XLN Audio - XO - Improvement, Pros, Cons

[yellowmix]

Can this scan for/use sample formats from other XLN Audio products like (most obviously) Addictive Drums?

The XO factory library includes one-shots from the Addictive Drums range, including Reel Machines. I just did a search for reel machines samples, there are 176 of them. You obviously don't want them all, since they're velocity multisampled. The rest seem to come from Samplephonics. Together they cover a very wide range.

Are the expansions NFR, or does XLN allow license transfers for all their products?

License transfers allowed like all their other products: https://www.xlnaudio.com/support/i-want ... rs-allowed

Is XO good for evaluating what would usually be considered "non-musical" sounds that could substitute for (or be layered into) the standard drum sounds? What about components of drum sounds?

I let XO scan my foley and many sample packs have a "percussion" folder with the most random stuff in it. If a sample sounds like a major categorization you'll likely find it in that region. So thwacking a large plastic container could be in kicks or toms. Metal hit could be in hihats or cymbals. Fortunately XO accepts a lot of formats including FLAC so it finds all sorts of stuff.

If it really can't categorize something, it tends to be in the bottom-most region. In my experience this includes short-enough loops, especially melodic and vocals. In fact, you have to lower the "druminess" range in the filter to display them.

As for drum creation tools, if it sounds like something that's where it'll be. Quick thumpy transients tend to be categorized with cowbells and congas. Kick bodies will be with kicks. HIgher pitched transients are placed among closed hihats. Best to use the filter to narrow down, e.g., "alchemy transient", or at the folder level if you added them individually (highly recommended, don't point it at the top level).

[Ou_Tis]

I read that XO has good "humanization" and groove features (not machine learning based though?) but that midi drag and drop "degrades the beat"... since I prefer to work with midi rather than a drum sequencer (especially a drum sequencer that's limited to two bars), the former is negated by the latter for me....

Apparently when going through nodes in the similarity cloud to audition substitutions into a beat XO is still smoother than Cosmos running inside CR8, though Waves could change that in a future update. Free version of Cosmos only runs as standalone, not inside DAW (that requires CR8, which I haven't bought yet).

Limitation: I listened to a playthrough of all the sequences/sounds that come with XO and they weren't really outsanding (at least for my purposes). I counted about 30 sequences I might use parts of. But I have tons of midi, Ujam, Groove Agent (not to mention drum loops) already that I like as much or more but can't import into XO to use the "humanization" features. Though I thought the demo tracks for the Oscillations XOpak were better (sounds definitely, grooves a bit, though I read it doesn't come with many grooves) and Ultra Bionic seemed interesting.

[Ou_Tis]

Everytime i load up up XO, it's rescaning all the folders that i've added. That doesnt make sense to me Can anyone confirm that? I'm on Cubase 10.5 and Win10.

Yes it looks for changes. It’s a background process though so unless you feel it’s impacting anything leave it to it.

Thank you But i would prefer a manual rescan, as the content of my folders doesnt change every day. Still doesnt make sense to me! Most of the devs have a manual rescan function (like the u-he preset browser). I think i'll contact the devs and ask for a function to disable that behavior.

When I first read this I thought I'd have to wait for it to finish rescanning each time I opened it, but thankfully that's not the case (now, at least...).

Is there a way to scroll down or zoom in on a specific area in Space view?

Guess there's no way to add our own tags, aside from renaming files or directories?...

Favorites only has "heart or no heart"; it would be better to have a wider range of options to distinguish between those you like and your favorites (or at least two hearts = really like). Ideally to be combined with tags or categories user can create (for grooves and samples).

I think I may have given myself tinnitus going through my drum samples for hours... haven't even gotten to external drives or proprietary formats yet. Then there are all the loops with hits I like and haven't chopped yet....

[yellowmix]

When I first read this I thought I'd have to wait for it to finish rescanning each time I opened it, but thankfully that's not the case (now, at least...).

It scans in background in case file system doesn't report correctly. Only if it detects real changes does it suggest a refresh & rescan, if you click into the Sample Folders workflow.

Is there a way to scroll down or zoom in on a specific area in Space view?

Mousewheel zooms in/out, centered on where the mouse cursor is.

Guess there's no way to add our own tags, aside from renaming files or directories?...

The design of the filter is based on Sample Folders and auto-detection. So if you work across multiple genres like I do, the best practice I've developed is based on folders named after sample developer, with their packs underneath that. If the sample developer makes samples across genres, then each pack folder gets the genre appended after it, like [DnB] or whatever. Then I can search for the "tag". I didn't do this just for XO, it's good for file management in general. So it'll show up in Everything and other tools.

