Sampler Track Monophonic Mode not working as expected

[HONEYHILL]

Hi together,

a friend of mine told me that he has issues with the monophonic mode of Cubase’s Sampler Track, getting gain build ups by overlapping sample playback. We both expect that the monophonic mode chokes the playback of the first note playing completely as soon as the following note hits. The manual is not very clear of what the mode is doing exactly:

“Activates monophonic playback. For solo instruments, this usually results in a more naturally sounding performance. If monophonic playback is activated, a note that was stolen by another note is retriggered if you still hold the stolen note when you release the new one. This way, you can play trills by holding one note and quickly and repeatedly pressing and releasing another note, for example. If this option is deactivated, you can play up to 128 notes simultaneously.”

I did some tests today with a short sample I created with a sine wave and white noise to check myself and actually my friend was right. I tried all different settings with monophonic mode enabled, one shot mode in the global window and in the amp envelope window and I always got overlapping sample playback resulting in a dirty and louder playback of the second note.

In the screenshots below you see settings of the sampler track and the bounced results of the midi sequence triggering the sampler track. You can see very clearly that the sine wave of the second note is overlapped by the whitenoise of the first note’s playback:

I also run through only a sine wave sample through the same setup visualizing the gain build up a little better:

After seeing that I was wondering if this is a bug or if this is just the best way to implement this. I did the same test with Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol Sampler with Polyphony set to 1 and One Shot Playback with basically the same results:

It would be really cool if someone could explain why this happens and if there is any way to have “real” monophonic mode where the playback of the first sample is choked completely in the moment the second note hits.

Thanks a lot,
Oli

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi,

Isn’t this the Release Time of the Sample? Or Reverb?

[HONEYHILL]

Hi Martin,

there is no reverb involved. And as far as I understand the ADSR am envelope runs through in One Shot mode regardless the midi note length. In my screenshot above you see that the release curve starts way after the sample end. In the Komplete Kontrol Sampler there is no envelope in one shot for instance. Nevertheless I did another test with the release set to 0 ms having the same result:

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi @HONEYHILL,

Would you be willing to share the test project with the test (audio) files, please?

[HONEYHILL]

Hi,

i could not resist to test this with other VSTi samplers. I did a test with TAL-Sampler and the Sample Enginge of Arturia Pigments 3. It seems like those two implemented the monophonic mode in a different way, having no sample overlapping but a short delay of the second note instead. If you set Pigments to Polyphony of 2, the result in the waveforms is pretty similar but the timing of the second note is even a bit too early. Very strange. The project is set to 120 BPMs and the midi notes are 1/32 playing right after another.

@Martin.Jirsak: Yes of course. I uploaded the project here: https://we.tl/t-9YMbF2WXu7

Looking forward to hear your thoughts on this.

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi,

I made another test with sine-signal and using octaves, to see, the upper octave note is still playing, when you switch to the lower octave. (See attached screenshot, please)

I can confirm the bug.

Reported to Steinberg. Thank you.

[HONEYHILL]

Hi Martin,

don’t know why I haven’t thought testing like that, but this is obviously a much better test with clearer result. Glad to hear that it is reported to Steinberg.

Thanks a lot,
Oli

[Martin.Jirsak]

Hi,

I got a reply from Steinberg:

This is by design to avoid clicks. It corresponds to the “Voice Fade Out Time” in the zone, which is configured to 10ms in SamplerTrack.