Flexi sampler - multiple recording bugs / unintuitive behaviours

obenoben
in Known issues

Flexi sampler is a mess ... If the following behaviour is intended, I don't understand it. It's unintuitive and I only figured out how it all works after several hours of testing different scenarios and thinking it was all bugs. I am still conviced some or most things described below are bugs. As for the rest, it's unintuitive and seems inconsistent across different scenarios. Documentation is also severely lacking which is the case for most of Drambo ... Maybe thorugh documentation of this particular module and the Clip Sync mode would have spared me the troubles.

See also this thread: https://forum.beepstreet.com/discussion/3632/flexi-sampler-bug#latest. @giku you we're tagged there more than a month ago and didn't even respond yet. Not cool.

1. bug: Flexi Sampler triggers itself while it's recording.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open new project.
  2. Insert an instrument rack on a track and activate any preset.
  3. Add the Flexi sampler module after the instrument rack.
  4. Press Flexi sampler's 'Monitor' button to hear yourself playing.
  5. Press the REC button and immediately play a few notes (at least 2 to 3 notes) on the pads or the keys.
  6. Observe how the playhead in Flexi sampler's waveform view triggers (starts playing) each time you played a pad or key.
  7. Observe how after you've already stopped playing, the sampler will trigger and play something again (the audio it's still recording).
  8. Now disconnect the gate input on Flexi sampler and repeat steps 5 & 6.
  9. Observe how it doesn't get triggered now (desired behaviour).

Having to disconnect the gate to record something in Flexi sampler while monitoring the signal is unintuitive and unnecessary. I don't see how this triggering during recording is useful anywhere. It would be best if the gate input was disabled during recording otherwise the Monitor option becomes kind of useless when recording MIDI instruments (I see how this wouldn't happen when recording external audio since you're not sending any MIDI into the track which triggers the sampler).


Bugs / uninteded behaviours of 'Clip' Sync recording mode:

Preliminary steps (for all bugs / unintuitive behaviours described below):

  1. Open new project.
  2. Insert an instrument rack on a track and activate any preset.
  3. Add the Flexi sampler module after the instrument rack
  4. Press the 'v Rec' button in Flexi sampler's module header.
  5. Change Sync mode to 'Clip'.
  6. Press Flexi sampler's 'Monitor' button to hear yourself playing.

1. bug / unintuitive behaviour: If you first press the 'REC' button in Flexi sampler and then press the Play button, Flexi sampler's recording starts only after the clip played through 1 or 2 times (depending on the buffer size -> that's definitely a bug). It should record immediately when you press the Play button because we can already have it record later by pressing the REC button while the clip is already playing. Sometimes you don't want to wait the length of the entire clip (or multiple clips - see 2nd scenario) for it to start recording but you want it synced to the length of the clip - imagine a clip that is 8 or 16 bars long ... it's just wasting time.

1st Scenario: recording starts after the clip has played through 1 time:

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Don't add any bars to the clip. Leave the clip 1 bar long.
  2. Set buffer size to and of the following: 128, 256 or 1024.
  3. Press the 'REC' button in Flexi sampler.
  4. Press the Play button.
  5. Press the pads or keys to play the instrument you picked.
  6. Observe how the sampler doesn't start recording only until the clip has played through once already.

2nd Scenario (100 % a bug):

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Don't add any bars to the clip. Leave the clip 1 bar long.
  2. Set buffer size to 512.
  3. Follow steps 2 - 4 from the 1st scenario.
  4. Observe how the sampler doesn't start recording only until the clip has played through TWICE.
  5. Ask yourself: What the hell is going on? Why should this particular buffer size have any effect on when recording starts?

3rd scenario:

Steps to reproduce:

  1. This time make the clip 2 bars long.
  2. Set buffer size to 512.
  3. Follow steps 2 - 4 from the 1st scenario.
  4. Observe how the sampler starts recording after the clip (2 bars) has played through once. That is more in line with the behaviour at buffer sizes 128, 256 and 1024 but it still isn't intuitive.


Continued in next post ...

