[SOLVED] End of sample gets clipped

[rich_h]

The timeline does not trigger samples. The triggering of samples is what sample playback instruments do.

As I mentioned before (and you discovered on your own) the Tracktion sampler does a bad job of this. I don't know if it's a feature or a bug, but it does indeed stop playing a triggered sample when looping.

Well, then it's a limitation of Tracker. It offers no way to achieve what I want, which should be quite simple, without making a mess of it. What I want is default in several other DAWs, so it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect it. At least the sampler should do the job correctly.

It's doing exactly what it's being told. You are dealing with audio files on a timeline and *not* triggered samples. This is how all DAWs deal with audio tracks. An audio track will always play only what is on a track at the playback point.

As has been pointed out, and you have agreed with, using a sampler will do exactly as you expect, although if you are correct and using the native Tracktion sampler and the sample is indeed choked at the end of the loop (I haven't checked) then that is incorrect behaviour.

[lmv]

It's doing exactly what it's being told. You are dealing with audio files on a timeline and *not* triggered samples. This is how all DAWs deal with audio tracks. An audio track will always play only what is on a track at the playback point.

The notion that "all DAWs" do it that way is fuzzy. That is certainly not the way that MuLab, Caustic, Hydrogen and a few other (though obscure) audio applications work. Granted, they're likely triggering MIDI notes rather than playing audio tracks, but the idea of axing the trailing sound of a sample by default just does not make sense to me.

if you are correct and using the native Tracktion sampler and the sample is indeed choked at the end of the loop (I haven't checked) then that is incorrect behaviour.

Yes, that's what happens unfortunately.

I am now using Carla and a Windows plugin to trigger the notes. Fabla didn't really work, it was altering the sound in some way I don't understand and it was not good. I investigated all the knobs and couldn't figure it out. Anyway, the other plugin is working and sounds good.

My next gripe now is that either with the native sampler or some external plugin, I don't see any reasonable way to apply effects to individual instruments. Tracktion applies effects to an entire track/sampler and... Well, never mind.

[whyterabbyt]

It's doing exactly what it's being told. You are dealing with audio files on a timeline and *not* triggered samples. This is how all DAWs deal with audio tracks. An audio track will always play only what is on a track at the playback point.

The notion that "all DAWs" do it that way is fuzzy. That is certainly not the way that MuLab, Caustic, Hydrogen and a few other (though obscure) audio applications work. Granted, they're likely triggering MIDI notes rather than playing audio tracks, but the idea of axing the trailing sound of a sample by default just does not make sense to me.

Its not fuzzy. Apples are not oranges. It doesnt matter how many times you say your apple should taste like an orange, it will not change that it does not, because it is not an orange. And it doesnt matter if you 'grant' that a clementine taste like an orange, an apple does not, especially when you have had an explanation of how apples taste, and been told repeatedly that they are not the same type of fruit as an orange.
If you are still refusing to accept that apples are an intrinsically different thing from oranges, if there's a reason that 'it does not make sense' , it is because you made it not make sense by expecting your apple to smell, feel and taste like oranges.
They will remain entirely different things, no matter how you protest, or how frequently you present your misunderstanding of the nature of apples.

[jabe]

Possible work round:

Insert sample. Insert sample again after first inserted sample.
Set Loop off
Set Marker In and Out points somewhere
Set playhead at start of first sample
Start Play
When playhead passes Marker In, set Loop on.

[incubus]

This is my approach:

The confusion for me is how that first one was done. No way that I know if you can have a physical clip not play to the end and not have it clipped. If the sounds were dry, then of course a verb would do it...until you render it and it would be the same problem.

[lmv]

The confusion for me is how that first one was done. No way that I know if you can have a physical clip not play to the end and not have it clipped. If the sounds were dry, then of course a verb would do it...until you render it and it would be the same problem.

I don't understand what you mean. The first track? The first sample? The first occurrence of an instrument? I just dragged and dropped. That's how I did it.

[incubus]

No, your first example in the two from the download

Anyways, there has to be a reason. I don't know what it is though.

[lmv]

Oh, you mean the other recording. That one was made in MuLab.

[rich_h]

It's doing exactly what it's being told. You are dealing with audio files on a timeline and *not* triggered samples. This is how all DAWs deal with audio tracks. An audio track will always play only what is on a track at the playback point.

The notion that "all DAWs" do it that way is fuzzy. That is certainly not the way that MuLab, Caustic, Hydrogen and a few other (though obscure) audio applications work. Granted, they're likely triggering MIDI notes rather than playing audio tracks, but the idea of axing the trailing sound of a sample by default just does not make sense to me.

While it's sampled audio, it's *not* a triggered sample. If the applications you mention are indeed using triggered samples then they are behaving correctly. But in this case you are dealing with *playback audio* on an audio track; the only audio on an audio track that should be audible is that which is at the playback position. It's not the same as triggering samples from a sampler.

