recycle is god-awful

jesus.

i haven't used recycle in earnest since 2006, when i used it exclusively (until the mpc1000 got CHOP/ZONE). i used to use it daily, i liked it good enough. but when i could do it on the mpc there was just no point in using it.

flash forward, it's today, and i tried to use recycle because for some reason Short Circuit doesn't accept waves that i chop from the mpc1000... (any suggestions on that?). so instead i just import the wav and decide to chop it on Recycle. this is a big sample, i wanted to take 64+ slices from it, of various shapes and sizes

first: i was horrified to remember that Recycle doesn't allow horizontal zooming via mousewheel. seriously, that's the FIRST step in pissing me off - i hate any editing platform that doesn't horizontal zoom on mousewheel. if there's a hotkey for this, PLEASE someone tell me. without this, zooming in to find the precise transient in the waveform is a tedious task and worse yet...

2nd: unintuitive playback. i'm sitting here trying to control this thing exclusively via keyboard and it won't let me. i searched for hotkeys/keyshortcuts in recycle but didn't find any. how can i play a single, current slice so i can edit by ear (since zooming in is such a pain in the ass?) instead, it appears i can only do this via mouse...again, if someone has keyboard shortcuts etc that i'm missing, be a hero.

third: the whole procedure of inputting how many bars/beats your sample is ("grid" based chopping, or "zoning") is bullsh!t. folks, just let me drop my slices. i don't know how many bars this 47 second sample of percussion is, and i don't care cuz i'm only out to get some oneshots. why force it?

i'm amazed by how frustrated i quickly got with this software. i can't believe i recommended it to so many people back in the day. worse yet i can't believe i used it so much - but i guess it's a matter of making due with what i had.

Yeah that's exactly what it is. Making do. If you were on a Mac I would recommend DSP Quattro. It allows you to highlight a portion of the audio file and drag it directly into other apps/samplers. Or Audiofinder, which can chop, but is better as a browser, and also great for printing effects to samples. I've never used Recycle, so I can't help you on that front.

As for SC not loading chopped MPC samples, first have you asked the developers? They seem to be pretty accessible (and you may have discovered a bug). Second, try opening the chopped samples in an audio editor, and resaving them with no changes. Certain hardware samplers write the header data wrong, and that open-save procedure can sometimes correct it. Its weird though, I've never had a problem with using chopped 1k samples in Battery or Kontakt.

Yo Nym,

I used Recycle exclusively for chopping until I got an MPC 9 months ago.

Speaking for myself I found it pretty good (I'd give it B grade I was testing it).

I'm not aware of any hot keys but this has never bothered me so much.
As for entering the number of bars, if you only want to grab single hits then does the bar value really matter (i.e any value > 1 will be okay).

Also...you must admit the .rex format is damn useful with EXS24/Kontact etc.

Mostly I like it because it does a specific job well (chops). If you don't like the auto detect you can use your own divide and conquer technique so you can be flexi able.

My only complaint would be that you have to covert your files to wavs before using Recycle. It would be awesome if you could

1) Record snippets as waves or as a poor substitute
2) If it had an mp3 converter in built


In any case, if I was as fluent in the MPC as you are I wouldn't be bothering with Recycle.

i have an mpc 2000 classic, so it doesn't have the zoning features like the xl, so i basically live off recycle. If you think recycle is a **** try out the 2000, for longer samples i just chop them on the 2000, but for one shots i use Recycle. It isn't all that bad and gets the job done. Plus the attack,decay, and time stretch are very useful to keep samples from getting too choppy. If I had a 1000 though i probably wouldn't be anywhere near recycle haha

Pre JJ - recycle and bluebox would have been damn handy.

I agree Recycle isn't perfect, but a few keyboard shortcuts that keep me going are the arrow keys which move you from slice to slice, the up arrow plays the current slice.
Apple+J to go to current cursor/ slice position.
Apple+click to zoom in, Apple+Alt+click to zoom out.
Bear in mind I'm on a mac so it will be ctrl on a PC I imagine.
The way I chop is to have my left hand on the keyboard arrow keys and my right on the mouse using the pencil tool to manually chop the slices. I don't worry too much about getting the trimming exactly right because I can tidy this up in the MPC or Battery later on, but once you get used to it you should be able to get a zoom view you're comfortable with and your chops will be spot on after a while.
Saying all this I have just been demoing Audiofinder from Iced Audio which looks incredible. You can chop and drag new wav files out of any audio file without having to go through the Recycle process of inserting slice points, saving as a Rex file, exporting etc. I was trying it last night dragging slices directly from Audiofinder into Battery cells and it worked a treat. I would imagine it would work the same with MPC editing software as well. Mac only though I'm afraid. http://www.icedaudio.com/

