Recording length?

So now my setup is:

ar- beats
af - arps, fxs and smiliar things
roland jx3p - pads, strings, chords

And i’m 100% satisfied with this combination, dont think i would need anything more of equipement for making music for my needs, but would like to change my sampler. Now i’m using ableton for recording and sampling my jx3p… I’m recording audio clips lenght od 8 bar sometimes even 16bar.

Is digitakt capable of recording samples that long? Im considering buying it just for sampling my jx3p, and replace computer in working environment.

Thank you for your answers and opinnions and sorry for my bed english.

hei, maximum sampling time in Digitakt is 33 sec. Measuring in bars is depending on the track tempo. I hope it helps. Cool name btw :wink:

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33 secs is for recording only - can transfer longer samples from a computer apparently

I came here to ask something related actually as I have a bunch of old tracks which are stemmed to 8 separate files for doing live dub mixes via ableton/apc40.

I was wondering if anyone might have any tips on breaking these down to Digitakt patterns for live purposes. I guess it’s a matter of breaking it down into suitable size loops and maybe reconstructing the beats from single hits.

(once Overbridge arrives am intending this to be my live set up “Digitakt to 8 channels in ableton to APC40 faders and fx sends”)

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Thx for replying guys.

So, 33 sec of sampling for one project or?
So i can sample lets say 10 secs of strings and 23 sec of pads? And then i filled the memory completely for that project or whole memory of device?

@t3h name yes :smiley:

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i think its 33 seconds at a time. So in theory you could record a 33 second clip, save it and then sample ram is open again to record another 33 seconds. Of course you can only load 64 mb of samples in a project so a bunch of 33 second stems may fill the project memory up quickly.

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Yep it’s 33 seconds at a time. You can sample and use as many 33 second clips as the 64mb RAM allows :slight_smile:

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I haven’t been able to find this in the manual. Is there a way to move a sample in the project/+drive into the sample editor of the DT?

you mean like the live sampling editor? I don’t think so, that’s why a lot of people are requesting that zoom on the source page feature, cause things are easier to cut in the live record mode. i guess, you could always use the internal resample feature but i personally haven’t gotten the resample to sound very good yet so i havent tried. it always pretty noisy for me.

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Octatrack would be perfect, I don’t think the digitakt is great for long samples like that, my partner has one and I’ve been using it a bit, I wouldn’t want to work with material over a bar or two on it, however on my octatrack I routinely capture long passages

manual also states that the 33 seconds is available even if the 64mb of project memory is full. which i find quite cool. It seems the digitakt storage is quite compartmentalized (examples: factory sample take up no space on the drive, sample memory is always available even if project memory is not).

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When I had the Digitakt, I recorded sequences of 8 to 16 bars straight from my Sub37 and Reface CS into the Digitakt. Worked just fine. Just watch the 33sec limit per session and you’ll be fine.

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Like others have pointed out - 33 sec for one sample. Then save, and then 33 sec for the next one. Boom, the next one, the next one etc. Straightforward and dead simple. After every save you will be offered to add it to the track and you should agree because it autoloads the saved sample to the project and it will be waiting for you in project RAM. You can pile up quite many before the RAM is full but if it gets near that, Digitakt will start to act funny. Wont let you save the new recordings (but it will still record to the buffer).

One more thing to keep in mind - Digitakt can autostart the recording but only using audio signal, not MIDI command. It really is more suitable for short clips and then recreating the long movements inside the machine.

I feel like someone should point out that the sample length can’t be automatically quantized to bar lengths. The sampler has an audio level threshold trigger, or can be manually started, and needs to be manually stopped. This may matter or not depending on one’s usage, but something to consider…

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exactly. Recording does not accept MIDI start and stop signals. Lack of transport control is the only major weakness of the recording process of Digitakt…

OK.
Do we now how many 33 sec clips can fit in 64 mb RAM ?

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It really is more suitable for short clips and then recreating the long movements inside the machine.

Yup, was thinking about this too.

So 64 MB ram is per project or memory of whole device?

Per project

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Assuming that the Digitakt samples at 48khz, 24 bit, you get 7 minutes, 46 seconds per 64 mb (project).

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It’s 64MB per project and 1GB per device. The samples are mono so you really have to work hard to fill this 64MB space.
I would guess that most of the Digitakt users have never even seen that. You would need literally hundreds of samples to fill the RAM as most of the samples will be small snippets anyway. This is one of the nice features of Digitakt - it is a flexible sound design device with a small learning curve. It encourages you to think small and teaches you to get the most from the sound you have. Here is one example what you can do with only one single (!) noise sample: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/made-this-song-with-digitakt-using-no-external-samples