# Possible to fake round robin out of 1 sample set?



## diggler (Jan 22, 2012)

Is it possible to fake round robin groups out of 1 sample group. For instance apply group insert effects and alter the tuning a bit for copied groups of the same sample set. If there is a good way of doing this without effecting the volume too much of each group I would like to know. This would help conserve memory by using only one or two groups of samples for the base of round robins. If anybody has some tips I would be grateful thanks.


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## Reegs (Jan 22, 2012)

Sure. There's a number of scripts that do it. TKT Ultra, I believe SIPS has a module for it now, and (one I wrote) Robin Rocket.


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## Frederick Russ (Jan 22, 2012)

You can also create a second and third sample set from the original by using your pitch wheel controller - when samples are ready, you can then build your instrument in groups. I had to do this with Miroslav many years ago since the original did not have round robin at all. Worked great.


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## diggler (Jan 22, 2012)

Very nice thank you for the options this seems like it it will work great hopefully one of these scripts plays nice with kontakt 4 and 5. This would save me a lot of time if it works. Thanks for the tips I appreciate it.


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## José Herring (Jan 22, 2012)

There's also a pretty simple way to do it if your libraries are unlocked. I did this with SISS spicc and stacc samples. I created a 4 way round robin by creating a second, third, and fourth group of samples. I pitched the second group up a 1/2 step, the third group down a 1/2 step, and the fourth group a whole step. I can't remember the exact mechanics of how I did it, but its pretty easy to figure out. Like drag it up a half step, then turn off the option in kontakt that automatically pitches the notes if you drag them, then dragged it back down so that the notes would correspond to the correct pitches. Sound complicated, but it only took me about 15 min to figure out and do.

Then you just set up a round robin in Kontakt involving all groups. Worked like a charm.


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## diggler (Jan 22, 2012)

Great methods here guys thank you so much for the insight. This is a real time and memory saver and the outcome is sounding great so far wow I am grateful.


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## José Herring (Jan 22, 2012)

I did a horrible job of explaining what I did, but the key is to pitch the surrounding samples down or up so that you trigger different samples in your round robin, but the same pitches.

There are many good methods to do this as mentioned here. The problem I found with doing it with a script is that it takes time for the script to do the shifting so if you have successive fast notes they go out of time. The manual method like Fredericks or my method is that you don't have that extra latency.


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## germancomponist (Jan 22, 2012)

josejherring @ Sun Jan 22 said:


> There are many good methods to do this as mentioned here. The problem I found with doing it with a script is that it takes time for the script to do the shifting so if you have successive fast notes they go out of time. The manual method like Fredericks or my method is that you don't have that extra latency.



+1 for this!

For those who like scripts, there is a script included in the Kontakt script library, with what you can do all this and more..


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## José Herring (Jan 22, 2012)

One other thing you have to do is to make sure your sample start times are spot on. On every commercial library I have there can be sometimes as much as 30ms of dead space before the note actually starts. SISS and EW were the most outrageous offenders of this. If you manually adjust each start time before you do your shifting you'll get a much tighter stacc. One of the reason why I hate it when developers lock you out of their samples.


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## germancomponist (Jan 22, 2012)

Yes, this is also very important! 

In the old days, when memory was rar, I also always edited the sample end point, because there were libraries on the market what had a looong pause in the end, what had cost a lot memory... .


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## diggler (Jan 22, 2012)

Well after a bit of testing I have to say the Robin rocket script works great and doesn't have any conflicts with my other scripts in kontakt 4. I tried the ultra tkt and couldn't get it to play well with kontakt 4 and the other scripts I am using.

This was an easy way to add round robin for sure. I tested the latency of fast repeated notes and I couldn't tell any noticeable offset. However I think creating multiple groups of the same samples and adjusting the pitch offsets manually will provide faster response even if I can't tell. 

I tried the manual way and it doesn't take a whole lot of time. By using the robin rocket script first to see how the pitch offsets and number of variables are going to sound I was able to calculate in the first stages how much pitch offset and how many variables to use. 

Seems like three artics with one note above and below with a .081 variance is a good sweet spot for the robin rocket. I was able to manually do 4 round robin groups with similar variance with a little better results. I think even though it takes a bit longer manually is the way to go. 

I will be use using both of these methods they are great and thanks for all the great help and expertise. o-[][]-o


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## mbietenholz (Jan 31, 2012)

diggler @ Sun Jan 22 said:


> Is it possible to fake round robin groups out of 1 sample group. For instance apply group insert effects and alter the tuning a bit for copied groups of the same sample set. If there is a good way of doing this without effecting the volume too much of each group I would like to know. This would help conserve memory by using only one or two groups of samples for the base of round robins. If anybody has some tips I would be grateful thanks.



A couple of other possibilities

1) for long loops, keep the whole loop, but vary the start point (although I can't remember if Kontakt will let you start in the middle of a loop). This gets you slightly different sounding attacks which is mostly what you need to avoid the machine-gun effect.

2) For things like snares, you can process the samples through some light flange or phaser. No or very slow LFO mod, but use a different delay/freq for different copies of the original sample.
This gets you similar-sounding but non-identical samples. You could of course just run sample through flanger/phaser with random modulation of delay/freq.


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## MacQ (Jan 31, 2012)

mbietenholz @ Tue Jan 31 said:


> A couple of other possibilities
> 
> 1) for long loops, keep the whole loop, but vary the start point (although I can't remember if Kontakt will let you start in the middle of a loop). This gets you slightly different sounding attacks which is mostly what you need to avoid the machine-gun effect.
> 
> ...



These are both great suggestions, and yeah, Kontakt lets you set the sample start mid-loop. The second suggestion is especially applicable if you DON'T have samples that are recorded chromatically (which seems to be critical to the trick employed in the above examples). It offers a way of changing that basic sample slightly. I've also had success with different EQ settings per-sample, but that gets time consuming quickly!

~Stu


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## diggler (Jan 31, 2012)

That is a great suggestion I will keep that in mind. For this project I wanted the samples to run out and not be looped. The instruments are wind controller driven so usually the player runs out of breath before the sample ends. 

I have been happy with the response and sound of robin rocket and combined with the factory humanizer script with 5% tune works great just enough to fake those round robins.

Right now I have kontakt performing natural attacks, releases, legato, portamento, breath controlled layer morphs and round robin all with just sustain samples. ADSR helps with attack and release noises. I like the performance of a smaller sample set adding release and attack samples doubles the size of the set not to mention what legato transistions add.

I find using a wind controller is a more natural way of playing woodwind and brass sample libraries. The wind controller adds elements of control that are difficult to sequence and is almost impossible to do with a keyboard in real time.  

What I have done is similar to the custom westgate scripts but without the performance hit and a little more responsive to the wind controller. Although the westgate script is very detailed with real legato transitions and attack and release samples. When played with a wind controller this can stress the computer to the point where playing 3 at low latency is about impossible. I was having trouble playing 2 64 samples 44khz. It is hard to create sections in real time like this so I opted for a more performance friendly way. 

Either way my library is a whole lot happier and my computer isn't as stressed. Thanks for the great ideas on round robin I really appreciate it.


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