Managing Apple Loops files?

Another thing with loops is that creating lifelike music with them usually requires a handful of loop variations that are called up variedly on the fly. In EXS this is done by assigning each loop variation to an adjacent key, then playing a different key after one or more loop cycles and recording this sequence.

The question is, how do we accomplish this with the Loop Browser? I know I can click different loops in the Loop Browser window to play them in random order while the rest of the arrangement plays, but once I come up with an attractive-sounding loop sequence by doing this, how do I drop it easily into a Logic track? (Or is this what people use Ableton Live with ReWire for?)

The more I think about this, the more I realize that EXS already has everything the Loop Browser aspires to become, except the ability to match the played AIFFs' tempo to the song's. So perhaps it's not more features we need for the Loop Browser really, but its seamless integration into EXS? (More exactly, the seamless integration of its tempo matching capability.) After all, how many AIFF playback utilities does one really need?

By EXS I was indeed referring to the EXS24 softsampler. In it you can assign loop variations to adjacent MIDI keys, saving the setup as an EXS program. So once you work out the optimum sequence of loops by triggering them via MIDI or the Caps Lock keyboard, you just record the sequence how you played them and you're done. (If you want to turn this sequence back into an audio loop, just invoke the "freeze" command.) Totally hands-on, there is none of that tedious Loop Browser business of having to drop the loops individually into the arrangement once you figured out the right sequence.

So, my point is, given the above, all the tools needed to create a lifelike sequence with multiple loop files hands-on are already present in EXS. There is no need to spend a kajillion coding hours to build the Loop Browser into a second EXS, when it is much easier to add the Loop Browser's only selling point (its ability to tempo match the song with its loops) to EXS. One AIFF playback utility instead of two: easier on the coders, easier on the users.

My first hunch would be the same what Shaun said - a cache particularity, caused by the circumstances. The first thing I'd try is check how many files are in the folder where you audition them. If you have several hundred, a good test would be to temporarily reduce the number to something like 80, relaunch the program and see if auditioning times speed up afterwards. If yes, then I guess you might want to plan a little sorting out to subfolders session.

The second thing I'd do is, if you have DiskWarrior, check whether your HD's directory is in top shape. A corrupted directory will often lead to issues similar to this: the Mac still works as if everything were peachy, but takes a weird amount of time to open files, etc.

The third thing I'd check it whether the files that play slow are AIFF or WAV. While I haven't run into a problem with my Macs yet, I did run into a reproducible AIFF playback issue on PCs already where the latest QuickTime (which handles the playback in the Pro Tools audition window too, I presume) simply wouldn't play certain AIFF Apple Loops no matter what but would have no problem playing the same files in WAV format.

I'm just about to solve this problem; I think I found the equivalent of Loop Browser of year 2017, It's called Ableton Live.

I have been nagging it only for 24 hours, so I don't have all the details down yet, but most of the functionality of Loop Browser seems to be in it, and then ten times more. It previews loop files at song speed, playing along with the already recorded tracks like Logic's Loop Browser. But on Live you can drag and drop a multitude of loops into its window and play them back in any simultaneous combination and/or playback order your heart desires, and you can even record this entire performance on the fly as you create it - very unlike the the Loop Browser. I found where Live program stores its loop files, (it's at System HD/Users/Your Username/Library/Application Support/Ableton/Library/Clips) and put an alias to Loop Browser's user Apple Loops folder (which is System HD/Users/Your Username/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops/Singlefiles) into it and pronto - I didn't even had to restart Live, all my Apple Loops came right up and ready for auditioning and use in Live. Beautiful!

Since I have been on Live only since today morning there are still two issues I'm working to resolve. First, while tempo matching is dead on, I'm still working on getting key matching to happen too. Secondly, while Live can reportedly feed its tracks into Logic Pro on the fly through ReWire by following the instructions on http://www.ableton.com/pages/rewire/logic_pro , I'm still working on getting this to happen. (There is a ReWire template in Logic's Templates folder, whose opening nukes half of the obstacles in one fell swoop.)

All in all, if the Loop Browser is giving you the fits too by its inability to manage files, or play them from external HDs through a well-placed alias, Ableton Live seems to be the answer. Its ability to audition several loops simultaneously was such an incredible fun and creative boost to me, if ReWiring it to Logic Pro remains a problem, after a few more days I might even stop worrying about it. 🙂

Not certain (at the time) whether Live is what I need to solve this Apple Loops problem, I bought an older version, 5.0, which could be had for $50 locally. I could have gotten the program for even less, had I settled for version 4.0 which I saw going for $1 on Ebay. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160178975383) So all my comments refer to Live 5.0, although I keep a Live 6.0 demo (from Ableton.com) next to it too, for troubleshooting comparison purposes.

Today's report from the trenches...

I found the answer to both previous issues: key matching for loops in Ableton (turn the transpose knob in their Clip View window) and ReWiring of Live to Logic. The ReWire implementation is rather handicapped; Logic will route Live's ReWire output to an Aux Bus channel first (not an audio track to record it, oh no) from where you can route it to Outputs 1 - 2, which you can bounce it to a file through a dialog box, and THEN you can drop that file onto an audio track. (4 counter-intuitive steps instead of 1.) So you can guess where this led. I figured out, instead of all this contortion, it's simpler to just do the whole arrangement in Live. 🙂