I was programming breakbeats in Renoise when I encountered the following problem: I have a sample which starts with a ride and then is followed by a snare drum a little later than halfway through the sample. I have synced this sample to 8 LPB so it’s perfectly in time whenever I trigger the ride (xS00) or the snare (xS80)
Then I want to retrigger the sample every 4 lines and theoretically all I should hear is a consecutive ride sample. However, there is a tiny but clearly audible click from the snare whenever the sample is triggered. This click shouldn’t be there because the sample is synced to 8 lines and the snare clearly starts later than xS80.
I have attached a .XRNS to explain the problem Please help!
Just out of curiosity idem345: Does it help any if you add say a AHDSR modulation to the sample that has no release stage (make sure NNA is also set to Note-Off)
But I still wonder why there is a click even if the snare is clearly not in range of the retriggered sample? How can that be? I would love to hear an explanation for this.
The problem isn’t the initial triggering of the sample, it’s that playback is slightly too fast when Beatsync is enabled. As you say, sample playback should only have reached 80 when you trigger it again halfway through, but I ran my own tests and the shorter a sample is the more it overshoots by.
I’ve highlighted the part that (according to Renoise) should last for exactly 8 lines at X BPM/LPB (assuming that that length of silence represents C-4 playback pitch at 8 lines.) However I’ve extended the sample slightly with ‘noise’ at the end. Technically if I trigger that sample every 8 lines I should not hear that noise played at the end (because we assume we get a completely clean re-trigger.) However I do get an ‘overshoot’ click in the audio buffer.
[Edit:] As Dblue explains below there is a tiny fade out release phase on the re-trigger which is what I’m hearing
The problem isn’t the initial triggering of the sample, it’s that playback is slightly too fast when Beatsync is enabled. As you say, sample playback should only have reached 80 when you trigger it again halfway through, but I ran my own tests and the shorter a sample is the more it overshoots by.
The bug persists even if you turn off beatsync. The closer the natural length of the sample is to the retriggered length, the louder you hear a click from outside the range.
I think devs should look into it. This is certainly not okay!
When a note interrupts another playing note, as it does constantly in your example XRNS, the sample’s NNA (new note action) is triggered.
If the NNA is set to note off, then it will obviously trigger the release stage of whatever volume envelope you have defined, or it will apply a simple fade out at the very least.
But even when NNA is set to cut, it does not simply cut the previous note to dead silence instantly, it will still apply a short fade out — ironically to avoid clicks!
So you are indeed hearing a tiny overlapping portion of the snare drum from the 2nd half of the sample while the previous note briefly fades out.
Renoise doesn’t know that it’s a breakbeat with a snare that will creep in. It could be a string pad, or a bass, or anything else which would typically rely on that fade out to avoid nasty artifacts.
So… If you absolutely require precise sample-accurate cuts for your breakbeats, then simply cut your breaks into individual slices/samples instead.
When a note interrupts another playing note, as it does constantly in your example XRNS, the sample’s NNA (new note action) is triggered.
If the NNA is set to note off, then it will obviously trigger the release stage of whatever volume envelope you have defined, or it will apply a simple fade out at the very least.
But even when NNA is set to cut, it does not simply cut the previous note to dead silence instantly, it will still apply a short fade out — ironically to avoid clicks!
So you are indeed hearing a tiny overlapping portion of the snare drum from the 2nd half of the sample while the previous note briefly fades out.
Renoise doesn’t know that it’s a breakbeat with a snare that will creep in. It could be a string pad, or a bass, or anything else which would typically rely on that fade out to avoid nasty artifacts.
So… If you absolutely require precise sample-accurate cuts for your breakbeats, then simply cut your breaks into individual slices/samples instead.
Can you please make this feature optional in the next release? It’s turning into a real problem in my current project as I want to trigger drums via Sxx command. I don’t wanna use slices for a particular reason.
One year later and this feature makes me really hate Renoise as of now. Thinking about migrating to another DAW because I CAN’T TRIGGER MY DRUM SAMPLES PROPERLY !!!
Has this issue reached the developers yet? I would really love this ‘feature’ to be optional in the next version of Renoise. Perhaps being able to set the time of the automatic fade in/out per sample would be a good solution here.
