Quality loss when sampling into Maschine
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  1. #1
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    Default Quality loss when sampling into Maschine

    How's it going everybody. Recently i've been experimenting more with chopping up samples in Maschine. I haven't been recording directly into it, rather i've been converting mp3's to wav so I can just them onto a pad. I'm concerned with just recording in Maschine cause I'm worried there will be volume variation or loss of quality, is this the case when sampling?

  2. #2
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    your signal flow is only as good as its weakest link. so any amplitude variation is up to how everything is hooked up.

    i think maschine mostly samples in 16 bit wav with the sample rate set from the audio settings/soundcard.

    converting an mp3 to wav doesn't make it lossless tho. once you got them jaggedy waveforms from compression, you're stuck with them. fwiw i can't hear any difference between lossless and 320 kbps mp3s. But yeah, if you are starting from 128 kbps mp3s, you're gonna have some lackluster samples.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by trux View Post
    your signal flow is only as good as its weakest link. so any amplitude variation is up to how everything is hooked up.

    i think maschine mostly samples in 16 bit wav with the sample rate set from the audio settings/soundcard.

    converting an mp3 to wav doesn't make it lossless tho. once you got them jaggedy waveforms from compression, you're stuck with them. fwiw i can't hear any difference between lossless and 320 kbps mp3s. But yeah, if you are starting from 128 kbps mp3s, you're gonna have some lackluster samples.
    Hey Trux, I'm only converting them to wav because maschine can't read mp3. I know it won't fix the audio, I'm just worried about causing any further audio loss from recording it. Man if Maschine and Kontakt could use mp3s it'd really speed up my workflow

  4. #4

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    You're not really sampling in this case, just dropping samples into the pad banks. There shouldn't be any concern, you're just using Maschine's playback engine.

  5. #5
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    heh yeah, wish there was some new audio format that was lossless _and_ small file size :P

    i often bounce from live to maschine, or i record loops in traktor and drag them into maschine. or, i record them in realtime using audio hijack. i guess i try to bounce it - so i record what is definitely playing - instead of converting files, but that's just me. either way, the levels should be as strong as your source material.

    maschine's normalize function is sometimes useful but it can sound a bit overworked - i try to avoid it. i suggest tho you look thru the sampler module settings for good processing of samples - drive, emulation modes, eqing/filtering. also maschine's compressor is pretty nice.

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