Have done it by adding silence and using the Ruler set to Beats, then you don’t need to use the Delay column but only if you are only ever playing the Sample on one Note (or multi-sample your Instrument for every note, although you’re actually using the same sample just with different amounts of initial silence.) Wanted this to make it easier and more flexible for a long time!
It can indeed a bit be a bit tricky to (manually) enter the note at a precise location.
Here’s how I figured it could be done most easily -
First of all, make sure the upper ruler in the sample editor is set to display beats (right-click). This should provide you with the approximate amount of lines/delay you’d need to use.
It’s of great importance that you’ve transposed the sample to the correct pitch before trying to determine the time, as this will affect the beat ruler.
With that information, we now know where to place the hit-point of the “whip sample” to make it sound precisely at the 4th line…
If LPB is 2, we need to have 1.125 lines between sample triggering point and hit-point.
If LPB is 4, we need to have 2.25 lines between sample triggering point and hit-point.
etc…
Or, as it would look like in the actual pattern editor:
00 — – ··
01 — – ··
02 C-500 – E4 <- This is where the sample is triggered (E4 = delay, corresponds to 1/8 of a line)
03 — – ··
04 — – ·· <- This is where the hitpoint will sound
If LPB was 4, we’d enter the following instead
00 — – ··
01 C-500 – C0 <- This is where the sample is triggered (C0 = delay, corresponds to 1/4 of a line)
02 — – ··
03 — – ··
04 — – ·· <- This is where the hitpoint will sound
–
@Joel Johansson: for your original idea, how do you envision that working with hit-points should be integrated into the pattern editor?
Seems to me that it would either involve “magical” notes that start playing before they are triggered, or notes that are automatically moved right after being entered (adjusted for delay).
Both options would be pretty confusing IMHO
Personally, I like the current workflow. I don’t do a whole lot of backwards stuff, but that doesn’t mean that a number of small things couldn’t be improved:
For instance, the sample editor should have the ability to report not only the 09xx offset, but also the selection in beats/sample/minutes.
See my point above about playing the same sample at different pitches. (Plus adding silence at start so no need for Delay column calculations in your example of only playing at one note.)
Sampled Pads are a prime example of this, although you are more likely to do your build with an Envelope so it will be synced at different pitches, there may be some who want to use sampled pads and to get the swell to correspond when playing a chord is going to be a lot of work.
Also it would work with the B0 Reverse command, so good for reverse symbols and other percussion where you want the attack on the beat whether playing forwards or backwards without having to use two samples for it.
You will find it in many DAWs and really is something I hope Renoise considers incorporating soon…
@kazakore: Sure, if you are using many different pitches, the above approach is tedious.
Wasn’t saying that I didn’t like the idea, but let’s come up with something which is intuitive from a UI perspective first.
Can you perhaps point out some examples of this? I did a search for “sample hitpoints” and this thread turned up first in google 
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Yes, they would start playing before they are visually triggered. Consider it as a per-sample offset, and it might be more acceptable. I agree that your point is a drawback, although minor imo.
Renoise really lacks a “pre-align” feature today, and otherwise I think this suggestion is very straight-forward and powerful. Current workarounds are very tedious and doesn’t work very well when using different pitches, right?
In most other daws you can simply shift the sample to the right location. I couldn’t find much specific references either, when i insert phrases like sample offset triggering, most references are aiming towards trackers.
Perhaps we could call it trigger-offset synchronisation. (that sounds more logic to me) I really had to read the first ten posts to get what the poster intended.
@vV, I’d be happy to rephrase and clarify my first post if someone tells me what to write 
I think most normal daws work with clips and markers. You can set a marker in a clip and you can snap it both to the front and to the back of another clip or the timeline.
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i have suggested this before and think it might help to make danoise’s workaround easier.
https://forum.renoise.com/t/automatic-0900-placement/32148
so, when moving through the pattern editor, you get a visual representation of the sample position for each line you’re on. that way, you can just find out which pattern line the hitpoint should be on by simply looking at the position of the overlay-line. you can then finetune it with delay-values to your liking.
this still means working around the problem, but a lot easier imo.
the only problem is that we currently do not have the possibility to view the sample editor and pattern editor at the same time. in the thread in which i posted my suggestion and mockup, there is talk about a method for that as well.
True in many DAWs you have the Audio tracks and you can see it, still they give you a Snap Point, so when Quantise is on it is this point which is snapped to the beat/whatever, not the start of the sample.
