How is the sample quality/performability?

[carrythebanner]

How do you override the range? I could not find the function for this...

Use the controls in the Pitch section. The orange-ish buttons provide audio transposition up to +/- 24 semitones (2 octaves). I find it's easiest to use these if you slap a transpose plug-in on the MIDI track that's feeding Ethno, so the keys you play correspond to the proper pitch (i.e., if you transpose down 7 semis in Ethno, transpose up 7 semis in the MIDI transpose plug-in).

This doesn't really work out well if you have Ethno as part of a device group in DP.

I understand MOTU's logic in limiting the range of each sound to the instrument's natural range, but it would be REALLY nice if it functioned a bit more like every other sample playback device out there, and let users EASILY stretch note ranges above or below the natural range. There have been a few times where I needed a sound to go just a bit higher or lower than the provided range...
All of the suggestions above are work-arounds to what should be a standard feature.

After all, we have controls for filters and envelopes, so if MOTU feels like they can give us these sound mutation features, why not transposition out of the original instrument's natural range as well?

You can load the Ethno sounds in MachFive 2, so this is now possible if you own M5. No consolation if you don't have M5, but if you do you can take your Ethno (and MSI) sounds to town.

[dosuna11]

How do you override the range? I could not find the function for this...

Use the controls in the Pitch section. The orange-ish buttons provide audio transposition up to +/- 24 semitones (2 octaves). I find it's easiest to use these if you slap a transpose plug-in on the MIDI track that's feeding Ethno, so the keys you play correspond to the proper pitch (i.e., if you transpose down 7 semis in Ethno, transpose up 7 semis in the MIDI transpose plug-in).

This doesn't really work out well if you have Ethno as part of a device group in DP.

I understand MOTU's logic in limiting the range of each sound to the instrument's natural range, but it would be REALLY nice if it functioned a bit more like every other sample playback device out there, and let users EASILY stretch note ranges above or below the natural range. There have been a few times where I needed a sound to go just a bit higher or lower than the provided range...
All of the suggestions above are work-arounds to what should be a standard feature.

After all, we have controls for filters and envelopes, so if MOTU feels like they can give us these sound mutation features, why not transposition out of the original instrument's natural range as well?

I love the sounds in Ethno. If you are just trying to raise or lower the pitch record the pitch and use pitch shift to perform the operation.