Why is Maschine Sampler's LFO linked to Settings/Sample Rate?
Hi friends! I am working on a pad sound on Maschine Sampler, it has LFO modulating filter's cutoff, just some bread and butter.
BUT after sound design, when switching Settings/Sample rate 44.100Hz to 88.200Hz to make some tape recordings, now strangely the LFO speed goes at double speed!
Even though the rate is still the same. All sounds that have LFOs get unusable.
Do you get the same response?
Best Answer
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It's not normal behavior.
Knobs, sliders, LFO's etc in music SW should have fixed ranges regardless of samplerate, usually max range within Nyquist afaik, this is how Ableton's Simpler works and any other SW I've ever used, including Kontakt.
The LFO in Maschine seems to use a percentage(?) of the total sample rate instead of the fixed range it says right on the knob, 0.03hz to 16K. It makes no sense at all for a knob to say 3k and actually be working at 6k.
Imagine if your EQ would change when you change the sample rate and instead of only going to 22k as they all do it would double the range if you double the sample rate... It would mess all up your EQ points not to mention that going above Nyquist makes no sense.
A mixing engineer opening a project recorded in another studio (which happens very, very often) that would change the project sample rate to his preferred way of working would mess up everything in the reference mix plugins, again... makes no sense.
What if we forget what the original sample rate was? Now what do we do? lol
As far as I am concerned this is either just terrible design or a bug.
There's no 'correct', it depends.
Nothing is rendered until you render so switching before rendering is totally fine, working the way he wants put's a lot less stress on your computer so it allows for way more plugins and lower latency/buffer while producing which is the stage you want things to be responsive... Then when everything is done you can switch and export. Unless you're recording Audio, that can require actually using the final sample-rate.
I removed the "solved" tag.
3
Answers
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I’ m guessing if it is not a normal behavior, since you doubled the sample rate
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Actually the correct thing to do, is the opposite.
Sound Design / Music Creation at 88.200Hz (or better at 96.000Hz, or at least at or 48.000Hz)
Final Export / Recordings at 44.100Hz or 48.000Hz. Unless:
- If you plan to send your work to a mastering engineer. In that case, export in high rates too and he will do the final down-sampling.
- If your recording is internal (such as recording a sample to import it in your project) use high rates there too. However in this case 48.000Hz are more than enough.
About your LFO, as previous comment mention too, it is an absolutely normal behavior exactly because you doubled the sample rate!
Tip: Try to do this in audio samples, alter the sample rate, without resampling. You will get some nice cartoon style samples ;-)
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Thanks for your comments. I still do not get it.
How can this be considered a normal behaviour, if an LFO at 1/16 is a relative rate to the TEMPO, not to the sample rate? But when I increase sample rate, TEMPO stays correct, but LFO speed doubles.
It looks more like a BUG to me, the LFO is not updating accordingly.
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I can follow your considerations.
Please report it to NI and hopefully they are going to correct it sometime.
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Oscillators are the carriers of the sound. Without them, no sound can be created.
The Audio Oscillator generates sounds in three ways. It repeats common waveforms (sine, triangle), it generates white noise (a random number for each sample), or it repeats a prepared incoming audio clip of any duration. It outputs typically 44100 samples per second.
In contrast, the LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) by default generates waves at lower frequencies and lower sample rates (60 samples/second). It synthesizes curves using a choice of common waveforms like Sine or Pulse, or it repeats a prepared incoming curve. It steps through the waveform at a rate that depends on the Frequency parameter and the Octave.
Both Audio Oscillator and LFO are interchangeable by changing their frequencies and sample rates. But unlike the Audio Oscillator, the LFO is designed for non-audio frequencies. LFO always follow the main audio sample rate and it can not be autonomously resampled. But since it can not be resampled, it can also not adjust to sample rate changes.
I tried to express it as best as i can, hopefully without phrasal mistakes. I hope it make some sense. :-)
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It's not normal behavior.
Knobs, sliders, LFO's etc in music SW should have fixed ranges regardless of samplerate, usually max range within Nyquist afaik, this is how Ableton's Simpler works and any other SW I've ever used, including Kontakt.
The LFO in Maschine seems to use a percentage(?) of the total sample rate instead of the fixed range it says right on the knob, 0.03hz to 16K. It makes no sense at all for a knob to say 3k and actually be working at 6k.
Imagine if your EQ would change when you change the sample rate and instead of only going to 22k as they all do it would double the range if you double the sample rate... It would mess all up your EQ points not to mention that going above Nyquist makes no sense.
A mixing engineer opening a project recorded in another studio (which happens very, very often) that would change the project sample rate to his preferred way of working would mess up everything in the reference mix plugins, again... makes no sense.
What if we forget what the original sample rate was? Now what do we do? lol
As far as I am concerned this is either just terrible design or a bug.
There's no 'correct', it depends.
Nothing is rendered until you render so switching before rendering is totally fine, working the way he wants put's a lot less stress on your computer so it allows for way more plugins and lower latency/buffer while producing which is the stage you want things to be responsive... Then when everything is done you can switch and export. Unless you're recording Audio, that can require actually using the final sample-rate.
I removed the "solved" tag.
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Thanks @Sunborn, are you a bot? it's ok to discuss about digital audio, sampling rates, LFOs, etc.
What I mention is quite straight forward: when changing Maschine's sample rate at Settings, whatever the system has to do to re-adapt its operation is done. All Samples get read well, the sequencer is OK (it does not double speed) TEMPO does not go to double, etc.
BUT the speed of the LFO does not get correct. 1/16 sounds like 1/32. 1Hz sounds like 2Hz. I have tested the same on other DAWs with their internal instruments' LFOs, and after a change in sample rate they do what they have to do correctly. In Maschine not. It may be something that was left unchecked while developing.
And I find it quite rude to pretend to tell "the correct thing to do". I do sound design at 44.1khz to avoid cpu restrictions. The "correct thing to do" could be instead to read properly. I mentioned that I record on tape, thus, I need my digital instruments to sound the best possible at that stage.
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Thanks @D-One for your kind and thoughtful reply.
I have made this test: saving the project, and re-opening it at the new Audio rate settings. Now LFO behaves correctly. Apparently Maschine Sampler's LFO does not handle Sample rate changes correctly.
Should I post this on Bug detection? o not necessary?
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No prob. :)
Oh... In that case, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a bug or not.
Kontakt for example warns you it needs to be refreshed after sample rate changes for example, I actually expect that from a complex plugin, but not from a Host / DAW.. So I am not sure tbh..
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About LFO: Yes, the way you describe it makes absolute sense. Obviously i need to learn much more about Maschine (in which i am relative a newbie). In Cubase all those years, i never had to deal with such cases, so what i wrote it seemed logical to me. But obviously, i was wrong.
About "correct thing": This is the usual way that i and many friends i know (some of them well established musicians) work, since many years. Based on that experience i wrote "correct", while of course it is not the only right way.
@Rilkecat usually bots do not have in their profile signatures with links to personal pages where everyone can see who i am, what i do and even my real name, don't you think? 😉 I was trying to explain the case, according to my knowledge and, as it happen to every human being, this time i was misinformed. The general info about LFO that i posted are correct (apart of some assumptions i did), as info, but obviously had nothing to do with your case. Cheers!
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