The Sample Editor |
The sample editor is the place where you can edit and load sounds which won't be generated in realtime called samples.
The big sample display is probably the most important part of the Sample
Editor. The display gives a representation of the audio data of the sample.
Just like the waveforms in the previous screens, a sample too is a series
of fluctuations around an horizontal axis. The sample is a representation
of the movement of the speaker cone in time when it plays that sound.
Let's look at
the display in detail to carefully explain what you can read of of it. The
white line is the actual sample. In our example the sample is a sinewave
which rapidly changes amplitude. The vertical blue line in the beginning
is the sample starting point. This is the point Jaytrax will start playing
when it has to play the sample. The vertical red line is the sample ending
point. When the sample reaches this point it either stops or it continues
at the sample looppoint which is displayed as the vertical yellow line. To
place thesde lines you can either change the 'Startpoint', 'Looppoint' or
'Endpoint' values or you can click one of those buttons and right click anywhere
in the display. The corresponding value will then be set. With the 3 dropdown
boxes under the display you can easily set the start-, end- or looppoint
to a fraction of the total length. This is very easy if you have a long sampled
beat which you want to cut up into smaller subbeats. With the slider just
under the display you can scroll through the sampledata if you are looking
at a magnification. If you drag through the display with your leftmouse button
down, you can select a range in the sample. On this selection you can perform
operations like cut/paste and zooming. Other ways to change your current
selection are
the
'Select None' button which disables any selection you might have. The 'Select
All' button selects the entire sample. The 'Select Loop' button selects that
bit of the sample between the loop- and endpoint. The 'Select Previous' button
selects the selection you have used for a previous operation. After selecting
a range we can specify what we want to do with it. If you click 'Show Range'
the display will zoom in on the sample and show exactly the bit you had selected.
Selecting 'Show All' resets the display and shows the entire sample. Clicking
the 'Zoom In' and 'Zoom out' buttons let's you gradually zoom in and out
on the sampledata. The 'Cut' button removes the selected range out of the
sample and stores it in the clipboard. The 'Copy' button only makes a copy
of the selection which it will also stop in the clipboard. The 'Paste' button
pastes the contents of the clipboard to wherever you had set your selection.
If your selection was only one line think, the contents will be inserted.
If you had specified
a selection, the selected region will be changed with the contents of the
cliboard. Clicking 'Zero' empties the selected range of the wave. Setting
a range to zero effectively kills the signal there. The 'Mix in' button does
the same as paste but it doesn't rplace the sample with the clipboard sample
but it mixes it in. The ratio with which the clipboard sample and the original
are mixed can be specified with the 'Mix factor' value. The 'Reverse' button
can reverse the selected range. The 'Average' buttons averages out peaks
and noises in the selected range. Averaging removes a lot of high frequencys
in the process and if you average long enough you will only be left with
a low frequency wave. The 'Amplify' button amplifies the selected range with
the percentage set in the field next to it. If you amplify a sample too much,
clipping will occur and the sample will sound deformed.
After having
manipulated the sample you can specify how Jaytrax should behave when playing
the sample. Normally the sample will only be played once. It will start at
the Startpoint, and end when it reaches the Endpoint. When you set the 'Looping
enabled' toggle, Jaytrax will continue playing the sample from the specified
Looppoint after it reaches the Endpoint. It will do so indefinately. When
you also specify the 'Bidirectional Looping' Jaytrax will bounce hence and
forth between the Loop- and the endpoint. If you try and specify a Looppoint
you will quickly learn that this is quite tricky to place one so that you
won't hear where the sample loops. Jaytrax has some utility functions to
help you with your task. First of all you can Click one of the 'Search Looppoint'
buttons to search for the first available probable looppoint to the left
or right. A probable looppoint is where the Endpoint and the Looppoint are
at an equal point in a wave. If you can't find a proper loooppoint, you can
aslo force one by recalcualting a bit of the sample so that it should loop
better. This can be done by hitting the 'Make Looppoint' button. This option
will recalculate X samples roundabout the endpoint, so that it will loop
better. The value for X can be specified in the 'Nr of samples'
box.
Finally
when you're through manipulating the sampled data you can save the
sample with the 'Save Sample' button. The load Sample allows you to load
previously saved sample data back into the program. Jaytrax only allows 16
bit mono .WAV files. Some subtypes of WAV are not supported. The 'Delete
Sample' removes the sample from memory, this way, Jaytrax will resume using
the synthesized sounds instead of sampled data. The 'Samplelength' box gives
the amount of bytes used to store your sample in memory. The 'Samplename'
is the name of the sample on disk. Last but not least there is a dropdown
box called: 'Share sampledata from instrument'. Sample sharing is the ability
to use the sampledata of another instrument. This is very usefull if you
want to use the same sampledata but with other characteristiques, like the
volume setting or different looppoints. Reloading of the sample would not
be very efficient, thus you can select with the dropdownbox the instrument
whoms sampledata you will use. Please note that if you start editing the
shared sampledata, the original sampledata will be edited as well! If you
select 'Delete Sample' however you will only disable the samplesharing and
you will get your old sample back.
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