Consider having a 16 bar audio recording. You want to loop only the first four bars. When the cursor returns to the start of the loop, you don't want the audio to continue playing the remaining twelve bars, you want it to play from the first bar.

I suspect the reason doing it using the Tracktion sampler is cutting off at the end of the loop is that there is a MIDI note off being sent at the end of the loop. This is also correct behaviour otherwise with sustained notes you would end up with lots of hanging notes. Setting it to ignore note off means that the sample will always play to the end, so as long as the sample isn't looped you won't get hanging notes.

[lmv]

I suspect the reason doing it using the Tracktion sampler is cutting off at the end of the loop is that there is a MIDI note off being sent at the end of the loop.

Hooooly Moses's rosy toeses...!!! I finally found a solution to this problem!

It has been bothering me immensely so I've spent the last few days hunting and trying all sorts of samplers and beatboxes, all in the interest of simply preventing my samples from getting axed at the end of the loop. A simple thing that Tracktion would not let me have!

Along the quest, I ran into pizmidi http://thepiz.org/plugins/?p=pizmidi, which had been already installed in my computer for a long time. I just had never taken the time to investigate it. I was reading all those descriptions when I remembered what rich_h had said about Tracktion sending a MIDI note off (why???!!!). So a light bulb lit up, I gave it a try and there you go, no more axing at the end of my loops!



NOW, things are sounding the way I wanted! Problem solved.

Thank you very much.

[dRowAudio]

Just to be clear to anyone reading this in future, this is in no way a bug or even an idiosyncrasy in Tracktion. No other arrange-type DAW that I know of wouldn't send note-offs at the end of a looped region.

If we didn't send these note offs, any synth that was currently playing would hold the notes as the playhead wrapped around and wouldn't turn off until the next note at the same pitch was played (which could be right at the end of the looped region and depending on the plugin, may skip the new note on attack phase altogether).

This may make sense for drum samplers where samples can be thought of as 'triggered' rather than 'played' but we have no way of knowing this in Tracktion so can't change the behaviour depending on the plugin.

As far as I can see, the only sensible thing to do to get this behaviour is for the plugin to have an 'ignore note offs' option so it didn't stop notes when the playhead stopped or looped etc.

However, I am struggling to see how or why this behaviour is a problem. In a timeline based DAW, looping a region should loop the contents of that region, not play things that would appear outside of that region. I can't see any practical reason for having this behaviour apart from it may sound slightly more pleasing when auditioning the looped region. In any mix down or render though, this looped region obviously has no effect.

[whyterabbyt]

Just to be clear to anyone reading this in future, this is in no way a bug or even an idiosyncrasy in Tracktion. No other arrange-type DAW that I know of wouldn't send note-offs at the end of a looped region.

.
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However, I am struggling to see how or why this behaviour is a problem. In a timeline based DAW, looping a region should loop the contents of that region, not play things that would appear outside of that region. I can't see any practical reason for having this behaviour apart from it may sound slightly more pleasing when auditioning the looped region. In any mix down or render though, this looped region obviously has no effect.

Im afraid the OP isnt interested in hearing how reality deviates from what he thinks has to be true.

[lmv]

Just to be clear to anyone reading this in future, this is in no way a bug or even an idiosyncrasy in Tracktion. No other arrange-type DAW that I know of wouldn't send note-offs at the end of a looped region.

If we didn't send these note offs, any synth that was currently playing would hold the notes as the playhead wrapped around and wouldn't turn off until the next note at the same pitch was played (which could be right at the end of the looped region and depending on the plugin, may skip the new note on attack phase altogether).

This may make sense for drum samplers where samples can be thought of as 'triggered' rather than 'played' but we have no way of knowing this in Tracktion so can't change the behaviour depending on the plugin.

As far as I can see, the only sensible thing to do to get this behaviour is for the plugin to have an 'ignore note offs' option so it didn't stop notes when the playhead stopped or looped etc.

However, I am struggling to see how or why this behaviour is a problem. In a timeline based DAW, looping a region should loop the contents of that region, not play things that would appear outside of that region. I can't see any practical reason for having this behaviour apart from it may sound slightly more pleasing when auditioning the looped region. In any mix down or render though, this looped region obviously has no effect.

dRowAudio, I have a few questions for you:

1) Question: Did you listen to the two audio files I uploaded earlier in this thread?
The link expired, but I just uploaded it again: http://www.filedropper.com/tracktiontest

2) One audio file is named Tracktion.wav and has the infamous "axe" at the end of the loop. The other file is named other.wav and showcases the smooth effect I was trying to achieve (among many others in other projects, but let's focus on that only one for the sake of this argument).

Question: how exactly am I or is anyone else supposed to achieve that smooth effect in Tracktion without the MIDI hack I found by myself and shared with the forum?

3) The file named "other.wav" was produced on a demo copy of MuLab. I drafted these projects on a tablet, using an application called Caustic, which produces the same smooth effect.

