If you do decide to give DigiChain a go, and want to use different grid sizes, you can Ctrl+Click on one of the slice grid option buttons to set a custom size e.g.:
Drop your samples into the list then press the Joined (Spaced) button to get files out all containing 24 slices, all slices are padded to the length of the longest sample in the list. If you have less than 24 samples, the last sample is repeated to ensure the chain is 24 slices long.
This is correct. You have to make sure the final slice is the same length as the rest. If you trim down to the end of the waveform only, there’s a chance the samples wont line up when you wiggle the STA param on the Rytm.
So for one of my tests, I had one sample chain that was 12 beats, and one that was 20 beats. I then highlighted just those samples and exported.
Each sample took up no more than 1 beat. Some samples were shorter than 1 beat, but never went over.
Seems right. You need to make sure that the end of the section you’re exporting lines up with the very end of the final beat (i.e. drag the selection end or loop end marker to the following beat. If you have 12 samples, the selection end marker will be on beat 13.). This way, you have 12 equal chunks you can step through with the STA param.
Amazing, I cant believe this might be what I missed. I’m literally going to try this right now I can’t wait!
Rather than highlighting the samples - use the loop bracket so the export only renders that portion of the timeline.
I already said it, but OctaChainer takes care of all of this, +sample rate/bit depth.
DigiChain does too 
I’ll check out these apps for sure.
Looks like the export length was my problem! My “long” sample chain just happened to be all 120 1 bar loops, which meant highlighting all the samples resulted in the correct sample chain length.
These others ones all happened to have the final sample less than a bar, and I was ending my selection there instead of the FULL last bar.
You can see why that caused me to get completely thrown off and question the math, etc.
Thanks so much for the help, I was really starting to get bummed out about this because it’s a huge part of my planned workflow.
@brian3kb
@Octagonist
@LyingDalai
@chapelierfou
@Lizard-of-Oz
This makes sense. Totally the kind of things I suspected. Glad you sorted it out !
Hahahaha yeah.
Me too man, this community is great!
Really interesting discussion, first time I hear about sample chains!
But I do not get one thing: can’t one achieve the same (and more) using sound pools?
With sound pools you can program each trigger to play a certain sound (not even just a sample) which you put in the pool, per pad.
Yes, but the 128 sounds per project feels like a massive limitation to me.
Yes, but sample chains make finding/choosing sounds a lot faster. Less time spent browsing once you have a couple of go-to chains handy.
As for making the chains themselves, I’ve found that the best option is with a Drum Rack in Ableton. I’ve got a bunch of clips for all the possible numbers of samples (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 40, 60, 120). I then simply populate the rack (without forgetting to assign a choke a group to all samples) and adjust the space between each sample with the project’s BPM, then export according to the clip’s length. There’s also the option of applying dynamics processing or EQ. I then pitch the resulting file up by an octave to save space.
