Using Play as a sample launcher/mixer?

Play
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Hello

I have a particular workflow which I think will work very well with Play, but I want to check as I can’t tell 100% from the documentation

I have no interest in the pre- installed samples and want to load my own into the pool

I don’t want to work on a one- shot trig basis, I like to work with pre- sampled sequences

I tend to create (eg) 16 variations of a particular (short, 2 second) sequence, then use a couple as roots and the rest as fills

I understand Play doesn’t (yet!) have a slice mode; I am happy slicing these stems and loading them into the Play sample pool

I envisage mapping 16 beat variations to one Play row, 16 bass variations to another etc; then swapping them in and out using the Play grid, to see which ones work best

Now. I am about 80% sure that this will work fine with Play, but I am slightly worried about the following

a) Everything I read about Play suggests samples should be one- shot, and you should create a single sequence in a Play for from a series of one- shot samples. That’s not what I want, as per above. I’m worried that having each sample 2 or 4 seconds in length somehow won’t work with the Play workflow.

b) Overall sequence size. A chain of 16 x 2 second samples might be up to 0.5 MB in length. Am I going to be severely limited in how many sample chains I can load, because of Play pool size restrictions?

I would love some comfort regarding the above before I spend/waste my money. Sorry if the above is a very obvious question / set of questions but I have read the manual a couple of times and it’s still not 100% clear to me

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If I understand your case well, the only two limitations you need to have in mind are the sample pool memory and single voice tracks (one step will be chocked by the next in the same track. If you want both samples to overlap you need to use different tracks.

About the sample pool memory, this is what the manual says:

The overall per-project sample pool memory allows for 6 minutes of monophonic 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sample files. However, Play can work with different sample playback rates, so you can reduce the required memory of a sample by reducing its sample rate. A sample played back at half the sample rate will use half the Pool memory. Conversely, doubling the sample’s rate will use twice the Pool memory. Because Play can use multiple different playback rates, your sample pool capacity may vary.

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Also you are limited to 255 sample files total per project

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