I believe many plug-in samples do to, but I don’t really use them.
Agree the term hitpoint is not good, thought I had linked to an old thread of the same suggestion earlier but looking back I didn’t…
Sure last time I was with my brother doing a bit of music on Reaper (been a long time since I did much and much, much longer since I used anything but Renoise) he top and tailed a sample to what would be played on that slice, then moved marker for where the snap position would be when placing it. Thought I’d also done similar in Cubase but successful searching isn’t going very well…
Trigger-Offset Synchronisation is a bit of mouthful… Something like (Beat-)Sync Markers, set within the Sample Editor as a special coloured Marker… I’m shit with thinking up names 
Transient Markers seems to be the name in Logic Pro and Cakewalk Sonar so there are two examples for you 
EDIT: Still not be completely right. Seems Transient Markers are what the likes of Recycle may put in (normal Markers) then Logic uses Flex Markers on top of this for actual sample Start/End. As you have a sample pool and stream from disk you could have a whole loop cut up into multiple (overlapping if you wished) sections, all coming from the same source, and think triggering would be from the Flex but Snapping to Grid would be from the Transient Markers…
Actually still not sure that’s right. Hard to skim-read and get correct information from a software you don’t use!
I suspect dBlue can whip up a fine “samples” to “delay values” calculator or even perhaps allow notes to be placed accordingly to where a marker has been placed inside the sample editor.
That would make it easier to have a note placed at the correct line using the correct delay value without needing to guess.
I feel that this can be scriptable somehow.
I just haven’t experimented with the sample-buffer content (whatever the frame variable contains) in the API (I whipped up a quick batch stereo to mono converter) but i guess you can read the frame buffer contents and let some calculations loose on it.
Well, dBlue could start by looking in the source code for the Duplex Recorder. It’s not rocket science 
I supposed the real challenge is to make it ergonomic and give it a proper name. I also tend to think we’re talking about something which can not be prototyped via scripting, for the following reasons:
- We would be piggybacking some other feature (slice marker or loop point) in order to indicate the position of our hit-point. This could perhaps be considered acceptable for a prototype, but still a terrible workflow.
- Entering notes with such a hit-point marker would have to automatically re-organize notes on the fly, in order to make room for the delays.
So I agree with Joel. It’s not really that big a deal that samples magically starts to play. Some of alternatives I can imagine are far worse: notes that jump around after being entered, or messy pattern editor symbols…
Oh, and I just called it a “hit-point marker”. Because we already got “loop markers”, “sustain markers” and “slice markers”.
I agree that it would be possible to script something that made the syncing a lot easier, by using a slice marker. However, isn’t this a fundamental problem that would be natural to address on a lower level in renoise? Perhaps the developers are already planning for clips and an arranger making this issue obsolete.
But a script wouldn’t be as practical when it comes to low attack instrument samples that are used as leads for example. It would probably require a lot of hotkey triggering from the user, and a rather strange workflow.
A problem with “hit point” however is the odd behavior when entering notes via midi or keyjazzing.
edit: I seem to be on equal terms with danoise and concurr with everything he was saying
Are you suggesting that the idea could be realized in real-time at all?
I don’t think so…it would be a bit like “real-time backwards reverb”.
Edit: perhaps in such a case, it could simply play from the hit-point and on…?
I was suggesting that the user might get confused, and recording notes in realtime via midi would feel strange. And would the sample play from the start or from the hit point when playing realtime? Details, but something to consider.
Again it come to Quantisation and what it is Snapping to
I suggest a feature and button like this to be named “Note align”. Other than that i think the button and marker idea seems intuitive enough.
edit: Maybe “note alignment” for the button. Pressing it could auto-detect the ‘biggest’ beat.
edit 2: or “note aligner”, referring to the actual marker. Pushing a button enables the note aligner. That would be logical and easy to get.
Note Align. That’s a bloody good name. Tells me everything I need to know.
I think you nailed it - everything else is in the details, but now I have a pretty good idea about how this would work
this feature would not only be helpful for aligning the highest amplitude of a reversed cymbal swell 
to the start of a new pattern, but could also be magic for when you want to align a certain word from a vocal sample to beat.
Although I’m quite used to doing it the hard way, this would be handy. Note align sounds good, I was thinking note snap, but Joel’s definitely fits better +1