i think i generally understand. however, is there any example/tutorial showing a technique that is unavailable in the context of slice/sample chain? [/quote]
It’s not so much a different technique, – it’s more a different result.
For example, if you have a 128 second sample and you slice it by 64, each sample is 2 seconds long. If you have a 32 second sample, each slice is 0.5 seconds long. Looping a 2 second slice sounds way different than looping a 0.5 second slice.
The other thing is that sample start and length are limited to 128 values, so the longer the sample, the less control you have over the precise start/end/loop points.
You can get some amazing textures by setting start to 0, length to 4, loop on and then modulating either (both) the start and length via LFOs. You can manually play with that technique - with loop ON and a single trigger (and envelope hold set to INF), slowly sweep the length knob between 1 and about 7 and the start up and down through the sample.
You get much different results with shorter samples.
