Auto-stretch/lengthen audio slices in Sampler Track

If I am slicing an audio loop in the Sampler Track, I would like to have an option to set a percentage stretch/lengthen amount for the slices (e.g., 30%) so that there are no gaps between sliced audio hits when I slow down the loop.

The stretching algorithm would leave each slice’s attack transients unaffected but “weight” the stretching to the “tail” portion of each slice. This is similar to how Propellerheads’ ReCycle works (although its slice “lengthening algorithm” doesn’t sound very good because it is not actually time stretching the slices).

Once the Sampler Track has lengthened the slices in a loop as described above, it should fade out the extended “tail” portion of each slice to create smoother, more natural sounding slice “hits” when played back from the keyboard.

This is done by using Musical Mode

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I think you are misunderstanding me. Musical mode stretches the entire audio loop without slicing it into individual hits (despite the presence of warp markers). What I want to do is slice up the loop into individual hits but stretch the individual slices by a user-definable percentage so that the loop can be slowed down without gaps. between the slices/hits. This is similar to how Propellerheads’ ReCycle works. But I don’t want to generate ReCycle REX files (which don’t sound that good because their slice “stretching” process is not true time stretching).

So if I understand correctly you do not want the actual slice lengths to shrink & stretch as the Tempo changes. You want to increase the length of each slice so it and the next slice overlap enough that slowing down the Tempo will not introduce gaps between the slices.

If so, then you can use the Selection (Arrow) Tool in ‘Sizing Applies Time Stretch’ mode. Just grab the lower right corner of the Audio Event and drag it to increase or decrease the length.

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Unfortunately, this means that I will have to manually stretch each slice in the loop. This is precisely what I am trying to avoid!

I know you are trying to be helpful. And I appreciate it. But have you ever used Propellerheads’ ReCycle program? I want Cubase to work like ReCycle but to do a better job of “extending” each slice.

FYI, ReCycle does not use time stretching to extend slices. It takes a portion of the tail of each slice, reverses it and then crossfades the reversed tail onto the end of the slice and then fades this out. This process does not yield very good results except on simple drum beats.

Off the top of my head, try

  • Use Hitpoint Slice in the audio editor
  • Quantize
  • Fill Gaps apply time stretch

I don’t know if the quantize will really work, might need to do some manual placement of the samples. But I believe Fill Gaps should work

Yes, like Tim said, I think that would solve your problem:
select all events to to
audio>advanced>close gaps
here you can choose between timestretch or crossfade!

Awesome. Thanks!

One final question:

If I slow down the song tempo by 30 BPM from the current tempo, will the “Close gaps” feature time stretch the slices to fill in the gaps between slices that were introduced by changing the tempo by this amount?

If there could be some way of automating these slice percentage stretch/lengthen options, this would add a lot of value to the Sampler Track and its option to chop up a loop into individual slices.

As in ReCycle, you would just set the percentage of the slice length that you want to be extended (say 30%), and each slice in the loop would be extended (via high quality time stretch) by that percentage. These sliced loops could even become a new file type (not REX) that would allow you to reuse chopped up loops at different tempos in different projects without ever having gaps occur when slowing down the loop.

By using time stretching to extend the slices, you could slice up instrument loops such as guitar loops, etc. and not just drum loops (which are really the only thing that ReCycle is good at).