Finding that perfect sample loop point | Prophet X Tutorial

video upload by Espen Kraft

"The challenge is as old as samplers. Finding that perfect loop point was often impossible. You could get close, but rarely perfect. Some samplers made the task easier than others.

Today I often use a program called SampleRobot to help make sample libraries for the Prophet X. That works very well for recording fresh, but if I have a sound from before, just ONE sample, and I want to stretch that out over the entire keyboard, I have to use the inbuilt sample loop functionality in the Prophet X itself, just as we had to do back in the day with the sampler we had at hand.

The challenge now is to find that perfect, or nearly perfect loop point. How do we do it?

When you stretch out a sample over the entire keyboard, the sample engine will have to stretch that sound out, altering the frequency of the sample itself. It will make higher pitched sounds end faster, while lower pitched sounds last longer. That will drastically change the timbre of the sound and many prefer that sound to a hi-fi multi sampled version of the same patch. It's all a matter of taste. The sound of a sample stretched takes us back to the 80s. Artifacts and aliasing etc. Many associate that sound with something nice and cosy.

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