Making loops from warped tracks *without* consolidating?

[robbmasters]

I've got a lot of full tracks warped in Live, but I'd now like to cut them into loops for greater flexibility when performing. Obviously I can do this by cutting them up and consolidating or rendering each section.

But I don't really want to do it that way. Why not? Because in doing so the loop will get timestretched twice, which is likely to lead to a more apparent loss in quality.

In case I'm not being clear, suppose I recorded a live track at 125bpm. However, as it was played live the timing was a little sloppy. I've warped this track so it's now accurately 125bpm, but the original actually varies from 123 to 127 bpm. If I consolidate / render a section that includes such tempo changes, Live will perform whatever timestretching is necessary to make the new loop exactly 125bpm. If I now play the new loop back in a Live set at 126bpm it will get timestretched for a second time.

What I really need is to be able to simply cut up the original audio file, and keep the relevant warp markers with each section. Either that or I need the Holy Grail of multiple ASDs for one WAV....

The only other thing I can think of is to create my loops in a Live set, and just keep him in that Live set - not try to save them as loops. But as you also can't load multiple sets, this is going to give me a massive set with memory demands to match.

Does anyone know another way?

Thanks,

Robb

[serotoninsteve]

You could cut them in an external audio editor into sections you want to use before importing them into Live, then warp them in Live.
So they are streched only 1 time, but I did´n want to do that, too much work.
We definately need multiple .asd files or multiple loop areas per sample or whatsoever.
And improved loop section handling, for better setting up loop points on the fly, for the moment it´s a hassle!

Greetings

Steve

[robbmasters]

Thanks. But having already warped them, I'll lose that warp information if I do it now, and I don't really want to have to warp them all again....

[grover]

you can use a sample in multiple clips, with different regions.

For example you can take an 8 beat sample and make the first half a clip, and the second half a different clip. Why can't you do this for the various regions of the songs you've already warped?

[serotoninsteve]

you can use a sample in multiple clips, with different regions.

For example you can take an 8 beat sample and make the first half a clip, and the second half a different clip. Why can't you do this for the various regions of the songs you've already warped?

Because you can save only one .als file per sample!
You can create multiple clips from your sample in one set, but you cant drag them from the browser into a new set, only copy and paste from one set into an other.

Greetings

Steve

[robbmasters]

Exactly. And I don't that "massive set with memory demands to match" described above.

[sickpuppy]

I'd still say use an external editor, if you cut them properly and the tunes have a solid rhythm you'll probably find that you won't actually need to warp them again.

And if you name them properly, there should be no need to keep the original tune coz you can just pull all the parts in one after the other. Alternatively, why not just keep the full tune as an mp3 or wma?

Obviously depends on what you would want to do with the full tune??

[zeropoint]

Exactly. And I don't that "massive set with memory demands to match" described above.

Why the massive memory demands? Any regions you create from the original file are just referencing that file aren't they? And unless you're using legato a lot and have switched the ram function on for a clip they're just streaming from disk, no? I have two sets one called Tracks to Warp and another Warped Tracks, like a big audio pool. .In the warped tracks I am creating regions of all the loops I'm likely to use from that track and stacked them in groups associated with it. I've only just started mucking with the DJ side of Live but already there's a good 50 tracks on the go with associated loops. Am I missing something? Am I going to run into some memory wall here at some point?

I agree it's a pain not being able to save regions as loops or load multple sets but for now there ain't no way round it.......I guess as time goes on I'll have Warped Tracks 1, Warped Tracks 2 etc and I'll print screen to keep a catalog of where things are. And then just when my library system is perfected 4.1 will be released and you'll be able to save loops and load multiple sets and create envelope libraries etc. etc. Then I just think back to the heady days of archiving my emu samples onto zips and thank god I hadn't got the bug in the days when it was all on floppies.......

[drush]

if you navigate to where the files and asd's are stored on your computer and you make duplicate copies of both (w/ whatever auto renaming convention your os then gives the copies) couldn't you just 'regionalize' the warped copies, as many copies as you like? sure this means increased storage but so what. wouldn't this accomplish being able to have as many ~versions/loop sections of the track as you like without having to re-warp?

[zeropoint]

Sure you could.....but lets say you have 5 loops from each track and each track is say 70MB. That means including your original you've just eaten up nearly half a gig and one of those loops might have been just two beats say. At that rate your going to eat up your storage pretty darned quick. Ok for one set of say two hours in which you mix eg twenty main tracks and use 5 loops from each of them plus 2 loops say from another 20 other tracks you'd be looking at about 11 Gigs - and that's reasonably conservative given that you'd probably have created a mix in and mix out loop for each track any way That's not so bad in itself but when you start to consider building an ongoing loop library that way ......70 MB for two beats here, 70MB for another 4 there it's going to get out of hand pretty soon. It's a pretty wasteful way to go really and like Robb says you'd end up with massive sets and an even more massive library set if you wanted all your loops gathered together in one place.......though I'm still unclear as to the problem of the attendant "memory demands" that he mentions.

[drush]

seems like the answer for now is cut them up, then warp.

..which doesn't answer the original issue.

[robbmasters]

The reason I mention the memory demands is that before I got my laptop, I did some test on a couple a machines to see how much RAM I would really need. Once Live was loaded up the PC was using around 256MB. Every time I added a clip (not a sample) this went up by about 1MB. I assumed this was because it had to buffer an amount of each clip into RAM, as you could trigger that clip at any moment. Maybe this stops rising at some point - though I'm not sure how, as each clip would still need to be buffered (if that is indeed what it's doing).

[xeb]

when you drag a new clip into live it renders the whole thing right? this leads to a lag while you wait for it to display the waveform. if you're doing this with a 9 min long track because you want one 4 beat loop in it then this is going to overload the system, even if only when you drag them into your set.

good question robb and one i've wondered about myself. i agree that chopping them in a sample editor is not really an option. i can't see another way around it other than the consolidate option.. hopefully someone else will..........

[zeropoint]

[quote="xeb"]when you drag a new clip into live it renders the whole thing right? this leads to a lag while you wait for it to display the waveform. if you're doing this with a 9 min long track because you want one 4 beat loop in it then this is going to overload the system, even if only when you drag them into your set.



Onlyif this is the first time it has been loaded. After that Live has already created the .asd file and the clip is referencing the file on disk. But as Robb says something is getting loaded into ram each time you load a clip even with the clip's ram switch off

Oh and Robb thanks for getting back re the memory. I've run some tests on my system now too. It doesn't seem to be buffering as the amount of ram taken up is dependent on the size of file. Short loops seem to be eating about 0.5MB but I loaded a compilation track of about 45 mins I think and that ate 4MB. I guess if it was buffering the start of the file the length of that file would not be an issue...no? Any ways this is very interesting....I haven't stripped down my OS to the bone but a Live Set with 50 full tracks gives a total system ram result of 650MB! Glad I've got that 1 Gigs worth........