Comments

  • obenoben

    ... Continued from previous post

    2. bug / unintuitive behaviour: The recording process doesn't automatically stop when recording through one clip iteration. It just goes on indefinitely until you press the REC button (or the waveform view) again. It stops recording at the end of one clip iteration only if you press the REC button while it's still playing through that clip iteration. Since this is a Sync mode called 'Clip', I would expect it to automatically stop recording when the clip ends without having to do anything. It seems unintuitive and redundant to have to press the REC button again in this mode. I would expect to be able to set the length of the clip (in the Sequence navigation bar) and that would determine the recording length in Flexi sampler too (when this Sync mode is active of course) - no need to press the REC button again -> recipe for quick and perfect loops. You could of course add other Clip mode variations to keep the current behaviour because I imagine it could be useful to some users -> examples of such modes would be 'Clip (sync end)' & 'Clip (sync start)' - the latter relating to the 1st bug / unintuitive behaviour. Another argument for why automatic stopping of recording is desirable is that both of your hands might be occupied by playing an instrument (keyboard, guitar) and you might be playing all the way to the end of the clip. When you press the REC button, it's already too late, the 2nd iteration of the clip is already playing and recording will stop only at the end of it. There goes your attempt to create a perfect loop.

    Steps to reproduce:

    1. Follow steps 1 - 4 of 1st Scenario in 1st Bug / unintuitive behaviour (see above).
    2. You'll have to wait until the clip has played once through for the sampler to start recording (see above). When that happens, play something so the sampler records it.
    3. Wait for that clip (during which it was actually recording) to play all the way through and then press the REC button.
    4. Observe how the recording stops only after it reaches the end of the 2nd iteration of the clip (while Flexi sampler is recording).

     

    Tested on:

    • iPad 5th gen. running iPadOS 16.7.11 (20H360) and Drambo v2.51(3)
    • iPhone 11 running iOS 18.7.1 (22H31) and Drambo v2.51(2)


    Testing all of this, figuring it out and writing this post took several hours which should be telling of the fact that I care about Drambo and want to keep using it but it should also be telling of the fact that I'm quite disappointed and slightly pissed because of its current instability and non-reliability and am close to switching over to something else if things don't improve in the near future. I want to be making music, not constantly be fighting the software because something is not working properly ... Through all this I did learn the current state of Flexi sampler and how to work around it but noone should be forced to go through all this to understand how a module works. It's unfair to expect that. We didn't pay for that and it wasn't disclosed anywhere. Thoroughly document the modules' intended behaviours and fix the bugs please.

  • gikugiku
    edited March 30

    @oben

    Thanks a lot for the time you spent on this, and sorry for the frustration.

    • Clip sync recording is clearly a bug (most probably introduced with the last sequencer update). Fixing it.
    • Other behaviours: This module wasn’t designed to sample a source and play it back on the same track - these assumptions are already glitchy: You’re sampling a clip and triggering it with the same sequence data that was created for the original instrument -what was your intention? If your instrument is on Track 1, you can add Flexi to Track 2 and set the source to Track 1 (available in the Sources parameter).
  • GoldiblockzGoldiblockz

    There's so many bugs right now that it's hard to replicate the ones you do find without frustrating yourself with known ones or running into new ones...please @giku a quality of life and polish update is dearly needed <3 too many new features too fast! lots of unattended reports!

  • obenoben
    https://forum.beepstreet.com/discussion/comment/65896#Comment_65896

    Thank you for getting back to me in the e-mail and here as well.

    Also, thank you for the explanation and the possible solution. I admit that I haven't thought of sampling into another track which makes sense and skips the issue of the sampler getting triggered while recording. As I wrote in my e-mail reply, my intentions in those cases were the following (pasted from the e-mail verbatim):

    • In some cases on my iPad (since it's old) in order to save CPU I have to record the output of the whole track and disable the MIDI instruments and effects (some DAWs use the term "freeze"). I could increase the buffer size to 1024 but the latency is unacceptable if I'm still trying to record new parts. For this "freezing" process I also tried stem recording but from what I see it always records up until you press Play again - meaning you can't time it perfectly to the end of the clip.
    • Since Drambo isn't a typical DAW and doesn't have audio tracks one has to be creative when slicing audio. I'm not saying you should make it a DAW, just pointing it out since that makes us approach it differently. Flexi sampler is the only tool I found in Drambo which allows you to "slice" audio files (played from a preceding sampler) into precise portions which are synced to the project tempo.
  • gikugiku
    https://forum.beepstreet.com/discussion/comment/65897#Comment_65897

    I’m back to the list now. hmm, it’s not so bad ;)

    If there’s anything that bothers you more, let me know. I’ll update the priorities.

  • gikugiku
    https://forum.beepstreet.com/discussion/comment/65898#Comment_65898

    Please use it on another track, clip sync issue will be fixed in max 2 days.

  • obenoben
    https://forum.beepstreet.com/discussion/comment/65900#Comment_65900

    Will do and thank you. 👍️

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