SP12 or ASR10

you cant get the sp sound from moogerfooger pedals, or any other mix technique/plug in/outboard/sampler

asr all the damn way..

plus invest the money u saved on the sp on other... ''younger'' gear

Nym wrote:

It's not silly, it's basic fundamentals. If you are not listening to your music at the beggining of its creation, how could you expect someone else to listen to it. I think their is too much reliance on technolgy.

the bolded part is what's just plain silly.

"not listening to your music?" come on, now, think about that... not one person is chopping utilizing a waveform display without listening to the slices as they do it. that's your assumption - that it's either X or Y when ideally it's a combination. a "scrub" feature coupled with a vertically/horizontally zoomable waveform is simply the most accurate combination possible without adding a spectroscope into the mix...

BUT, that being said, by virtue of horizontal and vertical zooming, i could easily chop a break "deaf," relying solely on the waveform, more precisely than anyone could "blind" without said waveform. that's just the way it is, it's like comparing a microscope to a glass eye. without listening to the music as i'm chopping it, i could in fact slice it "better" than if i were listening til my eardrums bled. the resulting slices would be slightly tighter.

the question is, of course, at such small values of inprecision, does it matter if the "blind" slicer's slices are less accurate than my "deaf" slices in this example?
not at all. the end listener wouldn't (and hasn't) noticed.

You cats wouldn't have survived in the 80s or 90s real talk!!!!!

hahah way to dodge the topic there, boss...get over yourself. you're no better off for the attitude.

"not listening to your music?" come on, now, think about that... not one person is chopping utilizing a waveform display without listening to the slices as they do it. that's your assumption - that it's either X or Y when ideally it's a combination. a "scrub" feature coupled with a vertically/horizontally zoomable waveform is simply the most accurate combination possible without adding a spectroscope into the mix...

BUT, that being said, by virtue of horizontal and vertical zooming, i could easily chop a break "deaf," relying solely on the waveform, more precisely than anyone could "blind" without said waveform. that's just the way it is, it's like comparing a microscope to a glass eye. without listening to the music as i'm chopping it, i could in fact slice it "better" than if i were listening til my eardrums bled. the resulting slices would be slightly tighter.

the question is, of course, at such small values of inprecision, does it matter if the "blind" slicer's slices are less accurate than my "deaf" slices in this example?
not at all. the end listener wouldn't (and hasn't) noticed.

just.... why would u do that?

tight isnt always better

you wouldn't do that (chop deaf), ever ever ever. it'd suck, and wouldn't be fun. the point is in the exercise.

in the hypothetical scenario where you had to chop but could only use 1 sense, the slices would be
more precise if you did them "deaf" (without hearing) than if you did them "blind" (no waveform).

like i said, scrub (sample playing as you spin the data wheel, that scratchy eerrrrhhhh sound) + waveform display is tops. add a spectrum analysis tool and you'd have the most powerful audible-visual combination i can currently imagine.

i would say that in most cases tighter is better - hence why 99.9% of all oneshots you buy/download/find in machine presets have no delay to them - they're trimmed to the transient. it's just the logical cross-platform concept: trim sample to transient, apply timing variation in performance/sequencing.

BUT--as you said, tighter is not ALWAYS better. if someone's advanced enough that they're using looser chops we a delay/noise/silence before the attack as a SHIFT TIMING technique, then they clearly have their chopping technique down, albeit in a different way.

i think if i were to build/program/conceptualize a midi based sample sequencer, i'd do a lot more with sample start time modulation as a type of time shifting. it's an under-utilized concept.

Nym wrote:hahah way to dodge the topic there, boss...get over yourself. you're no better off for the attitude.

Not dodging the topic, the point is to not rely on crutches. having the wave in your face is cool, I use it it when I sample in the MPC, but I can function without it. There are cats that can't chop unless they are looking at the wave.

Nym, why don't you try out your theory and let us know what you get from it?

Take your bangingest drum set already in a song, and replace the drums with the "chopped deaf" versions. I think you'll be surprised.

