2.1.0b2 Multisampling BETA Available Now

BETA Tester Area ANA 2 Beta
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IMPORTANT - BEFORE YOU BEGIN - PLEASE MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR PRESETS AND WAVES

Hi guys

After a few years of development, we are pleased to bring you the first proper BETA release of our Multisampling edition of ANA 2.

DOWNLOAD HERE

We have included 2 instruments for you to test out to ensure they are working on your system

The PRESET for each is available in the presets menu under the Multisample Bank
The INSTRUMENT is available from the Sampler browser menu under DLC > Multisample

If you guys can test the most important function of this for us which would be

  • Do your existing projects all load and work ok
  • Can you load the Multisample Preset from the preset browser
  • Can you load the Multisample Instrument from the sampler browser

After that please test

  • Adding your own samples to the Multisampler and placing them across they keys
  • Saving and recalling

Other than that please have a play about with it and feedback any issues you come across

IMPORTANT - You need to select the “Default Multisample” or “Black Multisample” GUI’s from the Settings menu after installing to see the new changes.

Please make a full backup of your ANA 2 Presets and Waves before installing this build.

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Thanks :slight_smile:

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let us know what you think :sunglasses:

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So far so good.
I haven’t found any issues with the two presets you include.
Haven’t done my own samples yet…
Found a graphical bug on pc not mac… will file it in a separate thread.
rsp

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Why do you offer it as a download if you then tell me after installing it that the beta has expired and that i have to buy a copy even though i own Ana2?

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@minozheros

Thank you for your feedback and question.

You don’t have to buy a copy if you already own ANA 2, the new Multi-sampling features and the 2 multi-sample instruments available in the Beta will be part of next ANA 2 release, more instruments and multi-samples resources will be released as a paid presets pack in the future, but ANA 2 MS core features will be available for every license owner.

Edit : Just to clarify things here, are you receiving a warning message from ANA 2 MS GUI telling you that the Beta has expired or is it a question about ANA 2 MS ?

Please let us know if you’re receiving an error message from ANA 2 plugin GUI, thanks :wink:

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Cool - ANA keeps getting better and better :slight_smile:

I was trying it out in Bitwig Studio 4.3.4 and it was working pretty well for a first Beta.
Of course I tried to stress-test it… :slight_smile:

My first test was 54 short samples of percussive material, 17MB.

  • The import of all samples at once did not work (via the Import button) when I did not say yes to copying the samples to the user samples folder, only if I let ANA copy them it worked, otherwise simply nothing happened.
  • This problem also immediately raises the FR of a user defined sample content folder, since I do not want that on my C: drive. That would also be important for the future installer of ANA2 IMO. I personally would prefer to have all of ANAs data on a different drive, it’s getting bigger and bigger.
  • I struggled a bit at first with the sorting. The order of samples seemed to constantly get changed. I always wanted them sorted by name (this batch was simply numbered samples) but somehow - not sure why - they changed their order several times and I had to re-sort. Did not grok why so can’t offer steps to reproduce.
  • I then found the drum mode to spread the samples over the keyboard one sample per note and that worked well, I just missed a way to define where it should start (?).
    The GUI was a bit sluggish (Windows 10, GeForce RTX 2080 TI, 6core i7, 64 GB RAM, VST3) but otherwise this first test was great and with some effects and stuff the result sounded great.

Next Level: Trying to import Imperfect Samples Fazioli Grand :wink:
704 Samples, 5,79 GB.

  • Trying to import all these samples crashed ANA (and again it did only “work” at all when I copied the samples to the user folder, the other option simply did nothing).
  • So I only imported the first velocity layer, 88 files with 447MB in total. GUI became a bit more sluggish (4k monitor, GUI at 200/250% scale), but otherwise it worked.
  • Haven’t found a way to set the root key automatically (the files and file names don’t contain it) so I went through all samples manually - pretty cool that I can move from sample to sample with the arrow keys and then just click the fitting keyboard key in the GUI - nice, so this went rather quick.
    -After that I selected all samples and mapped them around their root key, again, this worked great.
  • I then tried to import the next velocity layer in addition, again 88 keys with 539 MB, but even that crashed ANA, so sadly I can’t replace Kontakt yet :wink:

Those crashes were no problem thanks to Bitwigs sandboxing - I didn’t lose anything, just had to re-start the plugin and even my latest edits were usually still there.

So in total, I’d say for the normal intended use with limited sets of samples, it’s really good.

The changing sorting issue I didn’t understand and the import without copying the samples to the ANA folder simply did not work (only by drag and drop, not with the import button).

What I missed was a way to say: "Start at this key, keep the current sorting and put the samples one on each key.
Another nice thing would be: “This first sample is root A-1, all others go up one note from there in file-name-order”…

Oh, another crash I got when I pressed the “Remove all Samples” button after my first test with the percussive samples.

So yeah, looks really good, I was able to reload my presets and sample sets.

Thank you very much, I did actually not expect this!

