Sample being cut off (cry for help)

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T00:03:15.000Z

Just got an octatrack and couldn’t be more pleased. In just a few days I’ve figured a lot out that I thought would be really difficult from what I had read in forums. HOWEVER I’m adding samples to it for one of my songs. They are 99 bpm and 8 bars long. The octatrack has read them as 120 bpm 8 bars long., so obviously they sound slow when played back at 99bpm. When I edit the sample to 99bpm the length is locked and changes to about 6 bars. The sample is cutting off approx the last 2 bars. Any thoughts on why this is happening? Can you change bpm w/o the length changeing? This is happening to all of the samples (loops) for the song. They are 24bit 44.1 and I have upgraded to latest OS.

Really appreciate the help!

analogback · 2014-05-25T01:32:09.000Z

make sure your playback length is set to max or turned off , amp page gate and release are set to maximum.

this is your problem i think.

if that doesn’t fix it try turning off time stretching altogether

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T02:03:55.000Z

Unfortunately those don’t seem to be the issue. Also I want it time stretched so that if I play the track +/- a few bpm I’d want the loops to follow with. It seems to be the way the octatrack is analyzing the files. Even listening to the wav in the usb drive when octa is mounted to my comp the loops play all the way through correctly but then when loaded into a machine the octa thinks its 8 bars at 120 bpm instead of 8 bars at 99 bpm thus cutting off the last bar and a half. Is there a way to only manually edit the sample info before the octa tries to change the sample OR be able to change the tempo w/o the length being changed?

analogback · 2014-05-25T02:22:02.000Z

ok, highlight the sample in the slot list, press func+bank

so you go into the wave editor and press attributes… yes?

change original tempo to 99,

go to edit, make sure your end point is at the end of the sample

go to file, save sample settings

is that what you did?

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T02:30:45.000Z

I noticed the static machines did analyze them fine. Weird. That’s nice & can survive that way but still need to figure out why the flex isn’t doing it right if anyone knows…

analogback · 2014-05-25T02:38:37.000Z

oh ok… so i take it thats what u are doing then
not sure why its not working for u

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T02:39:36.000Z

Yeah I did this & is where I seem to be getting hung up. If I change the bpm the loop length changes with it so going from 120 to 99 makes the loop length only around 6.5 bars instead of 8. The loop restarts itself before it finishes. It’s really bizarre because if I use the same loop in a static machine it is analyzed properly at 99bpm 8 bars and the whole loop plays… I might experiment with throwing the loop in ableton and stretching it to 120 bpm then adding it to the octa since it seems to like to think every loop is 120/8. Far from an ideal workaround though…

sicijk · 2014-05-25T06:10:24.000Z

How do you trigger that sample?

• manually;

• with a trig;

• with a one-shot trig?

• if manually…it should need more investigations;

• with a trig: remember that if the Scale pattern is 1/1 the number of bars are not more than 4, so if you playback a sample slower than its original tempo (lets say here 120…the OT guessed that, right?) and you play it back at 99 bpm…then the length of the sample, instead of being 4 bars, it sounds like approx 6 bars (longer) just because you know that sample is intended to be 8 bars. So the correct approach is to stamp the original bpm value (99) in the Sample Settings (that you can reach like Subq wrote);

• if one-shot trig was used…more invetstigations needed

the weird thing is that you say that with a Static the problem is not there anymore…

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T07:41:17.000Z

I’m using 1 shot trigs with loop on in a static machine so that it plays the whole loop. Realizing that using a flex for these types of samples doesn’t make sense as they are 4-5 mb anyway. Will stick to short hits and bits instead of loops for my flex slots, although it is still a little baffling why it is behaving this way. I’m just happy to be able to loop 8 bar samples at all because, although my A4 is indispensable, 4 bars in a phrase usually doesn’t cut it for me & with the octa I can just sequence my A4 and minitaur via computer, record into octa, add my rytm and be out the door leaving my A4’ safely in my studio.

I think the octa will revolutionize my live set approach by allowing me to focus more on content flow, transitions, banging in the rytm, and mini brute bleeping, instead of A4 perf knob twiddling, albeit i do love the twiddling… just had to accept I’m not an octopus and will be better off with 2-3 boxes and a sax on the road than with 5 boxes+ really is amazing the realizations you get from the octa in only 2 days of playing. Looking forward to getting deeper into it.

Thank you for all your help and suggestions! And thanks to elektron for making equipment that makes me so very happy, and so very broke…

analogback · 2014-05-25T07:42:53.000Z

yeah it doesn’t really make sense to load these long loops into flex slots, you are right there.

u could upload one of these loops and so others can try to confirm/clarify the problem… maybe its a bug.

btw i am happy to try it out.

or if you don’t want to share it that’s fair enough too

glad its working for you now, maybe there is some sort of limitation when using lengthy samples in flex machines. Iv’e never really tried that, for multi bar loops i just use static machines

works a treat

adrianskye · 2014-05-25T07:55:45.000Z

Yeah it’s perfect this way. Will upload a loop tomorrow in case anyone wanted to try it. I looked to see if there was a size limitation for flex samples but didn’t find anything. Just shut my stuff down & it’s 4am here so…- time for bed… Thanks again.

adrianskye · 2014-05-26T00:18:33.000Z

Here’s 2 of the loops in my song. If an explanation arises i’d be curious to know what is happening but as said before, I’m totally satisfied with static machines for this stuff… especially after watching secretmusicUK’s video tutorials on flex machines last night. Definately want to save that ram for more interesting things. Highly recommended videos! Thanks again.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/l5vh1w8g462hmbt/AAASvyIRUlvIrV99kTr0xuS4a