Question about Offset, High Offset and Preparing Samples

[blast_thickneck]

Just marked an older thread as solved but decided to open a new thread since this is a completely different question.

I'm interested in doing stuff like jungle, dnb and breakcore and investigating I learned that trackers are maybe the best option for finetuning drums in that genre. That, plus it feels like OpenMPT's sampler is so much better than even some commercial options in my opinion (the Reaper sampler is archaic in comparison)

My main doubt or problem about it is the need of using High Offset to reach futher into the sample. It seems kind of a hassle or even unintuitive having to set it up but then immediately having to return to normal offset so I can use earlier parts of the sample. I imagine to avoid this I'd probably have to prepare the sample to make it have a lower freq. in like Audacity beforehand but the sample ends up sounding super tinny if i do this. It seems like older software like Impulse Tracker didn't have this problem? Or maybe it did and I misundertood the whole thing.

To anyone who has experience with this is there any way of using stuff like breaks or such without having the need to use High Offset? I don't even know if I'm asking in the correct place for this. I see there is sample cues but those seem pretty limited as well.

Anyway, sorry for troubling you and if this is the wrong place to ask please ignore but I'm getting pretty frustrated with this.... Everything else about OpenMPT seems much more straightforward than this.

[Harbinger]

My main doubt or problem about it is the need of using High Offset to reach futher into the sample. It seems kind of a hassle or even unintuitive having to set it up but then immediately having to return to normal offset so I can use earlier parts of the sample. I imagine to avoid this I'd probably have to prepare the sample to make it have a lower freq. in like Audacity beforehand but the sample ends up sounding super tinny if i do this. It seems like older software like Impulse Tracker didn't have this problem? Or maybe it did and I misundertood the whole thing.

To anyone who has experience with this is there any way of using stuff like breaks or such without having the need to use High Offset?

Ive done a lot DnB including breakbeats and i was using openMPT before the devs put in the High Offset command into the MPTM format. When #xx came along, it was a gamechanger for all my EDM.

The High Offset command does take some getting used to, but the only other reasonable workaround is to slice up the sample (that youre offsetting into) into smaller sounds, and giving them their own sample or instrument slots. I highly recommend saving the good ones that you think youll be using again.

[Saga Musix]

It seems like older software like Impulse Tracker didn't have this problem? Or maybe it did and I misundertood the whole thing.

Impulse Tracker is the tracker that "invented" the High Offset command, so it's responsible for all the headaches around it. But back then people of course tended to use lower-quality and thus smaller samples, so the High Offset was rarely needed.

Note that there is a more recent alternative to using High Offset in the MPTM format in addition to the #xx command that Harbinger mentioned: You can combine cue points with regular offset commands. This way you can either address the whole sample by a percentage (o00 + OFF always points to the end of the sample no matter how long it is), or parts of the sample relative to cue points, which takes both effect columns but doesn't require the tedious SAx command setup. Read more about this command combination here: https://wiki.openmpt.org/Manual:_Effect_Reference#Combined_Commands

[blast_thickneck]

Alright it does seem I have to get used to it also use the High Offset + Sample Cue combo too which kinda seems obvious in hindsight? Anyway thanks for answering I'll leave it unmarked for a little more if anyone has any tips on break manipulation stuff in OpenMPT and then mark as solved. Thanks!

[Saga Musix]

Maybe just as a complementary hint that works well with beat slicing: You can set up cue points in your sample at the offsets where you want to play the sample from (typically individual drum beats) and then right-click and choose "slice at cue points". Then map the sliced samples to different keys of the same instrument. That way you can trigger different parts of the beat just by using different notes across the keyboard. I use this technique frequently to slice Amen breaks, for example in this track you can see it in action: https://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=7225.0