Question: As a developer or otherwise representative of an audio software company, why do you suppose these other developers or providers decided to make applications that do not alter samples and thus allow their users to create loops that do not have a blatant, forceful interruption at every seam, which could instead be provided with a gating effect if so desired? What exactly do you suppose they were thinking when they designed their applications that way?

I am dead serious, I really hope you will answer these questions.

4) BitWig does impose the blatant, forceful interruption at every seam... to a certain extent. BitWig's sampler has an AHDSR envelope, and if I crank Sustain and Release all the way up, the sudden interruption goes away and I get the smooth effect I've been trying to achieve in Tracktion.

Question: Has Tracktion ever considered adding an AHDSR envelope to its sampler? If not, why?

5) Caustic, an Android application, amazing in its own good but still standing in the humble category of mobile applications, has a "Decay" knob for each drumkit piece, which kind of works as a poor man's gate. That lets me "shorten" a sample if I decide it should be shortened. Or... look at this, I can edit the sample in its own sample editor and cut it to the exact desired length.

Question: Do you think it is wrong to leave the task of shortening or otherwise altering samples up to the user/author/composer? Do you think that the software should make that decision on the user/author/composer's behalf?

Question: Do you think Tracktion had better not be used for building drum tracks or any other kind of strictly "triggered" notes?

6) A curious anecdote: I was also getting the blatant, forceful interruption on Shortcircuit, the sampler I ended up picking up because Tracktion's own sampler doesn't have any Delay knob or AHDSR envelope and no way to produce the smooth effect I was looking for. But as it turns out, all I had to do was to crank up the Sustain and Release sliders on Shortcircuit to fix the problem immediately. In fact, the MIDI hack is only necessary if I use Tracktion's internal sampler, not when I use Shortcircuit as the sampler. Well, Shortcircuit was developed by some guy named Claes Johanson, who now works for BitWig! Now I wonder if that similar behavior of the sampler on BitWig was his idea. It must have been, because you are saying that this way of handling samples and loops is just simply wrong.

In either case, I repeat:

Question: how exactly am I or is anyone else supposed to achieve that same smooth effect in Tracktion without the MIDI hack I found by myself and shared with the forum?

Question: As a developer or otherwise representative of an audio software company, why do you suppose the BitWig, Caustic and MuLab developers decided to design their applications in such a "wrong" manner? What do you suppose they were thinking?

Please remember I am not talking about audio tracks. It's all about step clips.

I know I sound stubborn and hard-nosed in this message, I wish I could avoid it, but please take me seriously, because I am a very very serious person. These are serious questions, the answers to which I swear I really cannot predict until you reveal them to me very clearly. I am trying to understand how you think (hence the emphasis on you multiple times), which I can't because I absolutely identify these blanks in the whole logic of the issue at hand.

Chiefly, this:
How exactly am I or is anyone else supposed to achieve that smooth effect in Tracktion without the MIDI hack I found by myself and shared with the forum?

What would the kosher way be in Tracktion???

I have to repeat this question once again, because you see, my hack does the job, while you, in spite of your privileged position, have not offered any solution at all. Instead, you dismissed the issue with the following words:

However, I am struggling to see how or why this behaviour is a problem. In a timeline based DAW, looping a region should loop the contents of that region, not play things that would appear outside of that region. I can't see any practical reason for having this behaviour apart from it may sound slightly more pleasing when auditioning the looped region. In any mix down or render though, this looped region obviously has no effect.

...which sounds a lot like "the problem exists but I don't care about it."

this looped region obviously has no effect.

Just one more question: Do you also ever make music? Or only software?

[terminus_one]

To @lmv…

dRowAudio clearly said:

This may make sense for drum samplers where samples can be thought of as 'triggered' rather than 'played' but we have no way of knowing this in Tracktion so can't change the behaviour depending on the plugin.

So @lmv… seriously… stop conflating things! The fact that the Tracktion sampler itself may not have the feature to support this doesn't mean Tracktion as an organisation (and it's representatives) are going against your deepest and most serious wishes! In fact, pretty much everyone on this thread has been sympathetic to your need to achieve this, and there are clear ways to achieve this in Tracktion, and all the other DAWs that work like Tracktion when it comes to the timeline.

[lmv]

So @lmv… seriously… stop conflating things! The fact that the Tracktion sampler itself may not have the feature to support this doesn't mean Tracktion as an organisation (and it's representatives) are going against your deepest and most serious wishes! In fact, pretty much everyone on this thread has been sympathetic to your need to achieve this, and there are clear ways to achieve this in Tracktion, and all the other DAWs that work like Tracktion when it comes to the timeline.

What "clear ways"? The thread is spanning across three pages now and no solution at all has been proposed apart from this one:

There might be a better way, but if there isn't, you could use two tracks and have sample-gap-sample-gap on one and gap-sample-gap-sample on the other.

...which is terrible. I don't want to sound ungrateful in a forum, but it really is terrible.