Hello , so recently i been seeing that a lot of sample packs come with samples in following formats however upon listening i dont notice much difference to wav in terms of sound

What is the difference and what are some cases that these formats would be used?

Do i need to keep them ?

 

acid are wav loops, rex2 is for reason, recycle, apple loops as far as i know are wav loops also, correct me if im wrong

 

acid and apple loops (for logic and MainStage) have a tempo info inside and markers to adjust tempo of the sample to your project automatically.

same goes for rex, but they can, afaik, only loaded into special hosts and samplers, like reason, steinberg recycle or spectrasonic stylus rmx.

 

acid, later "acidized" - wav file that contains tempo information. Proprietary Sony Acid Pro format in the past.
rex - sliced audio loop. Propellerhead's (Reason) proprietary sampler format. Every slice mapped to its dedicated midi note.
apple loop - same as acid, but also contains special tag for categorizing inside logic and final cut browsers.

 

Last edited: Jul 13, 2022

It is also only fair to say that REX is 16-bit only and REX2, ACID and Apple loops are 24-bit. REX2 are RX2s with slices and tempo info, ACID are WAVs with slices and tempo info and Apple Loops are AIFFs with slices and tempo info.

I usually just keep ACID WAVs for just in case [and Mac/Linux can read them, too]... I don't use sliced loops generally, unless I've made them.

If you're wondering what slices are, it's embedded markers that tell your software where the start of each sample slice is so they can stretch or shrink the loop according to tempo more easily and it won't hurt the quality of the sound, usually [if the slice markers were put in correctly].

Oftentimes, time-stretching can actually sound more interesting.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Jul 13, 2022

I join the OP's question

Do you know why there is such a difference in the weight of RX versus Wav. Even up to 50% less than a .wav ?

 

Because REX is 16 bit. RX2s are bigger bcs 24 bit, but both are smaller than WAV and AIF because they use lossless compression. That's pretty cool, actually.

 

So if i have a loop folder in wav and another in RX, is there no difference in sound? could I keep RX and save space in the disk?

 

Do the opposite! You can always make sliced files in Recycle.

 

The advantage to ACiDized wavs is that the tempo information and the beat markers are all extensions to .wav that any other editor should ignore if it can't support them, so you should, assuming a competent developer, be able to open them still in any editor.

 

The "Advantage" to Acidized Wav files is that you get to bulk up the sample pack content size by including a copy in another format without doing any real additional work or adding any more samples. The "Advantage" to Recycle files is only if you are using external hardware samplers with SCSI connection, because you can zap them over as key mapped slices. (and Reason, if that is your thing). Apple Loops are almost just as bad.

They pile on these "additional" formats to claim their sample product is many more times content than it really is, in the marketing spiel. Many of the formats make it so you cannot even quickly preview them.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2022

Ahh those were the days weren't they? Not to mention Recycle doesn't work for shit since they removed the SCSI support after 2.0 and you cant get 2.0 anymore. I dont know anybody that wants to wait a half hour to transfer a chopped up breakbeat over MIDI to a sampler heh. That shit was painful 20 years ago when it was the only option.

 

I disagree because I don't know a single tool that will batch convert Apple loops or Acid wav to RX2 automatically.
I"d always keep the RX2 versions if they're available, have a good player at hand (anyway, most DAWs can preview RX2 with your project's bpm) and convert to other formats only when necessary.

 

well, I was thinking just that.
In my case I use Studio one, and using the Studio one player to listen to the samples, it's much faster!
And since Rex files are much smaller than wav files and I have almost 500GB of sample and loops and I don't use all of them.
I was thinking of doing that.
Use RX files and I need, right there in the Daw I convert it to Wav

 

I'm not sure a batch conversion to rx2 would have any purpose without slice information. But then, I don't trust most of these jokers to slice things very well either. Pull some commercially released loops in Logic and enable Flex Time, and you won't much longer; because you will really notice all the drift within the files. Nor will I ever use every sample and loop in a release, so I'm doubling up all these files to use 1 or 2? no thanks. To all of it, they are a waste of hdd space and "justification" for a proprietary format that keeps users stuck inside programs like Reason, or whatever the next one will be.

 

One of the formats that surprised me the most was Flac. Some time ago I asked about it here in the forum. And from there I converted all my samples in Flac, they work perfectly, the ram is not overloaded, nor the cpu, the quality is the same. But to my surprise, many instruments that load audio files do not support FLAC. Being a file without losses, and also that it weighs very little. It is one last thing that the developers do not include it as an audio format.

 

storage space on a usb external hdd is about 20-30$ per terabyte. Batch conversion and compression schemes used to make some sense, economically. Now they really do not, unless you insist on your samples living on an SSD; which is also basically pointless unless they are Kontakt libraries.

Another thing about Recycle files, they really are best for working with drums and other material which is percussive enough you can chop them up and rearrange them. For lo-fi, fair enough; but people spend lots of time "crate digging" up drum breaks, only to have them downsampled/dithered or whatever attributes you can add to your drums via recycle or reason into the rex file format? nah.

 

Last edited: Jul 14, 2022

Loopcloud can handle all of them for you in one browser.

 

Do I understand this right: converting all the WAV tracks in a project into FLAC, I'll receive the same sound quality separately per track or on a full mixdown, but lighter on CPU/RUM?

 

No, what I said is that: I converted all my Loos and samples that I have on a disk to .flac and when using it, it does NOT overload the ram or the cpu. And there is no loss between Audio To Flac.