Just a tip...

This evening I was listening to a beat I had worked on a couple days ago; suddenly, I noticed a slight, very faint but noticeable static-like click coming from one of my monitors.

I thought this was a problem with that monitor (as the other one did not have this issue) so I was like, "Oh GREAT. Just what I need...to send the monitor in for repair..."

I then did a bit more digging and you know what? It was the SAMPLE. (Two of them actually)

Tip: if your monitor starts making subtle click sounds like something is blown/wrong, check your samples. I didn't notice it until I started isolating each track to EQ things a bit. You have to look at the waveform (and listen carefully) to notice.

The fidelity on our MPC is NICE.

One odd thing: both of the samples that had this were from Direct Recording...perhaps it's just my setup, but has anyone had any issues like this, that is, not getting a perfectly clean recording of a sample via this feature? Would be curious to hear how you guys set this up. (What gear, routing, etc.)

Uh, generally speaking, the first thing I check when I hear odd sounds, is the sample. Thanks for the tip, but I'd imagine that would be common sense.

Thanks for the tip, but for the most part, it's common knowledge. My guess is that the samples weren't chopped at the "zero crossing" of the waveform. It usually doesn't make much of a difference for certain samples that decay at the end; from experience, I have the worst cases with sub bases and sine waves.

Where did you have artifacts in the recording? In the beginning or the end? Or right in between the recorded signal?

episode wrote:My guess is that the samples weren't chopped at the "zero crossing" of the waveform.

yep yep... i agree.

was it a stereo sample? probably had the left channel zero crossed but the right slightly off

Hmm -- common knowledge or sense? Perhaps. But not in this case:

1. It wasn't an obvious static "click" that you guys are probably thinking of; this was *incredibly* subtle, and in the mix you didn't hear it at all; plus it was only coming from one side; it really did sound like something from a speaker anamoly, not the typical freq you'd associate with something as obvious as a waveform spike,

2. The samples weren't looping (or chopped from anything), so zero-point crossing isn't the issue; I had a beat going, enabled the Direct Record function, played a couple notes on my keyboard (piano patch, middle C range), waited for the short decay to finish, stopped Direct Record, assigned it to the sequence.

Stilo: the click came at the very beginning of the waveform, on both of the samples...it's like it recorded an internal artifact from the moment I hit the Direct Record enable button, and only on the left channel...quite odd...

tanaka_san wrote:Stilo: the click came at the very beginning of the waveform, on both of the samples...it's like it recorded an internal artifact from the moment I hit the Direct Record enable button, and only on the left channel...quite odd...

I suspected that...maybe you noticed that usually the start point of a recorded sample is not 0 but something like 2205 I think. And when you zoom in you usually see a static spike right in the beginning of the sample, which is excluded that way. I don't know how Direct Recording handles the start point, but maybe that's what's happening.

It could also be a feedback loop.