XLN Audio - XO - Improvement, Pros, Cons

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

XO attempts to automatically organize your one-shot hits by pitch. So things with a low fundamental will get grouped together (kicks), and then it'll attempt to do the same for snares, hats, etc. You can't really do that the same way with loops, where you'll have a low kick, a snare at a different pitch, hats higher up, all in one file. So then the developers would have to come up with some different paradigm for loops. Sort by source tempo maybe?

Sure, it could be done. I would much prefer if XO scanned and automatically sliced loops, turning looped drums into one-shot hits. Maybe take the first kick and first snare and first hat or whatnot from each loop. Then let users edit the start and end points as needed.

[LoveEnigma18]

Got this reply from XO support:

XO Support: Thank you for getting back with more ideas Yes we thought about this and it's a bit more to process, but it's in there among other things for future development for XO.

I just thought about this great feature and sent a request to XLN Audio support. Sorry if this was mentioned before.

I have one great suggestion if it's not already on your list: How about using XO for loops?

Right now, XO mainly scans for one-shots or very short samples only. But we also have almost the same amount of various loops as well. Why not extend the concept to loops too? It will certainly help to find loops that we can simply drag and drop in our DAW, for example. It's difficult to scan through folders.

The XO space can have two tabs: One-shots and Loops.

This way, XO can populate both of these categories from any folders dropped based on the loop length and other criteria you have in your algorithms.

[LoveEnigma18]

XO attempts to automatically organize your one-shot hits by pitch. So things with a low fundamental will get grouped together (kicks), and then it'll attempt to do the same for snares, hats, etc. You can't really do that the same way with loops, where you'll have a low kick, a snare at a different pitch, hats higher up, all in one file. So then the developers would have to come up with some different paradigm for loops. Sort by source tempo maybe?

Sure, it could be done. I would much prefer if XO scanned and automatically sliced loops, turning looped drums into one-shot hits. Maybe take the first kick and first snare and first hat or whatnot from each loop. Then let users edit the start and end points as needed.

That would be icing on cake, but for starters I would be more than happy if it offered to scan and view loops in the XO space to browse and pick any random, nice-sounding loop.

Regarding algorithm for loops, yes, tempo would be required I guess. So, it could be tempo and length. Anything more than let's say 1 or 2 seconds up to some limit of maybe 30 seconds. Just imagining.

Glad that they are already thinking of it.

[Cepheus]

XO is a remarkable tool but there is certainly room for improvements. I let it chew on many different folders with subfolders of samples. It would be nice if one could prioritize the ranking or position of the sample folders. Or put a plus (+) in front of the folder for collapsing it into the subfolders. Exp. Collapse Zero-G and only select the “disco” folders. Next to that, gating of subpopulation in the cloud would enhance the workflow. A big step forward would be the ability to generate variations of the selected sound using the synth engine inside XO. Bit like Photoshop can automatically spawn filter variations of an image or the grow sounds like synplant.

I finally picked up AD2 XL custom in the summer sale and experimented a bit with layering acoustic drums from AD2 with synthetic stuff from XO. Came up with interesting new grooves but also ran into some difficulties. It would be helpful if both plugins can be synced to each other since both plugins have groove/swing settings. So tweak XO, AD2 follows or the other way around. Furthermore, “borrowing elements” from each other would be great. What if one could drag something from XO in the flexi spots of an AD2 kit (hint for AD3…) and use the AD2 engine to further sculpt the sound or link it to a kit piece.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Just picked up the latest update and saw this thread - I'd like to be able to assign and save a named 'drum pool' preset for my selection of drums that could be made up of drums from a number of folders over a number of different drives and have the option to then generate a random kit from within that 'pool' preset.

e.g. (on Windows)

be able to save all these folders...

d:\samples\my_drums\kicks
s:\samples\my_drums\snares
v:\samples_3\other_drums1\hats
v:\samples_56\other_drums2\others\1
v:\samples_56\other_drums2\others\2

...as a pool named "My Main Drum Pool"

and then if I have set a tick box somewhere to use a particular drum pool have dice show against Kick, Snare etc. within the Edit screen next to those drums that would pull random drums back of that type from that pool.

Make those dice buttons that can be MIDI mapped so you could randomise the drums via CCs.

My second big wishlist item is to have the ability to save and load in patterns and kits independent from the monolithic saves we now have. Keep the monolithic saves by all means, but lets us have finer control as well when we want it.

Wishlist item #3 - a song chain mode - not just 4 bars of A and B, but C-Z and separate banks that can be chained how we want and maybe make it CC-able too so say cc 21 with a value of 1 could switch to Bank 1, pattern A, cc 21 with value 28 could be Bank 2, pattern B, value 76 could be Bank 3, pattern X. As it is right now unless you are doing particularly repetitive EDM you can only really use XO to create MIDI and audio to export and use as building blocks or to play an already created MIDI part within the DAW. With a song mode you could build more stuff on the fly and over time we could maybe get some generative and probablistic things to play with in there.

