Quick one about LFO. Does the LFO “amp pan” work well at track level? Wondering if it’d be a good alternative to having proper stereo tracks. And if so is it triggered at step level? Thanks
This sounds really nice the demo videos I’ve been checking out and I’m really tempted by this small sequencer with velocity sensitive pads, battery powered, etc.
However, my one experience with Sonicware was the Liven XFM which to be honest was a POS quality-wise. Has Sonicware upped their game?
The Livens are much more light weight feeling and use different plastic than the XT, overall I’d say the XT feels better built as expected, though it does use mini pots and encoders which some people don’t like.
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Speaking of the pots… is pot A jumpy when selecting sample slots?
I noticed it a few times, but in other screens (and in test mode) it doesn’t do it… might be a sowftware interpolation bug.
Yeah seems like it.
Ok. So maybe it’s fixable.
I suspect this is deliberate. If you move the pot fast it jumps through samples. That way if you have 200 samples loaded you can quickly move through the samples. If you move the dial slowly it isn’t jump-y.
Yeah. It is but the but consists in the pot being moved slowly and jumping too much.
I wrote them a long feedback email. So when you twist the knob it shows the slot manager like on the Digitakt.
Just ordered. Scales, arp, glide, side-chain, more than two octave range, polyphony, keyboard layout with velocity, all of this in one portable sampler, affordable, yes please. Hesitant about the screen though.
I was uneasy about the screen with the SmplyTrek, and ultimately it was fine there. I can say with the XT it is even more of a non-issue since everything is scaled up and you aren’t dealing with clips like with SmplTrek.
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That’s what I like to hear!
Any recommendations for an audio batch converter that exports to 24khz 16 bit mono wav on Mac?
Thanks!
The Discord community has recommended Audacity and Reaper. Most DAWs should work.
Thanks!
Tried audacity but can’t figure out how to. Found an online one which is not batch converting but has the options to convert to desired format, called onlineaudioconverter.com
Got my Lofi 12 XT today! my initial thoughts are:
-Form factor and build are great, It’s small enough to hold in my (slightly larger than average) hands and still use (though shift functions aren’t super comfortable). The buttons all feel great and the tall trimmer pots are surprisingly sturdy.
-The drum pads are awesome, no weirdness or double-trigs, velocity sensitivity is good without adjusting the settings.
-When I plugged the stereo outputs into my monitors it sounded amazing. Super-punchy. The headphone output is noisy but not too bad.
-The effects are a mixed bag, some great, some not so much. In particular I was disappointed with the tape and vinyl sim effects. The track compressors (2 options!) are great and super handy. I love the track filters, it would be nice to have a variety of slopes for subtle high-passing etc. Global Delay and reverb are… usable… at shorter settings but not particularly beautiful, hopefully they will add different models (plate, ambient, hall, tape delay etc) in a future firmware update. Global compressor is great, haven’t tried the filter yet though.
-In terms of performance features it’s pretty dull. There are a number of features that are neat (stutter, instant pattern change, global filter) and could be built upon to make a cool performance mode in a future update. The stutter only effects one track at a time, even if enabled on multiple tracks and you need to get the timing right or it cuts off in an ugly way, if they made it effect all tracks with the mode enabled and made it a bit more fool-proof it would be great… Or even make it more like the Roland implementation where it will loop selected steps. Instant pattern change needs to be made into a single keystroke action. If the global filter could be brought to the front panel it could be fun for a performance mode (though that would mean giving up the master compressor).
-The mixtape function is awesome. I think this is what makes it a truly portable sketchpad, no messing around with Zooms or recording into a laptop etc…
All in all it’s a great sketchpad, but also sounds good enough (especially with drums and pad sounds) to use for producing. Definitely a keeper for me. I haven’t tried sampling, putting my own sounds on the SD card, the arpeggiator or the song mode, but I’m looking forward to trying them out tomorrow.
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what’s the deal with the noisy headphone out, is it something they’re planning to address?
It’s noisy like SH101s are noisy, or the audio from your phones headphone jack… not clean but within what is considered acceptable.
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It’s part of the lofi magic.
Who abandoned the lo-fi liven for the XT? The workflow is hard on the liven but i like the form factor…
I actually doubled down and got another Liven from a forum member 
I actually quite like the workflow on the Liven although I’d concede it does take a bit of getting used to. I’d also say that the Liven is probably best used as a ‘fill it with your own sounds” and use it as a (great sounding) synth/drum machine, rather than using it as a regular sampler, which I think the XT (or SmplTrek) is more suited for.
Sidenote
I love samplers, and even early limited ones like Casio SK-1/5/8, and RZ1 are now selling for around the same price as the Liven, but honestly the Liven is much better and more useful today, with a similar but better sound.
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