Yeah, i have a love/hate thing with recycle..But, does the job! But is in need of a serious update! Nym, I understand the frustration. WHEN Was the last time there was an update to the program??? Feels like forever! The hot keys I feel you on...I would also would have like to see being able to Trigger/Test my samples via midi before I export (at least I know what I am getting!!!!!), i guess like Phatmatik (to buggy)

I really think recycle need a serious update! Buy the way when did Recycle 2.1 come out?


PS: I might add, If there was a way to rearrange slices, in recycle, that would be nice option to!

thank you all for your comments, very helpful and thoughtful
djconrad, especially thanks for the "up" cursor comment. i thought i'd tried that but you're right, it plays the current slice. that's perfect. now i can just stay zoomed in pretty deep and preview single slices - a LOT more elegant than my previous method.
mp3, i will see if i can't figure out what's wrong w/ the slices from the 1k...i dream of making my beat in the mpc and then exporting the samples into SC1 and triggering them via the programmed midi from the original track on the mpc...that is, for programs that don't make much use of qlink or specific program settings.

uptight, rex format is VERY useful, there's no question about it. which is why recycle deserves an overhaul. WHY do software "samplers" not sample??? recycle should be able to record/edit start/endpoints of snippets. seriously, why force a user to do this in another process? .... last, i wouldn't be using recycle if i didn't have a temporary problem with sc1 not loading my 1000's chopped wavs.

Nym wrote:WHY do software "samplers" not sample???

I couldn't agree more. The problem is that people who actually make their own samples (samplists as we're called) are in the vast minority of all people who use samplers. The vast majority of sampler users use them to load prefabbed samples and edit them minimally. So our workflows are not catered for in software products.

However there may be help on the way. Steinberg's new VST3 SDK allows VSTi's to receive audio input. So now its up to the developers to implement it. (I have wet dreams about Battery 3 with sample inputs...)

http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM08 ... /VST3.html

As of right now, the best options for the software samplists are 1) Emulator X2 standalone, 2) Edison + Directwave, or 3) Battery 3 + an audio editor. But with all those options you still need other pieces (sequencer, soundcard, MIDI interface, etc.) to complete the picture. Hence we mostly all stick to our MPCs and ASRs.

With Ableton Live or Logic 8, you can simply record an audio file and drag it from the arrange into a sampler. Logic also has an auto chop kind of thing. With Ableton Live, you can record audio to session clips and trigger them with about any midi controller/qwerty keyboard, without stopping the sequencer. Basically, Live is one big audio sampler

Battery 4 needs audio in, though....


About your problem, try to create regions in an audio editor and slice those regions in your MPC. This is probably only possible if your MPC reads WAV files. If you want to keep your original tempo, you need to set your BPM and bars and beats before you slice, in the MPC. I think 32 regions is the max. Anything above that results in a system error.

Propellerhead is just a weird company in general. It's weird that recycle 2.1 is more or less a dumbed down version of 2.0. 2.0 has some amazing features if you use older samplers (especially akai racks). They just dropped that for no reason and from what i can see, it doesn't add much.


The only shortcuts i use is the up key, Ctrl +/-, and ctrl J.

And i agree, i never understood why it doesn't record audio. Does propellerhead just not know how to do this? None of their programs can record audio. However, i find the rex format very useful. I can use it for reason (or most other software), use the akai format and have a program file on an mpc, or transfer sounds directly to my akai rack through scsi from my computer. So that makes it so i can never move on from it. It covers every base. I can even transfer my chops to my asr 10 through midi but it takes WAY too long.

hell yeah REX is a great format...but making rexes is not quite so nice.
someone ought to make a freeware slicer
i hate how the industry caters to preset surfers and actual sampling is (as it seems to have always been) thrust into a dark corner where akai offers you a backrub and a glass of nyquil

i have a similar problem but its the other way around. WAV data i export from ableton doesnt open up in the 2000xl, and its the correct format. My work around is to do a batch conversion using dbPowerAMp, only takes like 20 seconds.

i just use Audacity to chop one shots if the sample is in the mac.

I find it way faster then recycle. Just highlight the section, export as wav quick key and name then move on.

I find it way faster in the MPC or rack mount sampler.

not much help, but i could never really get into recycle i tryed and failed due to your same issues.