Oh, one more thing: The world has more kinds of music than all the EDM genres you offer, most of those I don’t even know what they are :wink: . Now with multisamples, it would be nice if you would open up those genres to include more general things like World, Cinematic, Experimental etc. ATM I can’t use any of those genres other than maybe Ambient…

Oh, forgot to say: The examples worked great here.

Cheers,

Tom

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brilliant info thank you Tom

I’ll have all of these points checked out - we haven’t yet stress tested it for that many samples - but there is currently a limit for 256 samples i think.

Can i confirm this point [quote=“ThomasHelzle, post:8, topic:36129”]
My first test was 54 short samples of percussive material, 17MB.- The import of all samples at once did not work (via the Import button) when I did not say yes to copying the samples to the user samples folder, only if I let ANA copy them it worked, otherwise simply nothing happened.
[/quote]

Are you saying that the IMPORT button only works when you chose the “copy fo user directory” option
Or that the IMPORT button doesn’t work at all (crashes)

in this example when you say you did drag and drop to get around it - did you drag and drop onto ANA - or do you mean you did drag and drop in windows explorer.

finally - if you mean you did drag and drop directly into ANA, it works ok without copying to user directory or again, only when you copy to user directory

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Yes, the import button did not work at all when I chose to leave the samples where they were.
This was independent of the crashes.
If I did not import the samples, simply nothing happened, not even a crash, since the samples weren’t loaded at all.
So even the crashes are an improvement, since ANA in that case at least tries… :wink:

I meant drag and drop into ANAs GUI, that seemed to work, independent of if I copied to user directory or not.
I just tried again and drag and drop onto the GUI works in both cases.

And today I even got the import button working when NOT copying the samples (different ones this time.
Hm, so it may have been something about the specific samples. Will investigate further.

But in that latest test I get a GUI Freeze when trying to do "Key Ranges: Map Consecutively (Drums) after not spreading out the samples but have them all at the default root key of C3. Have to crash the plugin to get out of it.

Will report when I have more conclusive results.

Cheers,

Tom

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2.1.0b3 available now

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I can’t load it. Something about that it’s not licensed, but my copy of Ana is licensed. Maybe I missed a step in licensing the beta?

Edit: The new beta works, maybe the beta license period had just ended or something.

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Yes, Beta versions should expire after 14 days and you’ll need to install the new Beta release.

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hi @ThomasHelzle - has this build solved any of your issues?

there is a limit on sample import - its 127, so if you can stick to that for testing

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Yes, so far my tests worked great in beta 3 (was on vacation for a while).
Will try some more and report anything I find.

Two wishes:
The installer does neither remember where I installed the VST2 version before, nor does it look into the registry for my default paths. Would be cool if I didn’t have to set this every time.
Your default is pretty non-standard, so may be good to rethink that too :wink:
I can provide further information if you want.

The second wish is a bit more involved:
I use a Seaboard Block and totally love MPE.
So the big wish would be, to have ANA 2 support MPE! :wink:
As a smaller first step it would be great if I could set the pitch bend range to the max and lock it to make it stick.
Other synths have this as a kind of global overwrite value. Since MPE maps that directly to the keyrange, it always has to be a fixed range, so that the position I slide to on the Seaboard corresponds to the pitch of that position if I release and press at the same position again.
ATM I set it to 24 halftones, enable MPE for the device in Bitwig Studio and it works, but every preset overwrites it.
(And MPE normally uses 48 halftones as pitch bend default…)

I understand that this beta is focused on Multisampling, but maybe you can at least squeeze in some locking option for the pitch bend range :slight_smile:

And one more question: Did you look at the new CLAP plugin standard? Is that something that you could imagine supporting, including in the longer term polyphonic modulation (would go hand in hand with MPE actually :wink: ).

Thanks a lot - ANA is really becoming a beast now!

Cheers,

Tom

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Okay, all my previous tests now not only worked but I had no crashes and no freezes/slowdowns.
Could import without copying the samples, the import button worked just fine and the Drum-mapping is fast and works perfectly. Sample names were no problem, the sorting was solid.

And: Everything was very fast, even though I’m testing on my Laptop ATM. So this is production-ready as far as my testing went, which before it totally wasn’t.

So now I can actually test a bit more in depth and get some actual work done :slight_smile:

Awesome! :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Tom

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Hm - interesting:
If I import 88 samples and at the requester say “cancel” when asked if I want to arrange them around their root keys, I get two samples on the lowest note and the last/highest sample is spread over two halftones.
I can fix that by using the Drum mode, spreading them over consecutive notes, then every sample is on it’s own key, but I wonder if the initial behaviour is intentional? I’d expect it to behave like the drum mode in that case actually?

Cheers,

Tom

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will take a look at that, could be related to the number of samples vs the number of keys issue again

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possibly somthing we can look at down the road, we are keeping focussed on getting what have done working solid first :slight_smile:

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Hm - but when I import 88 samples to 88 keys? Shouldn’t that being spaced out evenly no matter what?