Currently the Polyend Tracker or Mini is able to produce synth sounds using single samples pitched-up or down or using wavetables. Both methods provide already a good source of synthesized sounds and sound design capabilities. However, some of the sounds can’t be grabbed and reproduced accurately and with high fidelity using these two methods;
This wish is suggesting the addition of a “Multisample” instrument engine in which we could assign multiple .wav samples to different notes (or a range of notes) and optionally with different levels of velocity;
The idea here would be to be able to create multi-sample instrument of complex/organic instruments and be able to share them with the community like we currently do with .pti instruments.
What do you want to achieve?
Add a multisampling instrument type which will be composed of a list of sound files sampled on different notes of different octaves on the keyboard. Optionally the addition of at least two velocity layers would be preferable.
It could either consist of multiple files or of a single recording with all the notes/layers separated by slice points;
The multisample instrument playback engine will then extrapolate the notes played in between and identify which sample or slice to play (and re-pitch if needed) according to the note and velocity;
For the sake of compatibility with the OG Tracker, either the instrument would remain with mono samples, or it would need to convert the samples to mono upon loading on it. That is if the OG Tracker actually even has enough horsepower left to support multisample at all.
If a multisample based instrument technically requires more memory or more CPU resources, it would be acceptable such an instrument takes more than one slot when loaded through among the 48 slots in the Project Sample Loader, depending on the number of octaves/velocity layers it contains.
Are there any workarounds?
Use a single sample - but a lot of aliasing to expect time-stretching over an octave;
Individual samples as multiple instruments
Wavetable instrument - which doesn’t work as well to capture the nuances of a more complex sound.
Hey @alexandrosroussos, if you don’t have time, let me know.
I could break it apart and create a separate wish myself, i just prefer not to, because it is your initial idea and if i create a new wish it will be under my name.
I will try to do it. But it’s not easy in the formulation as for the multisample playback alone, it would require a standardized format of multi-samples as input.
I was thinking of suggesting the format the 1010music Blackbox uses (a folder with .WAVs named in a specific way).
Other way would be to allow creation of the multisample through adding the .WAVs manually into a new multisample instrument type.
Also the robot alone without playback…, I will need to refer to the first wish.
What path do you think I should take to separate them ?
I agree with separating it into two wishes. You can always reference both wishes by pasting a link to eachother.
Regarding the Sampling Robot/Automation:
I think this functionality could be useful even if multi-sample instruments was not a thing.
Here’s a couple options i could see as features for such a functionality:
it could multisample to one .wav file, which could be used with the existing Sample Slice functionality and auto creates those slices.
it could also have an option to create multiple .wav files, that could be useful for a future multi-sample instrument.
it could record a proper wavetable .wav file, by sending the correct midi data to an external device to record the resulting .wav wavetable.
Regarding the Multi-sample Instrument:
My suggestion would be a way to assign samples yourself into this new instrument. This would obviously require a new UI View to do this. But i see a couple benefits from that:
You could define visually the range that one sample covers (for example c4 - c5)
This could be practical also from a performance standpoint, the less samples you need the better.
No need for a rule-set on how to name your .wav files.
I think this is exactly what a visual multi-sample editor could achieve. it would allow you to use as few or as many samples as you want (clearly a performance question though), and spread them visually across a range.
