Playback engine 5 of 15

Sample

Sample is the direct reader: every note selects one discrete lane, then plays the Position/Field window as a one-shot, loop, or ping-pong voice. It is the clearest engine for pitched polyphony and for hearing a lane without continuous stack motion.

Controls edit the focused instrument. Instrument mode sets its lane and voice budget: eight voices in Single, four per part in either dual mode, or two per part in Quad. Quad omits stack controls because each part has one lane.

Good for: conventional sample playback, pitched chords, sustained loops, reverse one-shots, velocity-addressed lane layers, cue points, and tempo-synced rolls.

Page and navigation

Set Algorithm to Sample. Up opens the shared Pads & Scale and Amp Envelope pages, then Direct Play.

Shared Pads and Scale parameter page — Pads & Scale selects the performance layout, tuning root, and optional folded scale.

Direct Play page with two controls and six reserved positions — Direct Play keeps direction and discrete lane variation together. Source window, pitch, Stack Start, and Level remain on Engine.

The controls common to every playback engine are documented in the shared Engine page table. The sections below cover Sample-specific controls.

Direct Play — every parameter

Knob	Display	Range	Detail
1	PLAY	Forward / Reverse / Loop / Ping Pong	Chooses the read direction and whether playback stops or repeats at the Position/Field boundaries.
2	VARI	Manual / Cycle / Random / No Repeat / Velocity	Chooses how a lane is assigned when each new voice starts. The lane remains fixed for that voice.
3–8	Reserved	—	Inactive positions available for future direct-play controls.

Play Mode choices

Mode	Behavior
Forward	Reads once from the start to the end of the current window, then becomes silent.
Reverse	Reads once from the end to the start of the current window, then becomes silent.
Loop	Repeats forward through the window for as long as the voice remains active. JOIN crossfades the end back into the beginning; raise it when the two boundaries do not meet cleanly.
Ping Pong	Alternates forward and backward at the same audible pitch as the other modes.

Variation choices

Variation	Lane selected at note-on
Manual	The nearest whole lane selected by STAK.
Cycle	The next loaded lane in order, wrapping after the last.
Random	Any currently loaded lane.
No Repeat	A random loaded lane, advanced to another lane if it would repeat the previous choice.
Velocity	Divides the velocity range across the loaded lanes. A harder strike chooses a higher lane, but does not make the voice louder.

Pad layouts

See the shared Pads & Scale reference for every layout and scale. Sample reads the whole current window in Keys and Slices layouts; choose the Slices engine when each pad should address a different region.

With a long Amp Envelope release, replaying the same note starts a new voice while the old tail finishes whenever another voice slot is available. If all available slots are occupied—eight in Single or four per part in either dual mode— the reused reader makes a short fade to silence before restarting. This prevents a same-note retrigger from cutting a nonzero sample directly to the new start.

Lane selection is not lane scanning: Variation chooses one lane for a voice at note-on. Pressure can still offset engines that scan the stack, but it does not crossfade an active direct Sample voice to another lane.