How can you preview sound samples before you include them?

FlatEric · Post by **FlatEric** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 4:48 am

I would like to know how other people are 'previewing' or 'auditioning' their samples before including them into a Pulsar project/STS-3000.

I'm new to Pulsar/Scope so maybe I've overlooked something obvious, but I've spent quite a while searching through the forums and can't find very much on this subject.

I would have expected that the File Browser window would allow you to double-click on a WAV file and play it before you decide to load it into your current program. Is this an 'undocumented feature' of the software?

I'm currently either dragging the file into the Sample Editor and/or using the File -> Import Audio File option in Cubase VST, but both methods are a bit clunky.

Gregory · Post by **Gregory** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 6:57 am

No, that's about it. It might be useful to have a preview feature within Pulsar itself. I usually use a freeware wave editor named TWE from Yamaha to preview a sound.

castol · Post by **castol** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 7:14 am

if yer on a mac, Tom Ehrbe's "instant player" is great for previewing samples at the os level. just option (or ctrl) click on a file and it plays back. files can be looped as well (doesn't read loops, just loops automatically).

don't know of any similar program on the pc.

bosone · Post by **bosone** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 7:26 am

creamware should give us a way to listen to not only akai samples, but also wav files before importing them in sts...
i wonder a file browser with a "listen" capability...

Neutron · Post by **Neutron** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 9:17 am

i guess it would have to be a preview "device" it would be nice it it worked like the ACID browser. have the option to play any playable sound as soon as its clicked.

Post by **hubird** » Fri Apr 12, 2002 10:21 am

On 2002-04-12 08:14, castol wrote:
if yer on a mac, Tom Ehrbe's "instant player" is great for previewing samples at the os level.

Where can I get that prg? Can you tell us, would be nice.
BTW, I use Peak (Bias) for that.
I let Cubase play a cycle mode, than choose 'open file' in Peak, and there, BEFORE' actually loading the file, I listen to the preview player, by triggering by hand on every wished moment.
Handy when selecting sounds for an arrangement you're working on.
Don't forget to activate Play in background in Cubase, but hey, with Pulsar who doesn't?

LTBM!

FlatEric · Post by **FlatEric** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 3:19 am

On 2002-04-12 07:57, Gregory wrote:
No, that's about it. It might be useful to have a preview feature within Pulsar itself. I usually use a freeware wave editor named TWE from Yamaha to preview a sound.

Gregory -

Can I ask exactly how you have this set up? I'm thinking that this must mean that you have a Wave Source module in your project which takes up two inputs on your mixer? Plus... do you have to have the 'enable Audio only during Play' function enabled in Cubase to allow TME to interact with your soundcard?

Castol/Hubird -

I'm PC based...

so can't use Tom Ehrbe's "instant player", but whatever you're using - that or Peak (Bias) do you still have to configure it in the way I've described above?

Maybe the new Fusion software might handle this better...? I'm hoping.....

castol · Post by **castol** » Sat Apr 13, 2002 3:51 am

hi hubrid, and fe,

instant player along with a few other nifty mac only audio softs (soundhack is the other biggie, super usefull as well as a unique sound design tool) can be found over at thar http://www.soundhack.com.

instant player only runs off sound manager (the native mac os sound system). now for me personally the creamware audio driver (for soundmanager playback) is very buggy and unreliable, so i don't even use it any more. i just use the built-in a/v hardware on my mac to work with soundmanager apps.

i will not record externally through the built-in a/v (its OK, but a little noisy and lacking in fidelty), but for monitoring it more than makes up for its stability and means i don't have to start up the luna os (ugh) everytime i want to work on audio, but not neccesarily work with creamware plugs. also i can route soundmanager i/o internally into digital perfomer so thats one more reason not to use the cw audio driver.

but yes, if i were to use the creamware audio drivers i would just have its source connected to two ganged inputs on the rm242 which are sent to the main outs and the mains outs are going to i believe 2 different stereo destinations; 2 channels on a hardware audio out destination (for monitoring), and 2 channels of an asio destination(for recording into bias peak).

i think adding a little sample preview player into the file browser or what have you would be a great idea.

i don't work with many samplers inside luna right now, but i understand how mundane it is to not be able to preview audio easily before importing into digital performer.

it only previews mono, or dual mono sound designer II files for christs sake. no interleaved stereo sdII, or ANY other audio format, and bias peak will ALLWAYS defualt to saving as aiff, as well as having its own "opinion" about a lot of other preferences.

in all fairness i'm not running the latest versions of either software. i don't really keep on top of pay per updates unless something is critically wrong with the version i'm running now.

anyhow, i'm rambling.....

[ This Message was edited by: castol on 2002-04-13 04:55 ]

Post by **hubird** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 4:15 am

Hi FlatEric, no I don't use the setup you describe.
For my convenience I use the Mac built In soundcard to monitor Peak.

[As Castol points out, ASIO is for many PRG difficult to handle if you wanne switch from one to another to monitor.
Restart often is requirered to 'reset' the formerly occupied ASIO routing.
(just Reason does the job perfect BTW, you can switch whatever you want].

To monitor both Cubase and Peak I just listen to two stereo channels of my small Macky 12/2 mixer, each connected to the analog outs of Pulsar resp. Mac/soundmanager.

There is another handy thing with this setup: you can easily controll the 'mix' of both sound sources by controlling the potmeters on your mixer.
Looking for the golden sample on a sample cd you can check every sample in the song environmenet, without having to deal with (temporary?) routings in your Pulsar project.

