What is Your Favorite Sample Slicer ...and why

[Sascha Franck]

Cool! Maybe I just didn't look deep enough. I'll go try 'file/save-as' tonight :]

There's a dedicated export menu.

[stale bread]

ahh good to see some replies, I'm so curious about dicer, I haven't tried the demo but something about the interface beckons me. I've got beatcreator, recycle, and fruity but i need something to ride vst inside ableton Live,,, like sacha suggested microdicer paired with something like Live 4s clip envelopes might be sick as I need it, and then again it seems like live will be updated soon maybe and I know they're not going to leave out the damn slicer this time. that reflex looks interesting too but the price hurts my eyes

[smart]

For a standalone app, Zero-X BeatCreator or BeatQuantizer. It's extremely easy to work with, has really great beat detection, and also includes the zPlane Elastique time stretching engine for further working with your audio. Zero-X beat slicing combined with the time stretching make it extremely flexible weather you're working with drums, acoustic instruments, or whatever.

it's also been updated with a new gui just a couple days ago and looks great now

It can't be used as a plugin, but it's still extremely usefull - it can for instance export slices into different keys of a soundfont which is very usefull.

As for a plugin slicer - I really dont know because I use the Fruity Slicer and it's flexible enough for me, especially since the 5.0 update of FL.

[spacefox]

I am currently looking at Beat Creator to use alongside with shortcircuit free, but is seems to be a bit of an overkill for my current needs and too costly (I just want to auto-slice and export as rex or save the slice info to the wav file).

Such a simple offline slicer that export to shortcircuit can be loop mangling powerhouse. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find such an app anywhere.

[TeeLangSun]

This happens to be one of my favorite subjects and beatslicing is very much a part of pretty much everything I do. There are a few beatslicers that I like and in 3 categories. Standalone, built-in, and Plugin. BeatCreator is hands down the best beatslicer you can get. The best built-in slicer is the one built into the sampler in Orion. It's an amazing slicer. My favorite plugin slicer is Vsampler 3. Probably a surprise since it's not one of the dedicated plugin slicers like phatmatik pro. Where Vsampler 3 excels and the other fail is in their interfaces. I have to question any piece of software which forces you to do your editing in a tiny window when you probably have a 19 or 20" monitor, all of which can be used. That's what Vsampler allows you to do. You can edit a waveform, auto slice, manually slice and edit the slice markers in a window the full size of your screen. It's lovely. If that weren't enough, it also has better scrolling and zooming abilities than the rest. It has an overall navigation view above the waveform that allows you to jump to any point on the sample. It has zooming with the mousewheel and it zooms in to the position of the cursor. The slicer itself is also awesome. As soon as you make the slice, the loop locks to tempo and can be played, transposed up and down the keyboard, at tempo, within reason of course. With a click, you can send all the slices to separate keys on the keyboard and it offers you a midi file at that point. Drop that midi file on the track, or play it live from your keyboard. In the zone window, you click on a zone, it auditions the slice as well as clicking on the slice in the waveform window can audition the slice. I usually click on the zone to hear it, then from there I can route that zone/slice to one of up to 16 outs on the host mixer. All of this is dead easy and did I mention that I don't have to do this in a tiny window. You can double click the interface and the window jumps out of the Reason-like rack and resizes itself to the last size that I scaled it to. This window can be scaled like any Windows Explorer window. Another beautiful thing about Vsampler is that it doesn't have one of those awful custom browsers which make browsing a total pain like Kontakt, Phatmatik Pro, etc. All the usual things are possible like resizing the browse window etc. Don't sleep on this incredible sampler with incredible slicing built into it.

[birrbits]

I love BeatCreator, in the vst realm i am dying to play with Devine Machine (lil pricy though) but if its anything like Xincarn....its probably worth it.

[xander]

I love BeatCreator, in the vst realm i am dying to play with Devine Machine (lil pricy though) but if its anything like Xincarn....its probably worth it.

Beatcreator is excellent! I would also like to see Devine Machine as a group buy, since it is way up high on my "I gotta have it" list.

[haydxn]

afaik, wrt the MIDI slice limitations, reflex has it's own ways around that. i can't remember how but i don't think the 127 slice limit applies to that plugin.

but personally, my favourite is phatmatik pro, because i got that when it was released and used it for ages. it's slick and does the job and the comb filter and various effects it has built in all sound really cute.

however, i've pretty much stopped using it, and would recommend if someone were after a slicer and didn't already have it that they buy energyXT. it has one built in and as a plugin is a grillion times more versatile than any slicer that exists.

[jura]

Did you heard about EnergyXT?

It has great sampler with great slicer: multi-timbral, beat detection, on every slice you can control envelope, 3 kinds of fitlers with envelopes, coarse and fine tune, glide and route many modulators (LFOs, gate, random generator, Velocity, Pich bend, CC...) to many parameters (pitch, volume, pan, cutoff, res, LFOrate...)

[Ixox]

VSampler 3.5 works fine as a sample slicer....
It's my favorite because it's the only one i have...
It cuts the sample then turn your sample into many cut samples and a midi file (that will produce the rythm of the first sample), that you can import and modify....

It can also import Rex, rx2 and acid wav...

[stale bread]

wow vsampler and ext are starting to look good, I know ext can do alot but is it easy or too much to use just for it's sampler

[jura]

wow vsampler and ext are starting to look good, I know ext can do alot but is it easy or too much to use just for it's sampler

Using eXT isnt so much intuitive like (for example) Ableton but since you spend little time with it you gain very powerful and flexibile weapon. NO, if you going to use eXT just for its sampler, it isnt worth. But eXT is now very good host. Ok, theres no efect or instrument inside like in fruity, but look on price. For money you can save you can buy synth what you like, or some efects. But it isn necesary. I use clasic efects witch are great simple solution and Synth1 witch is fantastic (I didnt heard Nord Lead yet) So, try and youll see.

[pHz]

in my arsenal ...

(standalone) beatcreator ... im another one who thinks this is the best standalone beat manipulator around ...

(VST) pHATmatik pro / shortcircuit ... i like pHatpro for quick auto slicing and pulling MIDI timings out of loops ... and shortcircuit for the more fiddly or unconventional manual slicing stuff

slainte rob

[d(-- _ --)b]

Intakt is my favorite... I just wish it had reverb & chorus on it like Kompakt does...

[wikter]

Brambos Twareg... and a sampler.... Also Shortcircuit... but the more flexible is MatildeTracker within Buzz...