Is time stretch destructive?

S Righteous
S Righteous Member Posts: 148 Helper
edited August 2022 in Maschine

I assume timestretch is destructive as it's an option at the sample edit level. So if I have project and I want to change the tempo. Should I make a new copy of the entire project, with samples, and then timestretch those? Is there an easy/best way to do this?

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  • S Righteous
    S Righteous Member Posts: 148 Helper

    So already this has become an issue - there is something unintuitive going on with the timestretch option on my Maschine+. I had a sample, went into edit mode, the current BPM was already set, (auto detect was on) and I set the new BPM, this went from 136bpm to 127bpm. Fine it seemed to work. Second sample I did the same thing, and it seemed to do nothing, so I hit "Apply" a second time, as the 'detect' was set to on, and it was detecting the sample was at 136bpm - but now this sample has a doubled effect, both bpms are present in the sample, a fast and slower sound overlapped. What in the hell would do this, and why?

    I double checked things, such as if there were two samples in zones, but nope, it's a single sample which is now ruined because it has overlapping elements at two tempos. Does auto-detect simply not work, and I was re-sampling twice with the same settings and this is what it does? Total Garbage Process.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod
    edited August 2022

    The TS on the Sampling Menu is indeed destructive - Altho it should apply it to a copy of the audio file saved in Native Instruments/Maschine 2/Samples instead of destroying to original sample, but this might depend if you sampled directly into Maschine or are loading a audio file saved somewhere on your pc.

    Are you sure its 2 samples overlapped? Never heard of such issue but when time-stretch is not good enough, correct algorithm used or when using a big BPM gap it will sound stuttered especially on transients. What kind of sample is it? Drums/Perc tend to be more problematic for example.

    Auto detect works as long as your sample is a perfect loop with an even amount of bars lenght.

    I find it's better to load the original Sample in Audio Plug-In 1st which has real time TS, make sure it loops and then resample it to another Pad, this way you keep the reference and depending on what you want to do is just more practical overall.

  • S Righteous
    S Righteous Member Posts: 148 Helper

    yeah, I think your advice of keeping the original sample and making a copy before timestretching is crucial. In my case it was a set of chords played with a particular timing. I'm not sure what happened, but the result was indeed a bug - the resulting sample had extra chords in it! So I just redid the whole thing from a previous copy I had of that sample. I'm using the M+ and always backup my projects to my computer.

  • tribepop
    tribepop Member Posts: 160 Advisor
    edited September 2022

    Yeah the advice @D-One posted is probably you’re best bet. I wonder if what you did was stretch the sample initially and then tried to stretch it again without readjusting the original bpm (which doesn’t automatically update after you do the initial stretch).

    It’s kind of silly but if you TS a sample and then want to change the pitch (tune in sampler edit settings menu), you need to remember to update the original bpm in the stretch options to match what it was just updated to (127 bpm in your case) otherwise it gets all jacked up because it thinks the sample is originally in the old tempo but you just stretched it to the project’s tempo.

    You only have to do this manual adjustment once only after you’ve done the initial stretch. So for me, I usually stretch it to my project bpm, manually adjust the starting bpm to match what it actually is now, and then play with the tune settings and keep applying until I find the right pitch. It doesn’t seem to mess up the sample if you just keep re-applying different settings this way.

    NI really just needs to combine the Audio and Sampler devices into one or do a rework of the time/pitch stretching workflow for the sampler because it’s a little janky

  • Flexi
    Flexi Member Posts: 366 Pro
    edited September 2022

    Linking to an external audio editor with a button in the sample editor would be the easiest and possibly best solution.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 2,811 mod

    I'd like that very much for many, many other reasons. Currently, I just click "find in finder" and then open the sample manually to do any advanced editing.

  • Flexi
    Flexi Member Posts: 366 Pro
    edited September 2022

    I do it the other way, right click, save sample as, and just go with the new sample entirely, just so I can make sure all samples go to where I want and named as I want haha.

    (FYI Find in explorer on windows rarely ever works)

  • S Righteous
    S Righteous Member Posts: 148 Helper

    Tribepop -> "It’s kind of silly but if you TS a sample and then want to change the pitch (tune in sampler edit settings menu), you need to remember to update the original bpm in the stretch options to match what it was just updated to (127 bpm in your case) otherwise it gets all jacked up because it thinks the sample is originally in the old tempo but you just stretched it to the project’s tempo."

    How do you do this? I've just been working with some loops, and timestretched one of them from 136 to 80bpm, but really meant to go to 160bpm (double). After stretching, it still shows the original BPM as 136 and there is nothing I can do to set that to 80. It's not a number you can change with a dial, the control lets you select multiples of 136.

    I tried a bunch of things to 'reset' this BPM counter, but it will not reset, so now I can't re-edit my loop.

  • enz0
    enz0 Member Posts: 45 Advisor

    It’s so complicated i just don’t do it anymore on Maschine unless i have a perfect loop i need to stretch, in which case I’d use the audio module. They really need to bring real-time TS into the sampler 🙏

  • tribepop
    tribepop Member Posts: 160 Advisor

    Hey sorry I just saw this. In the Stretch settings in the sampling menu, you have to turn “Auto Detect” to off so that you can manually adjust the BPMs. It’s nice to have the auto detect on initially but once you need to TS again, you gotta turn it off to edit the BPM values.

  • tribepop
    tribepop Member Posts: 160 Advisor

    Yeah I kind of wish they would just combine the Sampler and Audio modules or just do a rehaul of real-time sampling in Maschine. Be very careful using the audio module when it’s running in “Stretch” mode because it will kill your CPU. I typically only use stretch mode to get the loop at the right BPM and Pitch and then resample it and then use an Audio module in “re-pitch” mode which is much less resource intensive.

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