Looping audio clips to playback without warping

[longjohns]

i've never actually had a problem with re-pitch myself

i just had remembered reading that thread and had considered it to be the latest/greatest in terms of the various experimenting which people have done...

[forge]

yeah I personally love repitch mode, at least when changing tempo

taking a fast loop and slowing it right down or vice versa can sound awesome - especially if you use Hi-Q interpolation

[paradiddle]

If you render a loop and the pitch varies with repitch then the rendering wouldn't be accurate.

I guess he said not to use repitch is because as there is a chance no matter how small that the pitch will vary and you would assume that it's undesirable

[Cryptic UK]

Ohhhhh yes it is

Ohhhhh no its not.

Its behind you!

[forge]

Ohhhhh yes it is

Ohhhhh no its not.

Its behind you!

getting to that time of year again

watch out for les Dennis as captain hook or julian clary as tinkerbell!

I'm sure you'll find them somewhere

[dj superflat]

one reason to want looping without warp is so that you can record loops in session view, all the convenience that affords, but not affect sound quality. if you're making your own loops or building up songs via loop-like segments, it's much more convenient to work in session (though you could do roughly the same in arrangement by setting up looping sections to work in) so you can try out different arrangements, etc. but if you're making loops out of (e.g.) recorded guitars or voice, any warping is very noticeable, so you want whatever mode will leave the sound alone if tempo stays fixed. obviously, this is not a concern if you want to play with pitch or tempo of samples/loops.

[paradiddle]

I'm really getting confused here.

You guys said "beats" has the solution. Beats mode means warping. That's why we said repitch cuz if you render any loop at the same tempo and set them to repitch, it shouldn't affect pitch or anything else unless you change the tempo.

Repitch works like a traditional sampler. If you load a sample at C3 in a sampler, it will be the same at the root note like the original unless you go a semitone up or down. The sample is speed or slowed down.


If you could just loop any clip without any repitch or warp mode, then the loops would be out of sync when you change the tempo.

[dj superflat]

the point is how to use looping -- which requires a warp mode -- yet not affect sound. so beats mode works because you're keeping the reference tempo the same, so it's just playing effectively the middle C sample.

repitch, by contrast, can change the sound of the loop even at the same tempo as recorded.

and, yes, this means you can't change the tempo. that's the point -- this is for folks who want to work with loops but do so at a fixed tempo. if you're going to make use of warp other than simple looping, you need to select whatever mode works best.

[paradiddle]

How does repitch change the sound? It is not suppose to change the sound at all if you keep the tempo fixed. There's no warping of the sound in repitch. No timestretching at all. The warp markers are there but if you add and move some warp markers, all it does is speed up or slow down the sample.

If you render a loop with made with a midi clip and impulse at 100 and then reload it and set to repitch, the sound will remain unaltered because you are not changing the tempo. If the sound varies then the repitch is flawed or the rendering isn't sample accurate.

You assume that since Repitch is under warp mode that it is a timestretching of some sort but it isn't.


In the manual:

9.3.4 Re-Pitch Mode
In Re-Pitch Mode, Live doesn’t really time-stretch or compress the music; instead, it adjusts
the playback rate to create the desired amount of stretching. In other words, to speed
up playback by a factor of 2, it’s transposed up an octave. This is like the DJ stretching
method of using variable-speed turntables to sync two records, or what happens to samples
in samplers when they’re transposed.
The Transpose and Detune controls have no effect in Re-Pitch Mode.

[dj superflat]

look, not to be obnoxious, but just read the thread. there's been a demonstration that repitch can change the sound even though you think it wouldn't. this is in part because tempo can go beyond the decimal places shown in live. and ingo from ableton weighed in to confirm all this, and to say that beats is the one to use if you're not changing tempo and don't want potential artifacts.

[Cryptic UK]

The option of looping without the warp on would be nice would it, sounds pretty simple aswell.

[forge]

if you read the post by Ingo on the last page the reason he said maybe not to use repitch is that if there are any problems of inaccuracy beyond the 2nd decimal place then it could start to change the pitch to compensate

- the way he worded it made me think that he meant over time it could drift more and more until there might actually be a slight detectable change in pitch over time in a long file

I took the fact that he made this comment at all to either be some kind of acknowledgement that maybe beats mode could be more reliably accurate in the 2nd decimal place calculation side of things, or just that he was going on an assumption that a slight variation in pitch over time would be less desirable than any timestretching that would occur - probably more likely the latter

he was saying that it is likely the sample WILL NOT BE WARPED if it is at the same tempo as it was recorded at

so the only reason to object is because you dont trust Live to make the decision, because it seems highly likely that if you keep the sample at the original tempo it wont be warped but there is always a slight chance


I personally didnt use beats mode for non-rhythmic material for years because I assumed it would be worse for quality, but because of this post I tested it yesterday and could not tell any difference between the source and recorded material in Beats mode so it wasnt being affected at all

but I have never noticed any problems in all this time of using repitch mode either

the answer I think is, you can use beats mode if you are working with the original tempo UNLESS you notice any problems, then if so try repitch

but in my experience you are totally safe to use repitch from the word go and at least then you KNOW the sound quality wont be affected, only pitch if anything at all

and despite all this I will carry on using pitch as my preferred option for this situation unless I notice any pitch changes which I think is unlikely

to be honest I still find it a little odd that Ingo made the comment to use beats because of the very small chance that if there IS a difference then it will be the quality that is affected, but as I said I can only assume that he was saying that would be preferable to pitch variations

but as we are talking about the 2nd decimal place the problems are likely to be small and rare if the tempo is kept the same, so I wouldnt worry about it too much, and if you are more worried about sound quality, repitch has always worked great for me

[forge]

sounds pretty simple aswell.

that's the common trap - what sounds simple to you or me usually isnt for a million reasons we havent thought of

although I suspect in this case it's more because they are so confident there is no need to because it it most likely a sample kept at the same tempo will not be warped

[Cryptic UK]

looping without warp on.......yes good idea +1

[Ball Sack]

This would be very handy for me, +1