Recording Samples

Recording Samples (Sample Rec View)

Circuit Rhythm has the capability to record samples via the external inputs.

You do this in Sample Rec View: press the Sample Rec button to open this:

The top two rows in Sample Rec View represent one of eight pages of 16 samples; they correspond
to the eight pages of samples displayed in Sample View. You can scroll through the pages using the
Up and Down buttons. 

• Note that when you scroll through the sample pages, the page you are currently
  viewing will be indicated by one of the 1 to 8 buttons momentarily illuminating bright white; i.e., if
  you scroll to page 5, the 5 button will briefly light. 
• The intensity of the Up and Down buttons’ illumination
  also indicate the page currently in use.

A dim grey pad indicates an occupied memory slot – one which already has a sample; an empty slot is
indicated by a dim red pad. The pad for the currently selected sample will be lit in a brighter shade of
white or red.

Pressing the pad for an occupied slot will play back the sample. If you want to clear an occupied slot
so that you can use it for a new sample, hold down Clear and press the slot pad to delete it from
flash memory.

• Note that the sample selection will reset if a new Pack is loaded.

Recording

To record a new sample, enter Sample Rec View and select an empty sample slot: the Record button will light dim orange, confirming that you can record to the slot. Press Record, it will light bright orange and the two lower grid rows will initially light dim grey, but will change colour through to orange one pad at a time, beginning with Pad 17 (the first pad on Row 3). This acts as a progress bar, and shows how much of the maximum recording length that has been used.

• The maximum recording time per sample slot is 32 seconds, so each of the 16 pads on the two lower grid rows represents two seconds.
• If less than 32 seconds worth of sample storage remains on Circuit Rhythm, fewer than 16 pads will
  be lit. The number of pads that are lit corresponds to the remaining time available.
  • For example, if 6 seconds remain, the first three pads will be lit dim grey, with the remaining pads being unlit.
• If you need to record for more than 32 seconds, you can select another empty slot. In this case, recording to the first slot will stop, but will continue directly to the second slot, allowing seamless
  recording across multiple slots.

To stop recording, press Record again. If the maximum sample time of 32 seconds is reached, or no
sample storage remains available, recording will stop automatically.

After recording a sample, it will be available for use immediately, but it will take some time to save
to the pack. While the sample is saving, the sample slot will flash green in Sample Rec View – do not
power off Circuit Rhythm or remove the microSD card while this process is taking place, or data loss
may occur.

Other notes:

• While sample recording is in progress the Record button is available in other Views, so that sample
  recording can be stopped from other views.
• Samples will be normalized following recording, ensuring that all recorded samples are at a suitable
  volume level. Beware that if silence is recorded, the low-level noise floor will be normalized, resulting
  in a very loud sample.

Record settings

There are four additional settings which affect how sample recording operates: Threshold, Attenuator,
Recording Source and Input Monitor.

• These settings are saved at power-off.

Recording Threshold On/Off

Pad 29 in Row 4 (above the Choke text) toggles the recording threshold function on or off.

With threshold off (pad lit dim red), recording will start immediately upon the Record button being
pressed. With threshold on (pad lit bright green and grid briefly displays ‘Thr’ ), recording will only
start once the signal level exceeds a certain threshold (-54 dBFS) after the Record button is pressed.

• Enabling threshold is useful when you want to prime recording to begin as soon as audio commences,
  preventing the need to trim silence from the start of a sample.

Attenuator On/Off

Pad 30 in Row 4 toggles an 12 dB attenuator on or off as part of the recording signal path. By default,
the attenuator is off (pad lit dim red, grid briefly displays ‘0’, representing 0 dB reduction in level).
When the attenuator is enabled (pad lit bright green and grid briefly displays ‘-12’ ) the recording
level is reduced by 12 dB.

• Use the attenuator if the signal level from an external sound source is too high and causing unwanted distortion on the recording.

Resample On/Off

Pad 31 in Row 4 (above the Keyboard text) selects the audio source for sample recording.

The default setting (pad lit dim red) enables recording from the external audio inputs. Pressing the
pad (lights bright green and grid briefly displays ‘RSP’) selects the internal audio engine as the
recording source: select this option if you want to resample internally processed sounds, or sample
the external inputs after being processed by Grid FX.

• With resample enabled, you may record audio from external and internal sources at the same time.

Input Monitoring

Pad 32 on Row 4 (above the Slice text) activates input monitoring. When input monitoring is active
(pad lit bright green and grid briefly displays ‘Mn’)

Disable input monitoring to mute incoming audio – this can be useful as part of a wider setup where
audio may be routed both through Circuit Rhythm for sampling, and directly from the source to a
mixer or audio interface.

• This pad may also be used as a performance kill-switch for external audio, which is useful when using Circuit Rhythm as an effects unit for external audio.

Monitor level

Use Macro 8 to apply digital gain to incoming audio. This will default to 0 dB upon power-on and is
never saved. This value may be increased to +12 dB or reduced to silence.

Sample Trimming

You can use Macro control 2 (Start) to trim the start point of the recorded sample and Macro control
3 (Length) to trim its duration. When either Macro control is moved, the pads in Row 3 of the grid
illuminate sand to indicate the start and duration of the sample. With all eight pads lit, the sample will
play for its full original duration, from the point at which recording commenced. The start point can
be moved “forward” with the Start control, and the end point moved “back” with the Length control:
both controls have the effect of shortening the overall sample length. The pads go dark to illustrate
the effect of trimming; note that start point and length can have values which are not integral
numbers of increments: this is indicated by the illumination on the “end” pad dimming. The graphics
below illustrate this:

As soon as the start or length are adjusted, Save will begin to pulse. Press Save to commit the new
start and length. Once a sample is saved it may be trimmed further, but it is not possible to revert
saved changes.

• Note that Row 3 does not indicate absolute sample time: a short sample and a long sample will both
  display their full duration as eight lit pads. Note also that samples can only be shortened – you can’t
  add silence at the start or end of a sample.
• The default precision of the start and end positions is 10 ms per pad, hold Shift to increase the
  precision to 1 ms.

Playback Modes

Sample playback in Sample Record View may be set to One Shot, Gated or Looped; Reverse may
additionally be enabled or disabled. These modes behave identically to tracks 1-8 (see Sample Modes
at page 32). The default mode is One Shot, which will be selected upon power-on.

• This selection is not saved with the project.
• Setting playback to Looped is useful for ensuring that looped samples (such as drum breaks) are
  trimmed perfectly.
• Reversing playback can be useful to fine-tune the end point of a sample.
  • For example, you may want to isolate a single hit in a drum loop and remove the transient of the next hit while maintaining as much of the previous tail as possible - with reverse enabled you don’t have to wait for the sample to play through in its entirety to check if you have trimmed correctly.