OK Ill say im still fairly new to this -- because on my mpc 1000, 2000xl, and 4000 there exists no option [that im aware of] to do non-destructive slices. You can chop it or you can go chop it- - that's it.
Now we can slice it up like a pizza pie and keep it together. The first question we need to be asking is "why?"
- Why would i want to do it this way, or the other way? My answer can be different from someone else's and we can still both be right -- I'm really curious to see how others are creating equations and solutions to this.
Getting right to the point - I am finding it best to use the non-destructive slices in situations with drum loops and melodies that I am not sure exactly where i want to make my cut(s) , or times when i might still need to edit the sample externally as a whole, and also -- the best use for it i have found is to make really authentic sounding hand pans and other acoustic drums. The easy way i found to get this effect is by making all your cuts into however many regions,or individual notes, or however you do it. Get them exactly how you want them - and then unlink your slices. This allows you to overlap your slices - so now you can go through and extend the end of each slice to grab just a little more acoustic noise before the next kick, or snare. It really seems to help blend everything together and have a more natural sound.
This is also great for amen chops. Just go nuts.
+++
For most situations, creating your programs by cropping new samples is undoubtably the best way to go... for me at least. Here's why ---- first -- what Monotremata and a few others mentioned early in this thread about how changes to one slice effect other slices, and they still sometimes go funky and do weird unpredictable things. If you like that sort of thing than get to slicing. If you like your sounds and actions to be precise and predictable, then chop it up. Its also really easy to build a bunch of kits by slicing several things into new programs, then browsing through your active memory to re-arrange and layer your cuts into more new programs in ways limited only by your imagination, and your internal RAM. AS soon as that thing hits 2Gbz's you're gonna see some serious sh+t - like all of your unsaved new programs and samples gone without a trace. You think it wont happen but once you chop you can't stop and you will be fine as long as you keep an eye on the RAM usage and save your pgms as you make them.
++
One more thing to always and forever consider is your RAM usage.
I'm trying to get as much out of it as i can, so i can have as many options at my fingertips without thinking about finding, and loading, and chopping more things..
When I'm ready to make music i want to stay in that mindset, not stop every 5 minutes to do tech support.
Oh yeah -- RAM usage. The same is true, I think, as has always been. The smaller you keep your file sizes, the less likely you will be to see latency, memory dumps, CPU going out of control for seemingly no reason, and maybe up to about 50% of the other stuff we read about over in the bug reports section. Most of the times my mpc crashes is because i pushed it past its limit. I thought at first this slicing thing would be the future, since one file is easier for the system to load and manage, so it only needs to load the sample into ram once and will call on it as needed. ... What i found is that it loads the entire sample into RAM multiplied by the number of slices. That can become a massive resource hog.
So either one 25MB wav file, or 64+125k to 1MB wav files, which is better?
We gonna chop it:
(now listening to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp4iTvqrb10 )
