Every now and then, it comes up that you want to loop a sound without warping it. For example, you might need to loop a bunch of field recordings for an ambient performance or installation. What you want is for all of the recordings play back at their original speed regardless of their length, or Live’s master tempo.
The problem is that the Loop switch is disabled when Warp is turned off. It’s quite easy to work around tho, just easy to miss.
Before brigning in the audio, it’s important to make sure that Auto Warp Long Files is turned Off in the Record/Warp/Launch tab of Live’s preferences screen.
Now, when you drag the audio files into Live, they’ll look something like this:
Time ruler along the bottom, loop brace surrounding the entire length of the audio.
When you turn the Warp switch on, you’ll have one warp marker at the start, and Seg. BPM will automatically be set to Live’s current master tempo.
This means you’re ready to go. As long as you don’t use either of the Complex warp modes, and don’t touch the start marker or the loop brace, the original audio file will loop with no change to the sound quality whatsoever (because the other warp modes are neutral at original tempo.)
The problem is, of course, a situation where you need to change Live’s tempo during playback. More thoughts on this to follow…
The audio will appear in Live
There’s two solutions to this issue. Let’s take a look at the first.
