Questions & Answers

Impact XT: one .WAV with four velocity samples inside; does it use 4X the RAM?

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asked Apr 12, 2020 in Studio One 4 by davidicusschacher (350 points)
I have files full of drums at different velocities, and even different drums and velocities. If I want multiple velocities of one drum on a given pad, I have to Add Sample (the same WAV file) four times. There doesn't seem to be a way to use the Start and End point markers on the same WAV to define four regions.

I'm worried by specifying a long WAV four times, it's getting loaded four times and using up a lot of RAM. Is this true? Or, is Studio One smart enough to load the WAV once?

1 Answer

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answered Apr 12, 2020 by matthewritenburg (17,320 points)
You typically load different samples for each velocity range.  The sound of a drum hit softly sounds different than a drum hit hard.  To capture that accurately, you need different samples.  So yes, it takes a bit more memory, but if you using on-shot drum samples that are only milliseconds long, that's not much more memory at all.  

There is also another way to simulate the change in timbre between a soft hit and a hard hit and that's using velocity to modulate the filter.  Softly hit drums have fewer high harmonics that drums hit hard.  Modulating a filter with velocity allows you to simulate that change in harmonics which affects timbre.  The higher the velocity, the more the filter is opened, the more high harmonics are allowed through, thus the sound is brighter giving an indicator that it was hit harder.
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