Feels weird asking the forum for help on this one, as I am a long-time OT user and I got my looping workflow down ages ago!
However, I just bought a 2nd OT purely for transition-looping duties, and I’m getting some nasty clicks when creating loops - the kind I haven’t had an issue with before.
Here’s my setup:
I am feeding the Stereo output of my main rig into the AB input of the OT
OT is slaved to midi clock from the rig
OT track 7 is set up to record 64 steps, via a one-shot recorder trig
recorder trig is set to SRC ‘main’
any thoughts/tips of things to avoid clicks? please feel free to state the obvious!
(i’ve never tried out the pick-up machines. might they be useful here?)
well one obvious thing is that when you set up the track recorder, you can set it to record with a little fade-in and fade-out. so, go to the 2nd page of the recorder setup (FUNCTION + REC CD) and turn rotary encoder A for fade-in (labelled FIN in the popup window) and encoder B for fade-out (FOUT). try the lowest values first.
That fadeIn FadeOut option doesn’t work that well for me, I think the prob was, that these fades adds length to file… (not 100% on that one anymore)
what does help for me is multiple triggers + very small attack. Here is a real world example:
Say I want a “thru-machine” . I setup a flex-machine, linked to the recorder-slot of that track. (recorder X for track X) . I place a recording-trigger on step01, for 16steps.
now I add play-triggers, and I p-lock sample-start
When you play, you should hear what-ever source you sampled (inputs, cue,whatever)
like it should. Now comes fun part, for every beat you think is important. place trigger, and set correct sample-start. your clicks will be gone… and yes, you can do allot more with these triggers… much more fun then regular thru-machine… and very effective against clicks.
the way i recall it, the fade in and out both happen at the start
/*************** fade in and recording
\ overdubbed fadeout
X************** ends up like this, either way length is right
i don’t think it’s as bullet proof as normal fading strategies, because of the possibility of interrupting a sustaining low freq note at the fadeout
it will click on play back, especially a sin wave, very obvious
i don’t think it does this much more robust approach
/***************
easy to test with a slow fade recording of white noise, which is what i think i did originally a year ago
anyway, i like the ideas that your strategy gives me for staggering playback, but wonder whether it cures clicks in a sin wave for the 16 back to 1 loop point, but intriguing #OTtip anyway
well one obvious thing is that when you set up the track recorder, you can set it to record with a little fade-in and fade-out. so, go to the 2nd page of the recorder setup (FUNCTION + REC CD) and turn rotary encoder A for fade-in (labelled FIN in the popup window) and encoder B for fade-out (FOUT). try the lowest values first.[/quote]
ah - will experiment with the fades. i go into the 2nd page to set the record trig to pattern length, but hadn’t played with the fades
is the new OT running the same OS as your original one? There have been some fixes that may change the behavior slightly, depending on how old the OS is.
Also - if you’re slaving to MIDI clock, forget about Pickup machines - they need to be running on an OT that is the master clock. They drop out of Overdub as soon as they loop if the OT is slaved.
In Record Set-up 2 the Fade Out parameter adds sound after the audio ends not before. So if you set Fade Out to be say 4 beats then when you hit stop (and whilst watching the audio wave being recorded) you’ll notice that audio is still being sampled for those 4 beats.
I hope fixing clicks happens in a future update as smooth playback is essential for me.
Yeah, my bad sorta here, the ascii diagram i tried to render above where the fade in and fade out were concurrent only and obviously applies to pickup machines, i guess i’m a little surprised and disappointed to learn that if you try to capture a loop using a flex that the fadeout is working as described - say you record a 16 step seq and set FIN and FOUT to 1, the recording will be 17steps long, so no matter how short the fade out (except nil) the loop is extended … if you grab it all, if you don’t grab it all and take the first 16steps worth, then the fade out is pointless for a loop capture
i got it wrong earlier in the thread, is this reflection (hopefully) wrong, because as far as i can remember you can’t do manual fades (which means it probably is possible) > goes to rtfm
thoughts?
i wouldn’t fade a loop over a step, it was just a quick discernible test, glad the manual fade is there, think i’ll go that way for loops from now on, the fade in is fine, but even a short fade out has to mess with the timing, but doesn’t seem to be causing much of a ruckus so may be no big deal, i think i assumed that if loop was set to on the recording would fadeout as an overdub, apparently not, i guess the editor doesn’t do crossfades though, probably hard to ui that ! - sounds to me like it would be better to have an automated fade envelope on playback that sat perfectly within the time window, oh well
i think the issue i had was that for some of the material i make th pickup machines were clicking all the time and that’s simply (in some cases) down to the phase of a low freq sound at the restart of a start/end, if you have gentle sustaining sounds a click is very evident and to be honest, of all the looping devices and delays i’ve used i’ve never heard any be so bad with similar material, again all down to the crossfade/playback strategies that were incorporated, phrases and noisy material is less prone to resulting in obvious clicks, so it depends what you are doing at the loop point and what sits around it
