Well, hang on. The internal memory is 64MB, so if you record live into the Deluge, I don’t think it can be anything longer than what 64MB can take. Which arguably is a lot, but if you’ve an ambient set going within the Deluge that’s about two hours long, and you wanna record that from and into the Deluge, that won’t work. It can stream anything of any length, but I don’t think it can record more than what 64MB can take, in one take.
But I recorded all my Deluge tracks this way, they were about five minutes long, those that were the longest. Pretty great. Dream it. Build it. Mix it. Master it. Record it. All in one box.
I have had a Deluge since August and it’s a great machine that’s been really well supported from the developers. One thing I would say though is that it’s not up to the level of the OT (or even close) when it comes to sample mangling goodness.
But the Deluge has so many other different strengths in other areas!
Almost on the verge of selling it all and buying a Deluge as a all-in-one solution, buuuut… one question, first!
I read there was a basic slicer mode. When you slice a long sample into, say, 16 slices, can you edit the in and out points of each slice afterwards? Or does the Deluge apply a trim on each slice and that’s it? For instance, if you’re slicing a really funky drumbreak and end up with a slice where the transient is missing, can you edit the in point and get the transient back from the previous slice?
Great, it does both polymeters and polyrhythms. Tracks can be any length of steps individually, and there’s a function called ‘sync scaling’ which enables true polyrhythms together with other gear.
From the manual:
"Sync-scaling
For users syncing the Deluge as a slave and wanting to make use of unusual time signatures, sync-scaling is a fun feature. A track of an unusual time signature may be created by setting its length to an unusual number of beats - e.g. seven 8th-notes. Using sync-scaling, the Deluge, when synced as a slave, can make those seven 8th-notes take up the same amount of time that the incoming MIDI beat clock says that eight 8th-notes are meant to take up.
There are a couple of applications for this:
● The user may wish to create polyrhythms by e.g. having an external device (the syncing master) playing a sequence in 4:4 timing, while the Deluge (the slave) squeezes 7 notes into a bar instead of 8.
● As mentioned above, some loop pedals may act as a syncing master. However, they are likely to assume that any loop created (e.g. with a guitar) is in 4:4 timing. If the user had in fact played a guitar loop in 7:8 timing, the loop pedal would still be outputting a 4:4 MIDI beat clock - dividing the entire loop into, say, fours rather than sevens. The solution is to tell the Deluge to scale the incoming 4:4 MIDI beat clock into a 7:8 one, so that a 7:8 sequence created on the Deluge would play perfectly synced to the 7:8 guitar loop, despite the incorrect 4:4 MIDI beat clock passing between the two devices.
Sync-scaling is tied to the length of one track in a song, and tells the Deluge that that track’s length should be squeezed into 1 bar of incoming MIDI beat clock (or 2 bars, or 4 or 8 bars, depending on how long the track is; the Deluge will use whatever magnitude of sync-scaling causes the smallest change in tempo)."
What about if you wanted to make a 3/4 track? You’d still have to do the sequencer mathematics to plug things in for multiple bars? (Page one is 16 steps, Page 2 8 steps)
I mean, I suppose the zoom in/zoom out would assist in this- but I don’t suppose the pages would be altered accordingly, would it?
Some mathematics are required You can also multiply-copy whatever length you make a track. Generally it does very well with odd time signatures and jazzy rhythms.
The Deluge has a dedicated button that switches the grid from 3/4 to 4/4. On the Deluge, 3/4 can be programmed over 4/4 more easily than any other machine I’ve used.