User Manual

Table Of Contents
WAVELAB
Using samplers and creating loops 28 – 669
Basic looping
Instrumental sounds in samplers rely heavily on looping. Looping a
sound
allows you to repeat a section of the sample indefinitely, to
create a sus-
tain of unlimited length. An example of this would be an organ sound.
Without looping you will only be able to play notes as
long as the original
recording. With looping, notes can be of any length.
Finding a good loop point takes a bit of practice. Here is some advice:
There are only two types of loops: very long and very short. Loops of intermediate
lengths usually don’t work very well.
A long loop will sound the most natural, and should be used whenever possible.
However, if the sound does not have a stable section in the middle (an
even sus-
tain part), it might be hard to find a good long loop. For example, a
piano note –
which decays continuously – will be hard to loop since the start point of the loop
will be louder than the end. A flute will be much simpler, because the sound in the
sustain section is very stable.
Very short loops (covering only a few cycles or periods) can almost always be
found, but may sound “static” and unnatural.
A loop should normally start a short time after the “attack” portion, that is, when
the sound has “stabilized” to a sustaining note.
If you try to set up a long loop, it should end as late as possible, but before the
sound starts decaying to silence (if it does).
If you go for a short loop, it is harder to say exactly where in the sound to put it,
but it should definitely be towards the end.
More information about looping in general, and the exact capabilities of
your sampler in particular, can be found in the sampler’s manual. Below
follows a description of WaveLab’s set of tools for setting up loops.
Adding, moving and playing loop markers
Loop markers are added, moved and otherwise edited just as any other
type of marker. This is described in the section “Introduction” on page 328
and onwards.
Please note the points about marker pairs (see “About marker pairs on
page 329).