Looping audio clips to playback without warping

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 10:33 pm

try out my tests--clips recorded at the exact tempo of Live have no change in sound when warped.

Cryptic UK · Post by **Cryptic UK** » Mon Nov 14, 2005 10:09 am

ok

live is about being able to do anything, no restrictions, to me this is something that live should have an option to do apart from wether or not warping effects the sound at the same BPM its recorded at. It does use CPU

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:56 am

does it really use cpu when the clip exactly matches the song tempo??? I can't see any change on the cpu meter at all when flipping warp on and off 16 tracks in arrangerview--maybe on slower systems? I'm not trying to be a douche here or keep saying the same thing, but the point is that it is not warping your audio when the clip was recorded exactly at the song tempo, thus I'd be pretty surprised if the cpu jumped much. If I leave the samples on warp and change the tempo to force them to warp, I get little if any cpu change--except for complex warp, it doesn't seem like warping adds much cpu strain at all here...

Ryan

naomh · Post by **naomh** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:26 am

Here's a change of pace. I have decided to give Live5 a try as my main app for creating audio scenes for games. I am presently working on a WWII tank battle. I have many assets (tank treads, machine guns, distant explosions, etc) none of which, by nature, have a BPM property. I have two assets though, 'wind' and 'diesel engine' which I would like to loop. I was assuming I was doing something wrong when I found that the Loop button was only active while the Warp button was on. I need to be able to loop both the wind and the diesel asset without warping. I first looped the diesel engine and found that it popped and clicked. I adjusted the BPM's so that the popping and clicking stopped, but when I looped the wind asset it was just terrible. Obviously, I adjusted the BPM's to get the wind asset to play smoothly but the diesel asset started popping and clipping again.

I thought an easy way to get around this whould be to choose a BPM setting that matched one of the assets and then time stretch the other asset to sync. Unfortunately, the BPM setting is so far away from either asset that I can never get a clean playback.

For guys like me I would love to be able to simply turn on looping without warping.

naomh

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 1:19 am

there are a few ways to work around your problems--have you tried to change the warp type--try "tones" or "textures" and try messing with the various parameters. I find that most of the time that changing the warp modes and adjusting the settings, I can get the audio to sound fairly decent, especially with singular sound elements such as those you are working with (warping whole songs with drums, bass, keys, vocals, etc. is a bit trickier, but can be doen pretty well with Live too). If that fails, you could always just go to arrangerview and string together as many copies of that sound that you might want and consolidate those to a new, longer clip.

Ryan

Cryptic UK · Post by **Cryptic UK** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 1:20 pm

quandry wrote:there are a few ways to work around your problems--have you tried to change the warp type--try "tones" or "textures" and try messing with the various parameters. I find that most of the time that changing the warp modes and adjusting the settings, I can get the audio to sound fairly decent, especially with singular sound elements such as those you are working with (warping whole songs with drums, bass, keys, vocals, etc. is a bit trickier, but can be doen pretty well with Live too). If that fails, you could always just go to arrangerview and string together as many copies of that sound that you might want and consolidate those to a new, longer clip.

Ryan

This is the feature wishlist and we want the option. Stop making this post sound useless, we dont want a work around. My freind told me about that work around that you pointed out were you go into arrangement view and the consolidate clips but both agreed that it would be much faster to just to loop without the warp on.

If you want to support this great if not make another post against this.

thank you.

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:43 pm

Cryptic UK wrote:
quandry wrote:there are a few ways to work around your problems--have you tried to change the warp type--try "tones" or "textures" and try messing with the various parameters. I find that most of the time that changing the warp modes and adjusting the settings, I can get the audio to sound fairly decent, especially with singular sound elements such as those you are working with (warping whole songs with drums, bass, keys, vocals, etc. is a bit trickier, but can be doen pretty well with Live too). If that fails, you could always just go to arrangerview and string together as many copies of that sound that you might want and consolidate those to a new, longer clip.

Ryan
This is the feature wishlist and we want the option. Stop making this post sound useless, we dont want a work around. My freind told me about that work around that you pointed out were you go into arrangement view and the consolidate clips but both agreed that it would be much faster to just to loop without the warp on.

