What’s your tool of choice for working with samples before you put them in your Analog Rytm?
I’ve grown fond of Caustic Soda’s simple but powerful editor for the Volca Sample and since it’s so easy, and has some great fx in it, I’m sticking with it.
Every other option I’ve checked just overwhelms me with buttons and switches and levers and menus when I look at them. All these Kontakts and Abletons and Steinbergs just laugh at me, right in my face.
I’m sure they’re awesome, but is there something out there more trimmed in features but focused in quality?
I don’t use any. If you look around the forum you will see that people had problems after they normalized and increased the amplitude of their samples.
Basically the signal path (as shown on page 6 of the manual) is entirely analog which means it’s affected by filters and amps. This might introduce distortion, which is going to be there anyway due to the above mentioned signal path.
So far all I have been doing is recording simple audio shots (from Logic and Pro Tools) just to give a bit of variety. And bouncing or converting to the 48kHz Mono format which works better for AR. I don’t add any post processing and effects, no compression, no cleaning no EQ as AR has plenty of gain stages and and overdrive that can damage ears and speakers. Normally I would trim the audio file to zero amplitude but I don’t bother because the start points are adjustable as well as amplitude and envelopes of the sample.
There are some nice single cycle wave stacks in the downloads section that can help get some analog bass lines out of AR.
The sample tool in Renoise. Renoise looks a bit “nerdy” but my impression is that it sounds great! …and the sample editor is really easy to use.
I bought Renoise after watching a video about this sample tool, where someone showed how easy transient-based slicing and saving of slices to different files is in this tool, without too much interest in the Renoise sequencer. However, I found out later that this sequencer is quite useful for the creation of sample chains.
For batch processing, I use a small tool called “Wavosaur”, don’t know if it’s good but at least quick and easy.
Wow… Triumph looks great, I’ve always lamented the good, but only just state of audio editors for Mac, this looks like the answer & really not badly priced at all - cheers for the link [/quote]
been using Wave Editor and Sample Manager (batch macros) by audio file engineering for 8/9 years - solid enough, but they don’t generally upgrade. they just kinda move on which is grating tbh, sure it’s a business but others seem to do it in a more customer friendly way - too many bolt ons and feature drops
Hmm, I must have missed something. If anyone would enlighten me on this: What’s the point in all this slicing and normalization and post editing? I honestly thought that since the samples pass through so much analog circuitry the less I touch them - the better. Was I wrong?
converting to mono
downsampling
bit reduction
trimming
gain
editing/fading
enhancing
adding grit
etc etc
lots of reasons
the conversion in AR may or may not be top drawer !
Well these two I get done in a DAW since I have a session set up in 48 and then I bounce to mono, gain I figured there is so many gain stages in AR including overdrive I didn’t even bother to normalize and as far as effects I guess I didn’t find any that I wanted attached to a sample.
Ok so basically the reasons are creative, I was just wondering f there was some other reason that would prove using sampler software over a DAW. Thanks.
Well these two I get done in a DAW since I have a session set up in 48 and then I bounce to mono, gain I figured there is so many gain stages in AR including overdrive I didn’t even bother to normalize and as far as effects I guess I didn’t find any that I wanted attached to a sample.
Ok so basically the reasons are creative, I was just wondering f there was some other reason that would prove using sampler software over a DAW. Thanks.[/quote]
yeah, sure use a daw - editors are just a little more focussed and streamlined for that job
often editing at fine resolution is not too easy in DAWs, may be better now
whatever works - Peak on Mac (old days) was great for crossfading loops
lots of people do it in protools
audacity is free and probably very capable for OP
In my case, it’s just because I want to do things with the samples that the instrument can’t do before I use them.
Right now, I’m working on a couple of songs that all have an old vintage record sound to them, some filtering and noise as layers, as if they’re all part of an old lost-and-found Django Reinhardt record. The way I hear it in my head, I can do in a software tool, then throw it into the Rytm and make some music. The beauty of it is that when it goes into the Rytm, something happens that just blends it all together into a wonderful soft and smooth mix.
Thanks for the tips, guys! I’ll be looking into all of these.
I use Ableton Live. Have been using it for sample editing since v5. I had been using DSP Quattro for years before, but the more I used Live for production, the easier it became to use it for just about everything.
I’m using Audacity for sample editing, and SOX & SampleManager for batch processing. I’d use only SOX for batch processing if I’d get around to all the command-line-fu required (yeah I know its sad, I’m starting to forget how to work the terminal )
Steinberg Wavelab Elements 8 for editing and sampling.
Adobe Audition CC for batch processing.
Depending on the sample I do different things but for percussive and instrument samples (like a bass or a piano chord) I usually:
Normalize to about -1db, if needed.
Trim the start of the sample so I don’t have any dead space in the beginning.
Create a short (less then a millisecond) linear fade in of so the sample starts at 0 level.
Create a fade out at the end to make the sample end at 0 level. Totally dependent on the sample and what I’m going to use it for but many times there’s a tail in percussive and instrument samples that can be trimmed quite hard without loosing the overall feel of the sample. (Sample size does matter, especially since the sample transfer is quite slow…)
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