[barza]

LoveEnigma18 and Funkybot's Evil Twin - I have been thinking about XO could handle loops too, and I think it should actually be possible to include both loops and the individual drum hits you can extract from them. Apologies for the long explanation, but I thought it worth writing this down.

Imagine the following. At the top left of the XO UI you have a new tab labelled "Prepare" next to Space and Edit. This page is designed to give you the tools to bring either prepared loops or unprepared audio into XO. Click on the prepare tab, and you have the ability to select an audio file via a browser. The audio file then appears in a window where the audio file can be analysed for tempo and key, and where it can be sliced based on transients or a grid. If the audio is not already a prepared loop you can determine loop points in the editor.

Once you have identified the loop points and slices, the screen gives you a number of options.
1. Copy all or selected slices to a new folder
2. Add the folder to your XO library
3. Extract midi file to play back the slices and reconsitute the audio
4. Add loop to loop library
5. Create preset from loop

Option 1 above allows you to keep the slices separate from the file and use folders to help with database or "space" management. Option 2 simply adds the slices to the database where XO will do its usual analysis/tagging as drum one shots. Option 3 is a help if you wanted to use your sliced audio in a different application.

Options 4 and 5 add something new to XO. Imagine that on the "Space" tab you had a button entitled "loops". Pressing that button would switch from the drum one shot view to a similar view but now displaying loops. Note the analysis of key and tempo of loops has already been done. As a basic prototype you could oragainse loops with tempo on horizontal axis and key on the vertical. Loops with no identifiable key signature could be shown in the middle of the key range in a certain colour. On this version of the space page you would still have eight slots on the left where you could collect loops you want to audition or layer together, and you could have a similarity algorithm as with the one shots. You could also have the ability to shift the key of the loops, or time strecth to a different tempo without changing pitch/key.

Now for the really cool part. From the original loop, you now have the one shots in the drums space, and the loop in the "loops" space. But note my "create preset from loop" option above. This does three things: Creates an 8 slice kit from the original audio, and recreates the original audio loop in a sequence using those 8 slices, and then saves the two things as a user preset.

This would allow you to do two things (a) use the kit of one-shots from the loop to play a new midi pattern (such as one of the other presets), or (b) to use the drum pattern timing extracted from your loop to play a completely different kit. So, for example, you could take "funky drummer" break and play it with a completely different set of drums....

Although there are lots of areas in which XO can be improved, I think adding something like this would make it dominate sampling for a while. We can but dream....

[rod_zero]

I would really like for Xo to suggest kits based of a couple of hits, lets say I select kick and snare and it suggest me open, closed hat and percussion from my library,

[WatchTheGuitar]

I would really like for Xo to suggest kits based of a couple of hits, lets say I select kick and snare and it suggest me open, closed hat and percussion from my library,

Based on what? Previous choices you've made? Sheer randomness?

[Najimad]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

[JiggSaw]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

It's actually worth a lot more than nothing. It just doesn't do some things that "you" want it to. That's life. It absolutely accomplishes a lot of things and you can see that by just reading this thread.

[noiseboyuk]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

Eh? You can play the drums as normal on a keyboard. Default mapping starts at C1 for the kick.

You can also save any pattern. It's cunningly hidden under the Save button.

[JiggSaw]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

Eh? You can play the drums as normal on a keyboard. Default mapping starts at C1 for the kick.

You can also save any pattern. It's cunningly hidden under the Save button.

As far as saving a pattern, I think he meant recording the pattern that he plays live (inside of XO).

[Najimad]

Yes of course recording into xo, that's what I meant. Creating my own drum beats with xo is very limited only by using your mouse it's possible, that's not the way I make music, I want to hit real pads or keys

[Najimad]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

Eh? You can play the drums as normal on a keyboard. Default mapping starts at C1 for the kick.

You can also save any pattern. It's cunningly hidden under the Save button.

Yes of course recording into xo, that's what I meant. Creating my own drum beats with xo is very limited only by using your mouse it's possible, that's not the way I make music, I want to hit real pads or keys and have it saved in xo sequencer as different patterns for snare, kick etc, just the way I played it or how I recorded midi in my daw. You can not do that, I already talked to xln support. So the plugin is worth nothing for me, just a nice organizer for your samples and some extra stuff.

Is it so hard to

music

[Najimad]

As long as you can not record and save a drum pattern in xo by using a midi controller or keyboard or just midi in your daw, this plugin is worth nothing. Now you can only use their presets, delete something or add with pencil, but I want to play my drums on a keyboard, but you can play only like with a drum machine, but can't save patterns. That's a no go

As far as saving a pattern, I think he meant recording the pattern that he plays live (inside of XO).

Live or with midi that was recorded in daw. Some seem to make music by using a mouse for midi only, a very unmusical and strange way imo. And Xln confirmed that this is not working with xo, so it's more or less a sample organizer wirth some extra only, not an instrument in the meaning I consider something to be an instrument, plugin or real. With 2 bars obnly in xo's sequencer, I can not take this plugin seriously anyway, the target seem to be absolute beginners or kids