Sample Slicer

Sample Slicer is a four-break instrument in the Sample family, designed to pair with s3g Tracker or any MIDI source. It loads mono, stereo, or multichannel audio, divides each file into playable slices, maps those slices to consecutive notes, and keeps every source channel sample-aligned through pitch, reverse, looping, inserts, and mixing.

The bundle exposes two fixed-output instruments. Sample Slicer 2 has a stereo output and accepts mono or stereo files. Sample Slicer 16 has a 16-channel output, accepts files with one to sixteen channels, and preserves wider sources in channel order without folding or truncation.

Workflow

1. Choose Sample Slicer 2 for mono/stereo production or Sample Slicer 16 for a source or destination wider than stereo. Set a REAPER track containing the 16-channel version to sixteen channels.
2. Route the stereo version to a normal monitor path. For the 16-channel version, connect its fixed output to a compatible multichannel destination and monitor path before loading audio.
3. Drop as many as four files onto the Overview waveforms or break cards. A multi-file drop fills successive slots.
4. Select a break, choose Equal or Transient in the Method menu, and press SLICE. Adjust markers on Break Edit when the result needs correction.
5. Choose the lowest starting note and MIDI receive channel for the break, then press AUTO MAP. A fresh bank starts every break at MIDI note 48 / C2, with breaks 1–4 receiving on MIDI channels 1–4. Marker additions, deletions, re-slicing, and starting-note changes require a new Auto Map operation.
6. After Auto Map unlocks the post-map slice editor, select and audition mapped notes, then set each slice's gain, pitch, pan, direction, launch mode, and choke group. Leave AUTO / RESTART / POLY selected for the default drum-sampler behavior: the same note restarts its slice while different notes may overlap. Shape the complete break with its proportional envelope, two inserts, mixer strip, and AUX send.
7. Open Mutate, select one loaded break as the source, choose Collage, Sorter, Stutter, Shrink, or Doublets plus its operation mode and treatments, then fill the empty slots. Occupied slots remain locked; clear one when it should become available for another mutation.
8. Choose STORE PROJECT (the new-instance default), STORE LINK, or STORE EMBED for the bank. See the shared Sample Storage policy.

Loading and Project Audio

Audio decoding and transient analysis run after a user-initiated load. Replacing or clearing a slot cancels stale work, so an older decode cannot overwrite the newer selection. Long filenames are shortened in the mixer while the complete path is retained for project recall.

PROJECT copies unchanged break files in the background to the saved REAPER project's effective media directory under s3g Samples. LINK keeps the original locations. EMBED stores decoded audio while preserving every source channel; a single instance can embed up to 1 GiB, and later slots remain path-referenced if the bank exceeds that bound. Long paths and missing sources remain preserved for later recovery.

Slicing and Mapping

Equal slicing divides the complete file into a chosen number of regions. Transient slicing derives one onset sequence from the source as a whole, then applies the same boundaries to every channel. Select either method and press SLICE to run it; changing the menu alone does not replace the current slice table. Zero-crossing snap and the adjustable pre-transient offset help retain attacks without introducing unrelated channel timing. PRE-ROLL US is a 0–20,000 µs slider, and MIN SLICE MS filters the transient result so adjacent boundaries—and the final slice—cannot be shorter than its 0–1000 ms setting. Minimum Slice defaults to 20 ms; zero disables either filter. Drag a slider for quick adjustment or enter an exact number in its value field. Equal and manual slicing are unaffected.

START sets the lowest MIDI note used by a break, and the available slice count is 128 − START. The default start of 48 / C2 allows 80 slices on notes 48–127; start note 0 allows all 128 slices on notes 0–127. Equal slicing, transient slicing, and manual marker creation respect that ceiling. AUTO MAP always begins at the selected note and never moves it to make an oversized slice table fit. Reduce or re-slice first when an existing table is too large for a higher starting note.

To set the first Auto Map note, select the break, open BREAK EDIT, and choose it directly from the START NOTE menu in the Slice / Map toolbox. The menu only offers notes that leave enough room for the current slice table. The START C2/48 text on the left break card is the resulting readout; press AUTO MAP in the toolbox header or on the break card when ready.