Said this now I don't know how the pc can handle this.
I often read in the problem sections that it's better to remove stuff like the VIA chipset when combining with CW.
But hey, sure you know ten times better than me about this!

To Castol: You're right about Peak and his way of handling preferences.
Had some problems with saving the colorspreset and the preference save map.
But the good news is: you should upgrade, I use Peak 2.52+, this version can save as 10 different types audio, including WAV and Sound Designer II.
Time to surf the net?

Let There Be Music!

[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2002-04-14 05:17 ]

castol · Post by **castol** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 5:02 am

As Castol points out, ASIO is for many PRG difficult to handle if you wanne switch from one to another to monitor.
Restart often is requirered to 'reset' the formerly occupied ASIO routing.
(just Reason does the job perfect BTW, you can switch whatever you want

hmm, i have no problems with dp and peak swapping use of the asio driver (dp takes a few seconds upon retaking control of it though). but yes, i can just imagine this driver swapping to cause problems. i don't like using this driver swaping (even though it works) anyhow, cause then either program won't run in the background. supposedly asio 2.0 is trully multiclient, but i haven't confirmed that for myslef. the documentation on harmony central is very sketchy.

so...one or the other gets to use built-in soundmanager and the other asio and everyone is happy

. now....if the cw audio driver worked well, and worked well with asio, i wouldn't have to even use the built-in a/v. but the workaround i found is more than acceptable. you pc users don't sound like you have problems using any manner of drivers within your projects. or that they are more or less buggier than others.

yah, its funny how some onboard pc stuffs cause so much trouble for folks. yet mac onboard is terribly solid and just works well and isn't scorned so much.

about peak....and its handling of multiple file formats. it is useless for myself. well, i only work with .aif and .sdII, and it supports these file formats natively. but the others, that are supported through the quicktime power plug are flawwed. they need to be "imported" before one can use them, and...quicktime doesn't support the reading of any loops, markers, regions (who knows what else), and it "rounds" audio data lenght to the next Video Frame (i don't remember what a frame is, in samples of a 44/16 audio wave). so audio files allways have 1-30 (ime it was around 5) extra samples of space after all files "imported" in this manner.

not to mention that .wav's saved in peak won't load into creamware sample devices, .aif's load fine however. quicktime is at it again?

i don't know, i got really ticked by this a bit back, mailed the bias list and got a bunch of dirt from mr. bias himself (its really cool that he anwsers questions on there).

my solution is to use soundapp, or d-sound pro to resave the files (for now, only .wav's, and very infrequently as i don't ever use .wav's natively...just .aif or or .sdII), soundhack works nicely as well (can tweak the header in thar).

oh btw, i'm using 2.58vst.

/end modeforlongpostday

[ This Message was edited by: castol on 2002-04-14 06:09 ]

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 11:29 am

I put this preview feature on my wishlist a couple months ago and wrote to creamware to suggest that they include it. It would be really helpful.

dxl · Post by **dxl** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 12:07 pm

don't expect it
STS 2000~5000 won't have that feature for sure.

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Thu Apr 18, 2002 8:32 pm

On 2002-04-18 13:07, dxl wrote:
don't expect it
STS 2000~5000 won't have that feature for sure.

No, but the Pulsar File Browser could....

FlatEric · Post by **FlatEric** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 8:32 am

Thanks to all for your feedback.

Seems like most MAC people have either found some kind of workaround or don't need it, but the PC people like myself are still wishing it was part of the Pulsar package...

Good to know I wasn't the only one.

Cheers,

FlatEric

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sat Apr 20, 2002 1:26 pm

I add files to the STS from the file browser. Is there another way?

FlatEric · Post by **FlatEric** » Mon Apr 22, 2002 1:23 pm

Hi Braincell,

I also add my files to the sampler using the file browser (or you can click and drag them in from Windows Explorer) but I've been asking how other people were previewing the sounds before they loaded them into the sampler. E.g. If you open a folder of snare drum sounds, how do you pick which one to use without loading them all into the sampler and then deleting the ones you don't want.

Cheers,

FlatEric

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Apr 22, 2002 1:30 pm

I load them in and play them

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Mon Apr 22, 2002 2:21 pm

Subhuman,

That gets tedius when you have hundreds or thousands of samples. I'm sure the preview option will be included inventually.

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Mon Apr 22, 2002 2:40 pm

Sorry to those who have read this query before in the STS Talk section, but I thought it was relevant to ask here:

Has anyone on this forum used any of Awave's development components for C++ or VB? These look like they'd be really useful for this sort of task.

I wanted to write a quick and simple tool to build and archive sample programs using these, as I find the whole process really frustrating (as I'm sure many other people do), particularly for quickly auditioning and selecting samples. However, when I contacted the guys at Awave, I immediately decided against the idea, as I think even I'm not lazy enough to spend a few thousand pounds just to save a bit of effort! They do look really useful though.

If there are other people as into the idea of such an application as me, who are prepared to pay a small amount of money, then I might look into trying to write one.

orbita · Post by **orbita** » Tue Apr 23, 2002 4:28 pm

I tend to use winamp for previewing wavs. You can drag whole folders in to it and then preview files extremely quickly just by hitting the down arrow.
Unfortunately you need to then dig them out from the relavent folder to use them in a sampler. But for scanning through hundreds to find suitable files its great.