Sampling time

Those are good points. To be fair, there are a lot people out there that don't seem to care about the 32 second limit. I think as their creativity expands they will clearly see the brick wall and realize there are no creative ways around that 32 second limitation without introducing new problems in their production. In my opinion, that 32 second limitation is a rabbit hole of a mess. You are right, Pioneer will not even address it. 

Yeah I understand peeps perspective on this.....but at the end of the day, they made it crystal clear what the limitations were at release. Hell I jumped in both feet, knowing it was missing some things I needed and just hoped for the best. Pioneer had done a solid job with updates so far, so I can't complain, I mean I could, but for what? They have a forum for suggestions which they obviously take into account.

I've pretty much came to terms with needing a software daw to complete my tracks, which I was hoping to avoid- unless pioneer gets really aggressive with their undate path over the next year, so time will tell...I'm all in for the next 12 months, at which point I'll have to decide if the 16's made enough strides to stay out of the "box" more times then not.

Good points above. I share some of the same feelings.

It's sort of a double-whammy. Even though the sample recording limit is 32 seconds, in reality, at 120BPM you get 8 seconds over 4 bars!

So, I see the more pressing need for a facility to allow samples to play "free from the sampler", a plays free trig in Elektron Octatrack terms.

Another approach would be to somehow allow 8 or 16 bars for specific pads / samples, so that you could at least reach the 32 second sample limit at BPM's of 120 up...

You could, as mentioned above, halve your BPM, e.g. to 60bpm for a 120bpm song, and double the timeframe for your sample to play in, but on the Toraiz I find that you are restricting yourself if you finger drum live, as it forces trigs that you record live to a quantize value (even with quantize off - which is another issue I raised that has gone unaddressed!)

Having said all that - the Toraiz is a bucket of fun in happy sauce :) 

* to allow samples to play "free from the sampler", a plays free trig in Elektron Octatrack terms.*

i wasn't aware the Elektron had that- ughhh, I might have to try this thing.....

samples play free on the OT is how I ran backing tracks at gigs in the past. You trigged them in sync with other gear (tempest, synths etc.) and jam away over a core backing track.

I don't fancy chopping up backing tracks into 8 second elements :)

Hi Orión. 

I do remember reading somewhere that there was 1GB Ram, and reading about that 16 pad x 24bit x 44.1khz breakdown. That does make sense. However, it would be good to get clarification from Pioneer.

Also, what happens when you change a pad mode to midi or thru, wouldn't this free up RAM? I know in the Octatrack you can customise RAM allocation per track, maybe this would be possible in the Toraiz.

If I was playing a gig and wanted backing tracks on my Toraiz then I would probably have 2 pads dedicated to midi and gladly sacrifice 2 or possibly even up to 6 more to free up Ram to allow me to use longer stem sections.

Having said all that, none of this gets around the 4 bar limit :)

Anyway, maybe we are trying to squeeze a box into a round hole - the Toraiz is not built to accommodate this and we should move on. Pioneer, any comments?

Quote:"The 32 second limit is a hard ware issue (ie RAM) not a software one peoples. 
If it does not stream from media, it needs to store samples in RAM" 

This is an interesting perspective guess but we don't know for sure how much RAM is allocated for playback. Does anyone know the answer to this? If it's only 1 gig then the 32 second sample playback limit mystery has been solved and we should stop bugging Pioneer about it.

I'm going to take my own perspective guess: It ain't RAM limitation! Let's find out for sure.

Even if the RAM limit is true with the default kHZ and bits, obviously allowing bit or kHZ reduction would circumvent that.

I'm just happy to have a sampler that doesn't save on a floppy disk.

Speaking of floppys even my ensoniq asr-pro allows me to do some RAM allocation so maybe it's coming in a future update and if not that's odd.

I'm not gonna poop on other peoples wants and needs but don't look at the 32 sec of sampling as a limitation look at it as a challenge. 

If you want to play back stems during a performance just use a daw. 

And again we just need one brave soul to do a toraiz tear down so we can see the guts.

Quote: "I'm not gonna poop on other peoples wants and needs but don't look at the 32 sec of sampling as a limitation look at it as a challenge."

I have taken that specific challenge in full depth as far as it can go in every possible direction. In many practical cases, the 32 second limitation is not a challenge, it is a brick wall.

Believe me, as an experience professional who has acquired the ability to learn to use a lot of top-end equipment, I do understand the concept of learning/developing new ways to get from point A to B as both a creative challenge and end result solution. Sorry to hurt your feelings but the 32 second limitation doesn't apply here.

I agree, I think the 32 second limit is more of a hindrance than a creative aid. I wish we could dynamically allocate RAM to increase it, however, there is still the issue of a pattern only being 4 bars long, so there would need to be a way to allow a sample to play for more than 4 bars somehow (play it free from the sequencer perhaps / probabilistic trigs (e.g. play only once every 4 bars, like with the new Elektron OS)

Having said that above, I did notice during a jam on my Toraiz last night that you can sort of defeat the 4 bar sample limitation though.

If you trigger a sample (that is longer than 4 bars) in Pattern 1 and switch to change to Pattern 2 (making sure to set pattern changes to end of pattern rather than instant) then the long sample will continue to play on Pattern 2. Realistically, the most this will ever give you is 8 bars, or maybe 16 (across 4 patterns) at low BPM's (e.g. 60BPM) - all the while, having to fix these pattern transitions in the song mode / arranger (e.g. A1-A2-A1-A2 etc.)

