Exporting with precise length?
Hey everyone,
Relatively new to Logic, but not a total DAW dummy. The problem I'm having is kind of infuriating but otherwise I love the software.
Basically, I am building 4- and 8-bar loops in Logic at a tempo of 103 BPM. I have uploaded my samples to a beat sequencer and am triggering them via MIDI. I then quantize the samples according to Logic's 103 BPM grid. Once I have a loop of either 4 or 8 bars, I export its track as a WAV file. Under normal circumstances, I then load the WAV file, which should be precisely 4 or 8 bars long at 103 BPM, into my sampling pad (Roland SPD-SX). With the click on the Roland set to 103, I should be able to play the loop and have it repeat indefinitely without it "creeping".
What I described above would be my best-case scenario. Thankfully, this has worked many times for me. In fact, I can double-check that it's working by using the Tempo Match feature on the Roland-- if I tell the Roland that the loop is 8 bars long, it infers that the tempo is 103 based on the length of the WAV. This works perfectly.
Until today. I did my same system as always, exactly as described above, no hitches. But when I load this new loop in the Roland, it creeps and gets ahead. The Tempo Match check? Roland says my loop is 103.4 BPM. I was careful to not make a mistake in Logic; Logic told me it was 103.
I have since tried to make this particular loop 4 or 5 times and it's always the same. The Roland thinks it's at 103.4, which I would assume means that Logic is truncating the length of the export WAV. I don't think the problem is that Logic's metronome is faulty. My ears tell me the samples within the loop are perfectly in time at 103, but at the end of the 8 bars, the loop starts again just a hair early, getting further and further ahead each time the loop recycles. Which sounds very much like Logic is truncating the length of the export WAV.
I called Roland and confirmed the issue is not with the sampling pad. Does anyone know why this is happening now and never happened before, and could someone please tell me how I can be more precise with the export length in Logic so that my pad's Tempo Match feature correctly reads the length of the WAV loop to arrive at 103 (instead of 103.4) BPM?
Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time.
Jake
MacBook Pro 2.2 Ghz, Mac OS X (10.6)