The technique became popular back in the days of Atari STs and Akai S1000s when, unlike now, computers and samplers couldn’t handle real-time pitch and time processing, and the results of offline pitch and time processing could be sketchy. By virtue of being a MIDI part, the pattern can be played at any tempo without impacting the pitch of the loop.

An accompanying MIDI pattern is created to trigger each slice in the correct order and with the correct relative timing between triggers.

To do this, the loop is sliced up into its constituent hits, with each hit assigned to a trigger note in a sampler. The core aim of beat-slicing is to retime loops without affecting their pitch, and to do so without the need of processor-intensive time-stretching and pitch-shifting. It offers much more in the way of creative potential than modern pitch- and time-processing methods, and the practice isn’t prone to the same artefact-heavy warbles and stutters either. If you set a negative track delay correctly, your midi notes that are quantized to grid will sound exactly on time, even though the actual samples start earlier and everything sounds more natural this way.Beat-slicing may be something of an old-school technique but it remains an essential weapon in the producer’s armoury. The audio wave file perceived start timing is usually somewhere just behind the first big waves Just zoom in on the midi note and the resulting audio file in the same window and you will see. But you can really find out exactly how much compensation you need by comparing a midi note start position and a recorded audio file. I try to find the best track delay value by ear. Choir samples are typically among the slowest and need the most track delay compensation. For strings this value is usually higher than for percussion. Sometimes optimal track delay values can be found in the VI manual. A negative value in this track delay will compensate for this extra 'sample start delay' of your VI.ĭepending on the VI you use (and the type of instrument) the track delay to be compensated can vary greatly (usually somewhere between 10 and 150 ms). That is why your instrument track in your DAW besides volume and panning also has a track delay among its most basic settings. But as a result of gaining realism the sounding sample start position is a bit later than the actual programmed sample start. If they didn't the samples would 'pop in' and sound unnatural.

Most VI instruments that are sample-based have a kind of natural pre-roll or pre-recorded audio at sample start. However, when using VI instruments an additional delay ( on top of your DAW system delay or audio buffer related output delay) occurs because of the timing difference between the actual 'sample start' and the 'perceived timing feel'. I think what you are finding out it is that quantizing midi notes to grid only shifts note values towards the grid.

Grid settings cubase