically use the right sample, that would be cool, although Id feel more comfortable if Id know the way samples are assigned. I would have expected that this thing allows to save at least kits with samples, as theyre part of the whole thing. Or -like my old emu - allow to save the whole project as one. I wonder if theyre scared that the samples from the factory bank would be too easy to copy…otherwise it doesnt make much sense that this is not possible.

sorry for joining in with another question … but don´t want to create a new thread.

I try to back up my Rytm to Macbookpro 2011. C6 1.51 sees the Rytm. But as soon i press “receive” in C6 and “send whole project” on the Rytm … C6 is still waiting for any data.

Connecting the Rytm directly to the mac usb port doesn´t help. A4 on the other side works fine with back up. Do I something wrong?

according to the facebook rytm group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/728969320490905/

there have some other people the same problem even under windows.

So maybe time to open a ticket? Or how did you managed the back up currently?

insect did you ever sort this out?

Same thing happening here, first time I’ve tried to make a Rytm backup.

Hey everyone,
didn’t want to start a new thread but having some trouble in this area.

I was realizing I really need to back up a project I’ve been working in so have attempted a few times yesterday. Each time I’m seeing data received in C6, and when I check back in it’s stopped on a large number with no indication of a file being saved anywhere. Sorry if it’s a stupid question: where is it saving the project? What type of file is it saving as?

Also regarding samples: am I to understand the only/best way to back up samples is to also have them stored on your computer and to have a list of which slots they filled? (1-127) Is it also then necessary to note what tracks the samples are on in any given pattern? What about sample locks? Seems a bit tedious.
Thanks!

Regarding C6 backup, if memory serves me correct you have to press Stop! once the Sysex is received. Afterwards i always save as a .syx file

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Thanks! That did it. It seems so simple in hindsight that I would need to press stop.
Regarding sample back up, the patterns do not recall sample slots? Can anyone verify this?