Pops and Clicks in the Sample

I am New to the MPC Workflow...And I have encountered the same reoccurring problem....Whenever I call myself Recording samples from my DAW....I find that on playback I discover Pops or Clicks in the Beginning or End of a sample....Which makes it discouraging to Build a Sufficient Sample Library....Or get to the point where I can have sufficient Experience with Experimenting with Sample Arrangement...If the Beauty of Sampling is marred by Imperfections on playback.....If I could only get pass this problem.....?

Brandon 162 wrote:I am New to the MPC Workflow...And I have encountered the same reoccurring problem....Whenever I call myself Recording samples from my DAW....I find that on playback I discover Pops or Clicks in the Beginning or End of a sample....Which makes it discouraging to Build a Sufficient Sample Library....Or get to the point where I can have sufficient Experience with Experimenting with Sample Arrangement...If the Beauty of Sampling is marred by Imperfections on playback.....If I could only get pass this problem.....?

These new MPC do add pops and clicks to sounds, so to fix that you need to adjust the AMP ENVELOPE of each sample in that program. I usually start with ATTACK: 56 DECAY: 6 SUSTAIN: 127 RELEASE: 45 then adjust according. The low pass filter also introduces pop and clicks so it's a must to adjust the AMP ENVELOPE or use the AIR LP FILTER effect.

Another thing to do...

in Sample Edit mode, hold shift and touch 0 snap... This will ensure that as you adjust start/end/loop points that they are (as much as possible... stereo is an issue)... this will greatly reduce clips... but you need to adjust the points to ensure they are at zero cross... I frequently just wiggle the 1x knob and frequently it solves the problem.

Next thing to consider is to use fade in/fade out on your samples...

It's a digital audio issue that goes back to the dawn of time. If you zooom way way in on your sampled waveform to the very start you'll see your wave isnt starting at the 0 point. its probably into its oscillation curve. It causes the speakers to be thrown and gives off a pop. you can just move the start point like tao said. i just zoom in and move it to a nice spot repeatedly hitting a pad to trigger it. Call me sick but i like defects, the more beat up a record is the organic it feels. I got a few tracks i have that pop and crack so much it sounds like fire burning.

NearTao wrote:Another thing to do...

in Sample Edit mode, hold shift and touch 0 snap... This will ensure that as you adjust start/end/loop points that they are (as much as possible... stereo is an issue)... this will greatly reduce clips... but you need to adjust the points to ensure they are at zero cross... I frequently just wiggle the 1x knob and frequently it solves the problem.

Next thing to consider is to use fade in/fade out on your samples...

100%! That's how I use the AMP ENVELOPE as a fade in/out. Keeps me from having to constantly edit and tweak. Get it close and use the AMP Envelope. Because it accrues even when playing the pads with note on. If you release the pad at a different place. Funny thing is I doesn't happen on my MPC 4000's.

Ultros wrote:It's a digital audio issue that goes back to the dawn of time. If you zooom way way in on your sampled waveform to the very start you'll see your wave isnt starting at the 0 point. its probably into its oscillation curve. It causes the speakers to be thrown and gives off a pop. you can just move the start point like tao said. i just zoom in and move it to a nice spot repeatedly hitting a pad to trigger it. Call me sick but i like defects, the more beat up a record is the organic it feels. I got a few tracks i have that pop and crack so much it sounds like fire burning.

Pops are great until you master it for vinyl or hear it blasting over a large venue sound system. At loud levels those pops are dangerous to the people who listens to your music.

Can you add attack/release to a sample?

You can add attack/release to a program, and then resample the program... not sure if that is what you mean though.

Acidizer wrote:Can you add attack/release to a sample?

I adjust the attack and release per pad in a program then leave it. I've tried resampling it but these machine continue to add pop and clicks to the sample, even after that. Akai Pro needs to correct their code because it's not the samples. I've imported samples with no pop or click, and the MPC ONE adds them.

Acidizer wrote:Can you add attack/release to a sample?

In sample edit you can select a small portion and apply a fade-in at the beginning, or fade out at the end of the sample. Not really what you asked, but it will remove pops caused by zero crossing.
The fade essentially forces the selected area to start at 0. If you select a small enough portion you won't even hear a fade at all, but it will still reduce the start point to 0 volume.

The editing the envelope didn’t seem to work for me... I am starting with the MPC Orchestral Pro Edition using the Percussion-Celesta sound. It has long unlooped samples for 11 keygroups, with a width of 3 to 7 notes for each keygroup. It is a clean sound, not complicated.

I wanted to resample at a Note Stride of 1 for an experiment. I got all kinds of pops in the result. I tried the envelope idea on the original, and the result, still all kinds of pops when playing my resampled version. When I switch back to the original keygroup, no pops.

I noticed as auto sample is playing each note, I can hear there are pops at the start of each note during the resampling. The notes dont pop when played by the pads, but if they pop when resample plays them, then probably all bets are off on the output being any good.

Also instead of making long samples, I wanted to make 1 second samples, with no tail, and alternating looping between 400 and 800 ms to handle sustained notes. Turns out on a long sustained note with the resample, there is also popping each time it gets to the end and alternates. So a sustained note gets a pop at the beginning, and rhythmic popping during the sustain. The original program has long notes that just slowly release no matter how long you hold the pad down because that is what is in the sample.... I set 0 snap, and on the screen pushed the start and end bars a little on the sample for each keygroup, hoping this would 0 snap them, but this doesnt seem to make a difference. Still get the popping at the start and the rhythmic popping as the loop alternates.

Like I said, when I go back to the original it doesnt seem to pop.

For what reason are you autosampling an already sampled instrument? The raw samples are there in the expansion and available for direct editing, why not loop the samples directly?

And if you want to change the note release length on that instrument, just go to PROGRAM EDIT, select ALL keygroups and in the amp envelope reduce the 'release' value, which is currently set to 115 to give that chime-like release you hear in a celesta. But try setting it to something like 65 if you want a more piano like playing style.

Otherwise, what is it you are trying to achieve with looping? Are you wanting to be able to extend the playing time of each note? All the samples in that program are recorded to their natural decay, around 5-12 seconds, anything longer might sound odd, but if you want to do that I would suggest a very short (tiny) loop region (milliseconds) just after the initial attack portion, which will probably loop and sound okay with that type of instrument as it's very pure and 'sine wavey'. You can then play around with the ADSR envelope settings, specifically 'decay' to control how the sample's volume changes while you hold down the pad, and 'release' to control how long it fades out after releasing.

I would say that looping in the MPC is a PITA, much better to loop in a computer audio editor (with dedicated sustain looping and crossfading features) and import back into your MPC.

Why auto sampling? - Because I want a keyprogram with separate samples for each note for an experiment. The existing sampled program covers 3 to 7 notes for sample, and this is too wide for my experiment.

I know I can use keygroup all to change the release. But that instrument forces a release even if the key is not released, because the sample itself has decay. Again I dont want the option to not have decay until the key is actually released. That is another reason for creating a new version of the instrument.

I will try a very short loop section. But as I said, there are pops at the ends of the alternating looping. Looping that just goes forward or backwards will have a very noticeable periodic discontinuity if the level at the beginning and the end of the loop are different. Alternating looping is a way around that with externally sampled sounds, you just end up with what sounds like a tremolo.

I will try the short looping. Still puzzled what to do about the popping at the start. This seems to be some artifact of resampling, or how the auto sampler is playing the notes. Previously I have only autosampled from external and didnt encounter this before.

BTW, MPC-Tutor, I love your MPC-BIBLE. Very nice! I have finished a big chunk of it.