I've written a piece for my upcoming composition recital that uses the handclap sample played rapidly (sixteenths at 180).  I wrote it in Sibelius, exported midi into ProTools, and am playing it with VDL2.5 in Kontakt Player.  The sound is bleeding into itself, creating artifacts.  That is, when you play a bunch of handclaps really quickly, they play back inconsistently, with distorted sound and unven volume.  I think it's because the samples are being triggered faster than they can decay.  I tried cranking down the decay knob in Kontakt, and even split the part up into four different instances of the handclap sample, but I'm still getting a very inconsistent sound.  Any help would be appreciated.

Windows XP Pro
Intel Quad Q6600
2GB RAM
160GB Hard Drive
Pro Tools 7.3.1
MBox2

I am not a Pro Tools person, but maybe there is a Reverb setting that is contributing.  This ";built-in"; reverb of the sample itself may be why you are getting uneven volumes and inconsistent playback.  I am convinced that the Release knob is going to do anything for your Hand Clap sound.  Jim, maybe you can clarify if this is really going to do anything for this sample.  It doesn't seem to really affect anything like it would on Snare, Vibes - probably because the decay itself is extremely short in and of itself.    It also seems that the sample itself is set to output a variation in sound quality with the hand claps in hopes of making this more realistic and not ";machine-gun"; like, but it shouldn't be giving a distorted sound.  Do you happen to be using any kind of Reverb setting?  You said ";Decay Knob";.  Did you mean the Release knob?

Was it doing the same thing in Sibelius?  Are you getting any frequent error messages in Pro Tools?

I tried recreating the issue in Pro Tools, and it played back fine for me.  Have you messed around with the playback buffer settings yet in Pro Tools?

If your buffer and playback settings are OK, try this-

1) Under the Playback Engine Menu, click on the RTAS Engine button (Ignore Errors During Playback/Record) and make sure it is checked.

My guess is that the instrument's individual polyphony setting is too low for what you're trying to do. To remedy, try this:

[img]http://img.skitch.com/20080224-p92j9ga6ajihytq79ih1qf8epb.jpg[/img]

Jim, did you whip up that snazzy graphic just for this or do you regularly have to give advice on how to really dial in ensemble handclaps? ;-)

He's using the awesome program called Skitch for OS X.  On a Mac it's really easy to take a screen shot of a certain part of your screen, then Skitch lets you add notes and upload it in a few seconds.

yea, Skitch is pretty sweet, for you Windows-based peeps, there is a similar app. called Jing Project (found here www.jingproject.com) It lets you do the same basic stuff as Skitch and its also free! Its by the same people that kinda started the Camtasia stuff, so its really good quality, its still in the beta stages right now, but I haven't had any problems with it.

Actually, I just keep a screenshot of every instrument in VDL with various bits of text assigned. It's handy for such occasions.

Kidding of course. :)

Thanks everybody!  I'll give your ideas a try and let you know how it works.

OK.�� I increased the polyphony settings on all four instances to 100, reduced the release to 0, divided the instances into four different instrument tracks, and the RTAS box is checked.�� Changing the HW buffer settings did nothing.�� I'm still getting inconsistent sounds.�� There are changes in volume and pitch, to the point where it doesn't even sound like clapping.�� The same thing happens when I go into Kontakt Player and mouse click really fast on the keyboard at the bottom.  This makes me think that Coach was onto something about the built in modulations to avoid the machine gun effect.  Problem is, the machine gun effect is exactly what I want.  Any other thoughts?

Hold everything!  It just occured to me as I was messing with the keyboard that the pitch and volume changes I've been hearing might equate to velocity.  Sure enough, the velocity on the notes is not consistent.  Sibelius probably does this to make the playback sound more natural.  I'll reset all the velocities and see what happens.

No dice.  It stills sounds wierd.

What you're describing may not be fixable. As Coach eluded to, the Handclaps instrument uses a technology called ";round robin"; which makes it so the same sample isn't repeated over and over again (machine gun effect). For the average handclap part, this will work well, but for what you're describing, it sounds like the variance between pitch and attack isn't giving you the desired effect.

Send me a PM and I'll see what else I can do to help you.

btw- I learned a cool little screen shot trick for OS X.  If you do Shift+cmd+4, you can draw a box around what you want to capture... but if you then press the space bar, it will snap to the size of the window you are viewing.