The reason why RELEASE doesn't work with "LOOP"?

[thuggy_bear]

Does the hardware not allow it?

I know that you don't necessarily want that for drum loops, but It would be nice to have that for sine waves, organ sounds, etc etc. If you didn't want to use it, you could always have the default be zero.


Actually, it would be nice to be able to use DECAY as well.

[kh4os]

Yes, and this is one of my suggestions.
To have small samples for synths.

[floccipocci]

I guess that's because release is only for a note off.

The best workaround is to just program the note in the sequencer, since technically, the sequencer is like a pseudo-looper.

Unless you're talking about the Decay? I've not tried it yet, but decay is only triggered after a note-on.

Which suddenly bring me a question in mind! (To experiment!)
Does decay work in loop hold?
That is,
a) Loop hold just holds down the key?
b) or Loop hold re-triggers the key?

[thuggy_bear]

I guess that's because release is only for a note off.

The best workaround is to just program the note in the sequencer, since technically, the sequencer is like a pseudo-looper.

Unless you're talking about the Decay? I've not tried it yet, but decay is only triggered after a note-on.

I'm talking about organ loops, not drum loops, as I said above. I have made samples of each key of my old, heavy 70s era Acetone, and mapped them to each key on the MicroSampler.

Why sample each key? Why do all the work?

Because it sounds better. Scaling it up and down the keyboard just doesn't sound as good. And if you do it right, you only have to do it once.

Since the Acetone's note off is instantaneous, by sampling each key, I pretty much have that wonderful sound in a far more portable package.

The Elka, on the other hand, presents two problems that the Acetone does not:

1) the vibrato/leslie simulator is built into the sound- there is no way to turn it off, even if I wanted to (which I don't). If I was willing to take a hit to the sound quality (which I don't) and just wanted to scale the sound up and down the keyboard, the leslie simulation sounds FUBAR.

2) I'm not sure why, but you can not just loop the Elka in the MicroSampler editor. Even If you line up the stop and start points on zero-crossings, the loop will pop. So, I need to cut each loop in my DAW, make a crossfade between the beginning and the end to make it sound right (or, in other words, worth doing).

3) the Elka, when you release the key, decays to silence. Since the Elka is used as the tone generator for the bass pedals in my band, this slow release time is not just nice, but crucial.

Now, here are workarounds, all of which are a poor substitution for just having the "release" and "decay" parameters work on loops as well as non-loops.

1) Just sample one 160 second chunk of the Elka, and scale it in Keyboard mode, and set the release and decay parameters, appropriately.

This gets the envelopes I want, but IMHO, sounds like crap, even when done over just one octave.

2) Just take 13 samples (the number of notes playable on the bass pedals) and make 16 twelve second samples, with the appropriate envelopes.

This might work, but since we play songs that generally grind along at 65-90 bpm, notes are sometimes held for more than 16 seconds. It's called a drone.

3) Just bring the damned Elka.

This is what we are doing. The whole point to buying the Microsampler was for me to have a nice, protable keyboard where I can do simple live parts when sitting in with friends, as well as use as the bass tone generator in my band, so I don't have to wheel a mountain of crap around with me. Elka OMB-5 keyboards don't grow on trees. I'd just as soon have usable samples of it, and keep it at home.

So, you see that the sequencer (unless I have totally misunderstood what you were suggesting) really can't help here.

I bring up both decay and release, because it would be nice to have both available in loop mode- I can not imagine that there is a some resource being used in loop mode that is not being used in one shot mode, you know?

Which suddenly bring me a question in mind! (To experiment!)
Does decay work in loop hold?
That is,
a) Loop hold just holds down the key?
b) or Loop hold re-triggers the key?

I don't have the MS in front of me, but in order for loop hold to work, it seems that it would need to be a loop. If it's a loop, then decay and release don't work. Right?

[floccipocci]

Oh now I understand what you mean!

Yeah, when I first got the MS, I tried doing a infinite-breath "Oooh" sample using just the MS (no editor), and I find it hard to set the correct start and end to ensure there's no pop/click.

I can do it with the AKAI, or I have not the patience to set the start and end right on the MS.

I think another feature we can ask for would be region looping (where we can set loop start and loop end, apart from the start/end point settings) with differing loop play modes (such as FORWARD, FORWARD-BACKWARD).

Wonder if that is feasible.

[thuggy_bear]

Yeah, when I first got the MS, I tried doing a infinite-breath "Oooh" sample using just the MS (no editor), and I find it hard to set the correct start and end to ensure there's no pop/click.

Being able to expand the window in the editor would be a nice feature, as would an increased zoom. So would zero crossing detection- does anyone really want to start their loop in the middle of a wave? Ever?

I think another feature we can ask for would be region looping (where we can set loop start and loop end, apart from the start/end point settings) with differing loop play modes (such as FORWARD, FORWARD-BACKWARD).

Wonder if that is feasible.

Well, all of that would be awesome, but I would be pretty psyched if they just made the decay/release thing work in loop mode. for sophisticated sampling, there are plenty of computer based things that can do all kinds of complex sampling. I think that the decay/release thing is pretty important to live performance, though. It's the only reason I'm not using this keyboard live.