Break Edit follows a deliberate order: choose a Method in Slice / Map, press SLICE to apply that method, adjust markers, set the starting note, and then press Auto Map before editing or auditioning individual mapped slices. Choosing a Method only selects it, so the same Equal or Transient operation can be run again after changing its supporting controls. The layout follows Sample Player's panel grammar: Sample / Slice contains the waveform and file actions; categorical choices use the shared in-canvas dropdown menus; continuous values use shared sliders with exact-entry value fields; Selected Slice holds the smaller post-map controls; Timing contains source BPM, loop crossfade, and glide; and Amp Envelope remains a separate proportional toolbox. Gain, pitch, and pan use sliders with exact-entry fields for fine adjustment; reverse, launch mode, and choke remain compact categorical controls. All six remain locked until the complete slice table has been mapped, because re-slicing replaces that table. Double-click a detailed waveform to add a marker, drag a marker to move it, and use the contextual delete action to remove it. Zoom changes the visible frame range without changing the slices. Moving an existing marker preserves a valid note map; structural edits clear the map so the new slice count cannot silently collide with another break.

Playback and Slice Behavior

Sample Slicer uses the same playback vocabulary as Sample Player while retaining four independent break banks and note-to-slice mapping. Thirty-two playback voices share one clock per voice across every source channel. Velocity, proportional attack/decay/release, pitch, pan, reverse, looping, ping-pong, loop crossfade, and choke behavior therefore remain synchronized for mono, stereo, discrete multichannel, and encoded source files.

The MAPPED SLICE PLAYBACK toolbox is scoped to every mapped note in the selected break. The Start Note triggers slice 0, the next note triggers slice 1, and so on; it is not a separate full-break key after a multi-slice Auto Map. It plays the complete file only while the break contains one slice spanning that file. Source BPM, loop crossfade, glide, trigger, retrigger, voice, pitch, sync, and the proportional Amp Envelope are likewise break-wide settings.

The fresh-bank default is TRIG AUTO, RETRIG RESTART, and VOICE POLY. Repeating the same note restarts that mapped slice, avoiding accidental stacks, while different mapped notes can still overlap. LAYER deliberately stacks repeated instances of the same note; IGNORE leaves its current instance running. Voice mode can instead be MONO, which replaces the active slice for that break, or LEGATO, which retargets it without restarting its envelope. GLIDE smooths the pitch transition of a legato retarget.

TRIG AUTO preserves each slice's launch behavior. A One Shot ignores note-off and plays to its endpoint; Gate begins its proportional release when the note is released, although it still stops naturally at the endpoint when the key is held longer than the slice. Loop and Ping Pong also release on note-off, while Thru continues independently. The break-wide Trigger setting can override these distinctions with GATE, ONE SHOT, or TOGGLE. Toggle starts a mapped slice on the first press and releases it on the next matching press. KILL ALL immediately clears every voice and held-note fallback, including latched or looping playback. Kill All and the complete STORE PROJECT / LINK / EMBED status remain in the global header on every page, including Break Edit.

PITCH RATE changes pitch and duration together. STRETCH applies the slice's pitch setting while preserving its timing. HYBRID uses Rate for a negative per-slice transpose and Stretch at zero or above. SYNC HOST scales playback from the break's source BPM to the current host tempo; SYNC FREE preserves unsynchronized playback. Loop crossfade blends the wrap region of Loop playback in either direction; Ping Pong reverses at its boundaries instead.