If you want to support this great if not make another post against this.

thank you.

chill out dude. Maybe you should re-read what you quoted of me--I was trying to help him out with a problem he had. Where did I ever say not to include this feature--never. I have pointed a few flaws in peoples assumptions when the the clips tempo anf Live's match, but fully agree that looping without warping would be useful in certaib situations like for the guy doing the game soundtracks. Sorry for trying to help him out and give him a few possible solutions since Live doesn't have the feature he want, oh please forgive me.

no, thank you

Cryptic UK · Post by **Cryptic UK** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:58 pm

yeah sorry should have said, cool for helping him out.

wasnt just that though its what it sounds like.

Too many buts throughout this post.

making it sound pointless.

naomh · Post by **naomh** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:05 pm

quandry wrote:there are a few ways to work around your problems--have you tried to change the warp type--try "tones" or "textures" and try messing with the various parameters. I find that most of the time that changing the warp modes and adjusting the settings, I can get the audio to sound fairly decent, especially with singular sound elements such as those you are working with (warping whole songs with drums, bass, keys, vocals, etc. is a bit trickier, but can be doen pretty well with Live too). If that fails, you could always just go to arrangerview and string together as many copies of that sound that you might want and consolidate those to a new, longer clip.

Ryan

Thanks Q,

I took your advice and changed the Warp setting to "texture". Voila, my loop was clear and clean. Wonderful!! and thank you for the valuable tip. I do find it strange that Ableton has married the loop function to the warp function, but at least there is an easy work around until they make Loop an independant function, which i'm sure they'll have available in the next upgrade, right Ableton, hint, hint.

Thanks,
naomh

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:44 pm

Cryptic UK wrote:yeah sorry should have said, cool for helping him out.

wasnt just that though its what it sounds like.

Too many buts throughout this post.

making it sound pointless.

not really dude, just pointing out feasible workarounds for a feature that doesn't exist, pointing out that it may be difficult to change a seeminly deeply imbedded function, that presumptions of warp degrading sound quality of clips recorded at the exact tempo of the song are unfounded, that said clips aren't even actually warping (or "eating up cpu")at said tempo unless parameters (like transpose) are altered. I still agree that it could be useful for people doing soundtrack stuff like Noamh, but it has a limited audience, as having more than one clip looping at different tempos usually results in cacophony. I can think of a lot of fixes and other feature requests that would help the whole community before they work on this one.

pixel · Post by **pixel** » Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:05 pm

Hi all,

2 weeks ago I sent a song to ableton support to prove this. I never received a reply.
The main problem/difference I encounter is the start of the clip and especially when I use clips the are uneven, e.g. 1 bar 2 beats 3 16ths..

Please let us loop clips WITHOUT warping.

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Mon Nov 21, 2005 11:51 pm

The thing is, I would have thought this to be included already, so ableton, let's do it!

The Mysterious Flying Pum · Post by **The Mysterious Flying Pum** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 2:33 pm

I fully support this request! I already post different topics on that issue...
Please let us loop without warping.
I want to be able to loop a clip and change the global tempo without changing the tempo of this looping clip. This is very important when you work with home made samples that are not prefect on the timing and you want to change the individual tempo of each clip without affecting other clips tempo.
TMFP

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 2:52 pm

I also don't see the point. The whole warping thing is one of the reason I switched to Ableton Live, you guys whatever!

Hey Quandry, if you want to be scientific in this is the way to do it:

1: Render a file with warp on
2: Render a file with warp off
(Or use resample, record in session view so the recorded clips are exacly the same length.)
3: Have them in 2 audio tracks, Put utility on one of them and enable both phase buttons.
4: Mix them together at 0db, if the warping didn't affect the waveform there will be no sound left, zip, zero, nada, and other wise there will be.

(mixing two identical waveforms with the phase or more correctly "Polarity" inverted will cancel out the wave completely)

I've thought about doing this for a long time but I can't be bothered because I use warp all the time & it sounds really good

Looping audio clips to playback without warping

Audio Scene Creation

Thanks a million

warping DOES change the sound!!

Yes, looping without warping