Favorites only has "heart or no heart"; it would be better to have a wider range of options to distinguish between those you like and your favorites (or at least two hearts = really like). Ideally to be combined with tags or categories user can create (for grooves and samples).

Send the suggestion to support. I like that. I have some go-to similarity starting points which are all favorited but I'd probably use other colors for less-used percussion simply to reduce clutter in results.

Then there are all the loops with hits I like and haven't chopped yet....

I've been using Resonic Pro for this, it's very fast and I can delete the loop when I've extracted the hits, and put the one-shots where they need to be.

[darkcapricorn]

Layering like drum designer or drumvolution and advanced sequencer like geist2 please

[yellowmix]

XLN doesn't monitor this thread, AFAIK, so you would be better off sending suggestions directly to them: https://www.xlnaudio.com/support (Product Requests/Feedback).

[Annabanna]

What's up with the nudge?

Seems like it's not doing anything at all. Getting a good loose clap for any sort of electrofunk, etc requires shifting individual claps often by 60ms or more, yet even at the most extreme settings there is zero perceptible space between any of the claps.

Is the feature even working? 100ms in either direction would be a decent working range, but it doesn't even seem to be doing a tenth of that. If this can't be extended into an actually useful range, it's back to Battery and nudging regions/tracks outside of the plug.

While we're at it, the Haas effect type switches are a great addition, but is there any reason they need to be a single fixed value? They would be much more useful if they could be dragged through a range which wouldn't take up any more UI space since it could just be an ms value displayed in the same space. 0-50ms would be a good usable range and much more useful than a simple on/off at a fixed value.

[anton everest]

I gotta try this.

[Biome_Digital]

What's up with the nudge?

Seems like it's not doing anything at all. Getting a good loose clap for any sort of electrofunk, etc requires shifting individual claps often by 60ms or more, yet even at the most extreme settings there is zero perceptible space between any of the claps.

Is the feature even working? 100ms in either direction would be a decent working range, but it doesn't even seem to be doing a tenth of that. If this can't be extended into an actually useful range, it's back to Battery and nudging regions/tracks outside of the plug.

While we're at it, the Haas effect type switches are a great addition, but is there any reason they need to be a single fixed value? They would be much more useful if they could be dragged through a range which wouldn't take up any more UI space since it could just be an ms value displayed in the same space. 0-50ms would be a good usable range and much more useful than a simple on/off at a fixed value.

Nudge works fine as far as I can tell. Been using it all day. I only use the pitch stereo switch as the pan one isn't mono compatible, which is a shame.

[Annabanna]

I see now. Someone pointed out it only works with the on-board sequencer.

I've never seen the point in such a sequencer. How is it nut just easier and better in every way to sequence within DAW blocks, then re-arrange them like Legos?

Is there a workflow that makes use of the internal sequencer sensible when switching patterns, adding fills, occasional ghost notes, blank sections, etc?

[slackhead]

Nude works fine as far as I can tell. Been using it all day.

[Biome_Digital]

I see now. Someone pointed out it only works with the on-board sequencer.

I've never seen the point in such a sequencer. How is it nut just easier and better in every way to sequence within DAW blocks, then re-arrange them like Legos?

Is there a workflow that makes use of the internal sequencer sensible when switching patterns, adding fills, occasional ghost notes, blank sections, etc?

Yes, of course it's only with the sequencer.

[Biome_Digital]

Nude works fine as far as I can tell. Been using it all day.

hahaa

I had to read it three times before I noticed that.

[Annabanna]

Yes, of course it's only with the sequencer.

Makes sense now that I think it through, but tha't now how I came to the information about nudge. I don't care about the internal sequencer and wasn't even aware it has one because that's not a feature I bothered looking at. I came across XO specifically because I was searching to see if a drum machine existed that could nudge individual pads so I could stop running 5 instances of Battery and nudging regions/tracks to accomplish the same thing.

It might not be possible for negative offset depending on DAW architecture, but that's what I was searching for on Google when XO popped up saying it could do it.

[Biome_Digital]

Yes, of course it's only with the sequencer.

Makes sense now that I think it through, but tha't now how I came to the information about nudge. I don't care about the internal sequencer and wasn't even aware it has one because that's not a feature I bothered looking at. I came across XO specifically because I was searching to see if a drum machine existed that could nudge individual pads so I could stop running 5 instances of Battery and nudging regions/tracks to accomplish the same thing.

It might not be possible for negative offset depending on DAW architecture, but that's what I was searching for on Google when XO popped up saying it could do it.

Nudge is a sequencer feature. You want something like trigger delay, or sample offset. It's not really the way it's been done though. Atlas has some extra timing features, have you seen that?