Well I hate to say it guys, but I've called it quits. I just need way more flexibility, way more everything....just to use to the soft synth world I guess. I flipped my 16 the other day for my a bunch of Ableton "centered" stuff.

Wish you all the best with your music making ventures.

CM

I just cant believe it! I reviewed all the posts before and after this post and they were all answered by Pioneer. They continue to ignore 32 second limit question this is a big problem. Pioneer has no answers!

CM, that is a shame and I am sorry to hear you gave up and sold your SP-16. Obviously, you didn't buy it for it's bright and colorful blinking lights.

Best of luck CM! I have Push 2 as well (maybe that's what you got) - great piece of gear, and will provide all the flexibility you might need.

Having said that, I am really enjoying the immediacy and sound of the Toraiz - I think its simplicity is part of the attractiveness.

I do wish Pioneer would at least comment on the 32 second sample issue, or I fear quite a few others might follow in CM's footsteps...

Cheers.

@ Clay

Yeah I didn't really want to, but I'm just not getting tracks done the way I used to.

Again this is probably more about me than the Toriaz...I've used Ableton forever, and the speed and flexibility is just something I can't due without.

Quote: "Pioneer has no answer."

In my opinion, I think they do have an answer but they are protecting something. What that is; we have already speculated. One thing we can pretty be assured of is that the 32 second limit was not a "oops, we didn't think about that" reason. It was by intentional design. Otherwise, Pioneer would have explained it by now.

Thanks,  best to you as well Simon!

Someone gets it, if you want to play longer samples/backing tracks because the 32 second sampling limit is a brick wall, switch (back) to a daw (or as pioneer might say, buy a cdj).

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that pioneer has implemented some featured requests from this forum yet have not mentioned or responded to an inquiry about the sampling time (as far as I've seen). Anything beyond this observation would be speculation.

Hello,

I'm interested in purchasing the Toraiz SP-16 but this talk of 32 seconds sample time has me boggled, so I'm hoping someone can clear this up for me.

Does it mean that the entire machine can only handle 32 seconds of sample time or just means that each sample recorded is limited to 32 seconds? If its the later, I can live with that, but 32 seconds only for the entire machine will cramp my style for I resample my performances and chop them up further.

Pioneer needs to get this in order as soon as possible, with AKAI dropping their new standalone touch-screen sampler in the next coming month, Pioneer can lose potential future customers, like me, that would rather have unlimited sample time and at a cheaper price.

Each sample is limited to 32 seconds not the entire machine

Thank you Morris! Thats a world of a difference. Definitely can handle that, don't know why everyone is complaining 😁

I think Orion Garcia has made a good analogy pioneer wants us to purchase cdjs to compensate for the 32 sec sample limitation. It's unfortunate when I spend this much money for a production/sampler that it has to be this way. I really like my SP-16 it sounds great and for its simplicity but I don't like the way pioneer is approaching the 32 second dilemma by not responding to us users I feel they are being deceitful and if they purposely did this to force us to purchase more products then I have lost total respect for this company. I don't like to complain like this but things like this force me too.

I may be one of the top advocates that has spoken about that 32 second limitation but I feel I have to be objective as well. When it is all said and done, companies make products to make money. They will not implement design features for the purpose of servicing their customers needs if they think that design will result in losing money. Companies are businesses; not charity organizations.

Pioneer is a DJ company. I'm not a DJ, I'm a production musician. So, here is great question for the professional DJ: If Pioneer would eliminate the 32 second limitation on the SP-16, would you be able to do your job without a CDJ? If that answer is yes in any shape manor or form; Pioneer will NEVER remove that 32 second limitation on the SP-16.

Would professional DJ's please answer this question?

What's the big deal with the 32sec limitation? What do you need a "sample" this long for? I don't really think they envisioned the toraiz as a karaoke machine...

@srmaietta the mnon-karaoke uses of sound files longer than 32s been covered in other forum posts, but I'll put it here for posterity.

1) Musicians (I use the Toraiz but play several instruments) commonly have variations in their parts that easily result in a part being more than 32s. This happens on over half my songs. It's much more difficult and worse sounding to record according to Toraiz limits rather than what's natural. It results in pops and clicks in between slides and bends when you need to record parts of the same guitar solo separately to adjust for time constraints.

2) In order to have more capability of textures in song, it's better to have a minute long sample have its constituent parts be triggered as slices rather than taking up extra tracks for what is essentially multiple slices of one track. I often sample over 32 seconds of a song and want to trigger slices within it. Having a longer sample to tigger from results in more possibility of variation in the riffs you make from it. It's good to have multiple versions of similar drum hits and synth stabs for example.

3) I purchased the Toraiz to help me play my albums live without a computer. For my past material that I created primarily in Logic or Reason, it makes sense to export the tracks I won't play live as stems which will be longer than 32 seconds. Panda Bear and many other well respected musicians use gear like the Octatrack in this way. The Toraiz is more expensive than the Octatrack but with a greater limitation in terms of using longer audio.

4) There are many creative uses of long ambient samples being manipulated by the LFO triggers of the Toraiz.

There are more reasons from other Toraiz users, but I think it's already clear that  long samples are not just for karaoke. Only a lack of imagination and experience prevents us from seeing the great potential of a Toraiz without that limitation. 

The MPC Live and X will be at NAMM, I'll play them and see if they have the same limit.