MOTUnation.com

First let me say that I want to use M5 for sound design type things, I have no need for realistic piano, bass, etc. I want to use pieces of sounds like synth. But...

I can't seem to make a loop work.
I put in a sample, make a crossfade loop section, but it nearly always has clicks in it no matter how I adjust the start and end and crossfade.

I had the same problem in M5 v1 but I thought it was just v1. With v2 I can zoom in and see the start and end down to the sample level so you'd think I could loop it correctly, no matter how short. But I can't. Even with medium long pieces I can't get it to loop smoothly, even with forward-reverse and the longest crossfade.

I don't really understand, if the crossfade will not smooth out the clicks then what does it do? And why is there a limit to the length of the crossfade? And why does the crossfade screw up the view so I can't really see exactly where I'm crossfading?

This is very frustrating. I hardly ever used M5 v1 because it was limited in the functions I wanted (and because of the ilok). It really looked like v2 was what I expected v1 to be and I was really excited, but I can't get it to happen.

Am I trying to to something it just won't do, or is it broken? Any tips?

If my description of what I'm trying to do is not making sense, think of when you select a really short section of audio in something like DSP Quattro and loop play. It's like a tone. I want to play that with the keyboard.

bb

Just curious, Bongo; are you using 2.0 or 2.0.1? I haven't used the loop editor yet, but when messing with Apple loops, I heard a lot of clicking in 2.0 that went away in 2.0.1. At least I think it did. It was worse in some loops than others, so maybe when I checked it later I was just using the right loops. But I think they may have improved it. Are you in 2.0.1?

Shoosh

2.01.

Damn. That means it's just buggy. I hope you'll send a TechNote to MOTU.

Shooshie

I was able to loop various samples in version 1, tho I used the zero crossing method rather than relying on crossfades.

Anyway, you didn't mention your experience so a question:

Are you samples mono or stereo? If stereo then you'll need to watch out that both left/right channels are both at zero crossing for your start/end loops. Also, you'll need a certain loop length to make sure you have enough samples (those more technical can say how many).

So I tried looping/crossfading a couple of mono samples and it works fine, without clicking.

Can you post an unedited and edited sample on the web so I can take a look at it on my system?

On the stereo samples I probably don't have zero crossing on both sides, but isn't that what the crossfade is for? If the longest crossfade doesn't take out the click then what does it do?

If it will only loop with mono samples, no crossfade, at zero crossings, then it's gonna have pretty limited usefulness.

I haven't had time to play with it again lately, I'll try it next week when I get home.

bb