I'm not sure if you have an academic knowledge of fourier series, but I would say that where a drum hit "starts" is not necessarily obvious from the time-domain representation... especially when the sample is taken from a loop (i.e. embedded in noise).

i "test" this "theory" in every song. my drums are sliced to the transient, which is both visually and audibly apparent in a sample/sample waveform. i often swap drum kits utilizing the same sequenced midi notes and different samples. that's one of the obvious perks of slicing to the transient - samples can be exchanged without sacrificing timing.

in your example of a noisy--ie lesser visible--loop (let's say a legato string sample) new notes are definitely not as apparent visually (though if you're used to reading waveforms you can see clearly where the frequency changes). in this case scrub becomes that much more important.

if a frequency exists in a sample, it is necessarily represented graphically in the waveform. especially in the case of a clean drum-only break, there is nowhere whatsoever for a sneaky frequency to hide.

hmm.. unless all your replacement drum hits were "chopped deaf", then you certainly haven't tested your theory at all. You are assuming that your library of hits are equivalent to "chopped deaf" hits, and obviously I am trying to point out that this is not necessarily so.

if a frequency exists in a sample, it is necessarily represented graphically in the waveform. especially in the case of a clean drum-only break, there is nowhere whatsoever for a sneaky frequency to hide.

This is interesting. While it is true what you say, it is not necessarily true that you can hear all the frequencies that are represented graphically in the waveform. Especially for wide band signals like drums, I would expect some masking effects to take place. So then, if you can't hear those frequencies that you can see, why would it be better to chop using your eyes instead of your ears?

perfectly civil: you should to go back and reread what i have posted previously. this is why this debate is invariably such an ordeal - folks simplify the claim being made.

i never said it was "better to chop with your eyes." do you realize how much i would hate having to do that? i stated that in a hypothetical where a user had to choose either 1 or the other, it's easier to get tighter slices down to the transient utilizing only a waveform compared to only using numbers.

the theory is in fact tested because, like i posted, i chop to the transient. this is also what the above user would do in said hypothetical "Deaf" situation - sliced to the first transient. obviously this doesn't always mean the highest peak - slicing a tambourine to the highest peak would cut off the swirl that occurs before the actual dash, which would be the biggest peak.

regarding inaudible ghost freqs mucking up the waveform: turntable thud could be mistaken as a kick drum, a pop as a hi hat. rare occupational hazards, sidestepped by an experienced waveform eye and ear. this is why, just one more time for clarification, let me address this point:

So then, if you can't hear those frequencies that you can see, why would it be better to chop using your eyes instead of your ears?

!! step outside this binary. my position is that the best current combination on any MPC/slicing application is a combination of the waveform (eye) and the scrub (ear).

but for general, every day, run of the mill clean sampled breaks, if for some strange reason there was a lamewad contest and a chopper had to choose 1 sense, by the nature of the beast the likelihood would be that he'd get tighter slices by negligible milliseconds using only the waveform.

Why is your hypothetical equivalent to the truth again? Unless you actually tested this, I don't understand how you equate them.

Also, by "masking" I'm refering to the nature of adjacent frequency components being cancelled by the perceptual process of listening using the human ear. This is the fundamental basis of MPEG compression in audio, right? perfectly civil: do you know how MP3 compression works?

regarding mp3 compression - yeah that's all very familiar, i did a lot of variable bitrate stuff with LAME professionally at my last job (though i like ogg the best! pity it's not more widespread)

but i don't see this psychoacoustic stuff as much of an issue at this early a stage. i'm not ruling it out because surely it happens, more notably in busier samples. especially for this exercise. after all, if we did this and missed something, there'd be an audible issue in subsequent playback, and we'd know straight away there was a problem upon hitting play. at that point, we'd take care of it. this may have happened had i chosen a different drum break in my test (see below) but in my bisensual chopping experience i run into this kind of thing pretty rarely.

it's kind of like zero point crossings, but more lofty a principle.
by doing it by ear, you don't end up with perfect zero point crossings. me, i stopped caring about that a while ago. a lot of the time i'm operating with an attack of 1 increment or more anyway but the point is (and this applies to the entire discussion) that if you can't hear it in the end work then the means don't matter.

testing...tested.

timing is virtually identical, drum sounds are of course different (original sounds better for layering reasons described in paragraphs below). i can post up audio examples if need be. daw is not connected to the internet and i'm on my last week teaching this summer residential program, but i'd be happy to upload the results.

for the original, i used drums sliced from a break using scrub and slice and layered with bank sounds. for the replacement test, i just used a .wav of a break from a record. nothing fancy.