Each selected slice has gain, pitch, pan, direction, launch mode, editable loop bounds, and choke controls. Choke OFF leaves the slice independent; groups 1–16 are mutual-exclusion groups across the four-break bank. Triggering a slice in a nonzero group applies a short click-safe release to any active voice in the same group, which is useful for open/closed hats or mutually exclusive break fragments. Pan applies to mono and stereo files; it is locked for wider sources so their channel order remains intact. The launch choices cover One Shot, Gate, Thru, Loop, and Ping Pong behavior. Selecting Loop or Ping Pong reveals LS and LE handles on the detailed waveform; drag them to set the selected slice's loop range. The handles snap to safe zero crossings and remain constrained inside the slice. Moving, adding, or deleting a slice boundary resets the affected loop to the complete slice so stale points cannot escape its new bounds. Incoming host MIDI and mouse auditions both illuminate their mapped key on the bottom keyboard and use the same slice voice path, including that slice's gain, pitch, pan, direction, launch, and choke settings. Every active voice receives its own waveform cursor and MIDI-note flag, so layered and overlapping playback remain visible instead of sharing one cursor.

Mutate

Mutate treats the four break slots as a small mutation bank. Select any loaded break as the source, choose an operation, then fill the empty slots once to build a deterministic result in every available slot. COLLAGE uses the original rearrange and repeat recipe. SORTER orders the complete slice set from low to high by multichannel loudness or duration. STUTTER randomly retriggers shortened slice beginnings or contiguous joined groups. SHRINK repeats one segment while progressively truncating and accelerating it with a linear or exponential curve. DOUBLETS repeats every segment: Expand keeps both copies at full duration, while Source Sync renders pitch-preserved half-duration copies so the pair occupies the original source time. Each rendered hit remains a mapped slice in the new break, so the result can be played, edited, mutated again, or exported. Doublets refuses a destination map that cannot contain every pair rather than silently dropping late slices.

The COLLAGE + TREATMENTS row separates operation hierarchy from post-operation treatment. Rearrange and Repeat shape Collage; Pitch, Mixer FX, AUX Bus, and Reverse can treat any operation. All except Reverse are enabled in a fresh instance. Mixer FX gives every newly arranged slice its own deterministic pair of mixer inserts selected from Filter, Degrade, Transient, Resonator, Erosion, Shift, Fold, Repeater, and Time, then varies the three-band EQ and mid frequency. AUX Bus independently gives every new slice its own send plus compression, saturation, bite, clip, tilt, and return treatment. Wide sources automatically use field-safe bus processing.

Each mutation renders outside the audio callback, captures as much as two seconds of processor tail, and is mapped automatically. A shared multichannel gain reduction is applied only when a rendered slice would exceed 0 dBFS, so no generated slice exceeds that peak ceiling while quieter slices and channel relationships remain unchanged. Occupied and currently building slots are locked and never overwritten. Select a slot and use CLEAR to make it available to the next fill pass. PLAY THROUGH walks the selected break's mapped slices in order through the normal playback path, so per-slice gain, pitch, pan, direction, launch behavior, and processing are heard; the Mutate waveform shows a live cursor and note flag while it runs. Generated audio has no original path: PROJECT writes it as lossless project media under s3g Samples, while EMBED keeps its decoded PCM in state. The chosen source remains unchanged.

EXPORT WAV… runs the same background render without consuming a break slot or changing the loaded bank. The save panel writes an atomic 32-bit floating-point WAV at the current host sample rate. Mono and stereo material exports as stereo so pan is retained; wider material keeps its original channel count and channel order, up to sixteen channels.

Mixer, Inserts, and Break Bus

Each break owns level, stereo pan where applicable, three-band EQ with tunable mid frequency, mute, solo, audition, two serial inserts, and a post-fader AUX send. Active voices adopt mixer and insert edits on the next audio block without restarting the slice.

The Break Bus can link detection across all channels, adjacent pairs, or independent lanes. FIELD SAFE retains linked dynamics, snap, and linear tilt while bypassing nonlinear stages, allowing encoded or other phase-related multichannel material to keep its channel relationships.

Output and Storage

Sample Slicer 2 has a fixed stereo output. Sample Slicer 16 preserves source lanes in order on a fixed 16-channel port and leaves unused channels silent; it can carry discrete or compatible encoded material but does not itself create an ambisonic encoding.

PROJECT is recommended for routine work and collects source and generated audio in the saved REAPER project. LINK keeps original paths, while EMBED stores decoded audio with the project. When using REAPER Save As, select a copy-media option if collected files should follow the new project. See Sample Storage.