An addition to LOOP REC Mode to improve sample capturing

(regarding the OS2XL LOOP RECORDER)

First an explanation/description:

Older hardware samplers such as the "S" series from Roland (S-550,S770 etc) had what they called a "Previous Sampling" feature.

This mode allowed you to set a period of time to record (5 seconds for example).

When recording was triggered, the amount of time you selected (in this example, 5 seconds) was recorded to a buffer, continuously SHIFTING it (not overwriting or over-dubbing) so the last 5 seconds was always being captured. Clicking STOP REC therefore gave you the last 5 seconds of whatever you heard, even if you let it run for minutes.

This was advantageous for collecting samples from "running sources" on-the-fly.

You could arm the sampler, listen for as long as you wanted until something perked your ear that you liked, hit STOP and you would have the last 5-seconds (or whatever amount of time you selected) ready to go for editing. This eliminated any need to cue up something you wanted to sample, or the need to record "live" material (radio, tv, running CDs etc).

Every click of the STOP REC button dumped that 5-second sample to a memory slot for future editing and would re-arm automatically and resume recording again. Gathering raw samples basically became "oh, that sounded cool- STOP, oh that sounded cool- STOP" etc etc. A half hour just listening to the radio or watching TV etc with the sampler armed and recording in such a manner would get you a load of captured sounds ready for editing. No recording it all first, no cueing up anything ahead of time. It was brilliant.

Only the Roland samplers had this feature back then (80s/90s). When I had once purchased a Peavey Sampler (Peavy SP) in about '93, their sampler expander module "Peavey SX" had a looping rec mode similar to what JJ has done with his. When I made the suggestion to Pevey techs back then regarding "Previous Sampling", they very much liked the idea and realized its advantages for sampling- thus they were able to very quickly add this "shifting-buffer" capability to the firmware (due to the way the hardware & code processed the buffer for the incoming audio, they told me this was a simple thing to adjust in the code).

It is my hope that such a modification to the OS2XL Loop recorder can also be done.

"Previous Sampling" was a great feature of the Roland hardware and was a huge time saver for me when sampling. I think it will be for you too!


Note: I thought I had originally posted this in "Feature Requests", pardon the mix-up.

Previous has now become skip back sampling on Fantom line. I still have my S-550 and this is exactly the way I still sample for the most part. I've often thought of requesting this, but never thought about having it in the loop mode. Nice idea. Unbeatable for radio and tv. Deffinately +1.

+1

Brilliant,,, I support JJ in making this happen. This would give some new live to the sampler section of my MPC. (I've been using it mostly as a sequencer for other equipment,,,,)

Just an after thought: This is also perfect for sampling records. As soon as you hear something you want, just tap the stop button and wait for the next thing to catch your ear.

I am glad to hear your positive comments regarding my suggestion!

By the way- there *IS* a work around if you prefer to sample in such a manner- you can do so by hooking up a lengthy delay pedal (like the ones used for "loopers" and so on) between your source and the audio-in of the MPC.

Back in the late 90's I had to do this with a pair of very expensive and hard to find rack-mount Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro's as they were among the only units at the time that provided a nice lengthy and clean delay.. Modern "looping" & delay pedals are much cheaper now and can also give you a nice long delay to work within.

Though being able to do this stand-alone with the MPC would be just great.

+1

this is something that I always wanted. 5 sec is a bit too short tho.

5 sec is a bit too short tho.

yes, should be user-defined

Would be awesome, hopefully possible to implement.

sounds like a good idea.


on a slightly different note - has anyone noticed there's a slight buffer on regular sampling - like a 1 or 2 tenths of a second?

It would be great if this could be user defined - and capable of being turned off.

It would help with immediate sampling into a pgm. e.g. have a pgm loaded but not the samples . So Pad 1 is set to ?Sample1 Pad 2 is set to ?Sample2 etc .
Now if you hit the record button on the in thru screen you can sample straight into the pgm.Each new sample is assigned to a new pad - depending on the pgm and the sample naming. (renaming reset would be good too actually!)

I tried it with individual beatbox sounds for instance and it worked pretty well, and was wanting to develop it so i could maybe use it in a live context. - the main issue being with the bufffer.

sorry for the slight off topic, just wanted to share the idea.

has anyone noticed there's a slight buffer on regular sampling

Yeah its approx 2205 samples, or 0.05 seconds (at 44.1khz sample rate)

astronaut wrote:+1

this is something that I always wanted. 5 sec is a bit too short tho.

Yes, I just used that length of time as an example. I would expect the max time to be the same 60 seconds as the looping recorder in the OS2XL, if one were able to add that feature to it?

I agree that this should be in loop mode, could even go hand in hand with the latest loop extract request, but this should also deffinately be in the regular sampling menu as well.

Not sure how this would work in Loop Rec mode. If the sample you want overlaps the end of the Seq or "Bars" set in loop mode, would you have to splice the end to the beginning?

cosign on this request, but i would like to see it implemented with the normal RECORD screen so that you could use this to create new programs on the fly with the pads assigned as you go.

here's what i mean: i've always wanted a 'direct to pad' sampling mode in the RECORD screen where when you press a pad, whatever audio is coming into the MPC at that moment is sampled & assigned to that pad in 1 step.

so say you have some sound playing into your MPC: hit pad 1 & hold it down for 1 second and you get a sample of 1 second duration that consists of whatever was playing while you held the pad down assigned to pad 1. hold pad 2 down for 3 seconds and get a 3 second sample assigned to pad 2, etc... it all happens on the fly as you go.

maybe not so good for finely sculpted one shots but good for some quick and dirty sampling that can surprise you and force you to come up with some new stuff that you might not otherwise. and you can always go back and trim up the sample better later if you need to.


it seems both this and the 'previous sampling' feature that bbaksea started this thread with would work best in the RECORD screen, tho. why do you want it in the LOOP REC screen? i admit i'm not super familiar with the LOOP REC mode but the few time i've messed with it it seemed kind of limited & buggy.

Sooty_G wrote:it seems both this and the 'previous sampling' feature that bbaksea started this thread with would work best in the RECORD screen, tho. why do you want it in the LOOP REC screen? i admit i'm not super familiar with the LOOP REC mode but the few time i've messed with it it seemed kind of limited & buggy.

I mentioned the LOOP REC mode primarily because many years ago when I had my discussion with the Peavey engineers about the sampler I had of theirs (the SX 'sampler expander' already had a LOOP REC mode much like JJOS's), they had indicated that because of the way it was executed/programmed, and the way the chip handled things- it was a simple tweak to the code to effect the change. I had a new EPROM mailed to me within a week. So when I noticed this similar thing in the MPC, I thought I would mention it.

But by all means, having it in regular REC mode would be highly desirable indeed!

I just didn't want to "over reach"