threshold chopping - how to get more slices

Hi. Sometimes with threshold slicing i cant get more than about 10-12 slices.
I try messing about with the threshold and minimum sample length but it makes no difference.
Im used to working with New Sonic Arts Vice2 which is really good at detecting chops and the MPC seems like something is wrong with the way it works.

The threshold function is broken, it usually produces unusable results, and it's hard to find an example case where thresholding saves time. Chop manually.

Here's how:

“really really quickly”
Quickly this and quickly that. Quickly quickly.


Maybe 5% of the time I use chopped loops. I’ve never subscribed to the school of
“16 equal chops” either. Not trying to be like the majority of everyone else.

All other times I use threshold and have no problem with it though.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:The threshold function is broken, it usually produces unusable results, and it's hard to find an example case where thresholding saves time. Chop manually.

I haven't used it in ages (always manual chops), but back in 2.10 I think it used to get worse as you turned up the threshold heh. You would get about halfway up and it was fine, go over 50% and it actually removed slices and made it worse than when you started.

Maybe it tells something that it isn't called "transients". Akai describes the Threshold Chop Mode like this:

This method uses an adjustable detection algorithm that derives the number of slices created from the volume levels present in the sample.

The whole idea is so broken right from the start, it's not very meaningful to compare it with actual transient detection algorithms, but here's a synthetic example, raising sine waves which are cut off abruptly, creating a loud transient.



Ableton figures out where the transients are, no problem, and it handles each instance the same way. Well ok, I'd prefer it to place the warp markers slightly further to the right, when the sound has completely ended, but I guess this is a rather unusual case.



But then Akai's "threshold" chopping:



I couldn't find any combination of threshold and "min time" to get it to find the cliffs properly. Oddly, it even produces a very different result for each instance.

I assume that the threshold algorithm was intended to be able to cut out individual drum hits from an isolated drum track. Like individual snare drum hits or something.

I zoom out and drag the slices to where they should be in general, then adjust the start points with Q links. Usually that's fine - I find that threshold chop wants to make more chops than I need, so I drag the extras to the end,