I first reported this bug to Toontrack at least 5 years ago. After a LOT of back and forth of support essentially not beliveing the bug exists, despite being very easy demonstrate the bug was finally acknowledged but no timeline was given for a fix.
With each version I’ve checked to see if it is fixed, but sadly even with v3.4.0 the bug remains.
If you bounce audio (either using your DAW, or the internal MIDI->Audio Export in Superior), at 44.1kHz the timing looks like this:
Notice how the start of the hit does not budge from the MIDI triggering it. If however, you bounce at sample rates that are not 44.1kHz (for instance 48kHz). You get something like this:
Notice how the timing of the audio is often slightly ahead of the MIDI, but also that it shifts around in time by random amounts on each hit. This means you can’t even manually realign the audio file without correcting each hit individually.
It is clearly a bug, because it behaves as expected at 44.1kHz. This is the case for any library that you use in Superior – it has nothing to do with how the audio samples are sliced up, because it functions correctly at 44.1kHz.
The only workaround currently is to duplicate your session at 44.1kHz and bounce out audio, and then resample the audio to your desired rate. For such an incredible and powerful sampler, it’s such a glaring issue – timing the audio of the samples to lock with the MIDI is one of the most basic features a sampler should get right.
Posting here, purely because there is only so many times I can send this to support with nothing being fixed. It’s also helpful to warn others in case they assume that you’ll get phase accurate timing from your samples in a session. SD3 has been out for years now and this bug has been present for much of that time.
I first reported this bug to Toontrack at least 5 years ago. After a LOT of back and forth of support essentially not beliveing the bug exists, despite being very easy demonstrate the bug was finally acknowledged but no timeline was given for a fix.
With each version I’ve checked to see if it is fixed, but sadly even with v3.4.0 the bug remains.
If you bounce audio (either using your DAW, or the internal MIDI->Audio Export in Superior), at 44.1kHz the timing looks like this:
Notice how the start of the hit does not budge from the MIDI triggering it. If however, you bounce at sample rates that are not 44.1kHz (for instance 48kHz). You get something like this:
Notice how the timing of the audio is often slightly ahead of the MIDI, but also that it shifts around in time by random amounts on each hit. This means you can’t even manually realign the audio file without correcting each hit individually.
It is clearly a bug, because it behaves as expected at 44.1kHz. This is the case for any library that you use in Superior – it has nothing to do with how the audio samples are sliced up, because it functions correctly at 44.1kHz.
The only workaround currently is to duplicate your session at 44.1kHz and bounce out audio, and then resample the audio to your desired rate. For such an incredible and powerful sampler, it’s such a glaring issue – timing the audio of the samples to lock with the MIDI is one of the most basic features a sampler should get right.
Posting here, purely because there is only so many times I can send this to support with nothing being fixed. It’s also helpful to warn others in case they assume that you’ll get phase accurate timing from your samples in a session. SD3 has been out for years now and this bug has been present for much of that time.
Just so you don’t think that I’m just here to aggravate you on this. I ran similar bounce tests at 44.1KHz and 48KHz to not only confirm your findings, but also to provide clarity to ToonTrack as what to look for since your images above are way too confusing. If that’s what was provided to them, then I don’t blame them for asking so many questions. However, the images provided here should give clarity as to the issue. The playhead was used as a reference marker.
Damien, Olof or Petter can provide further guidance from here on as to the complexity of this issue.
jord
Just so you don’t think that I’m just here to aggravate you on this. I ran similar bounce tests at 44.1KHz and 48KHz to not only confirm your findings, but also to provide clarity to ToonTrack as what to look for since your images above are way too confusing. If that’s what was provided to them, then I don’t blame them for asking so many questions. However, the images provided here should give clarity as to the issue. The playhead was used as a reference marker.
Damien, Olof or Petter can provide further guidance from here on as to the complexity of this issue.
jord
Thanks for verifying the bug. I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to confirm that it’s happening for you too.
I have provided videos, screenshots, pro tools sessions, audio files, MIDI files, and many explanations. This is also via bouncing internally in Superior, as well as bouncing via the DAW. I have tested this in several DAW’s too FWIW. As mentioned, I have been reporting this bug for 6 years and it has been confirmed by Toontrack.
But also, your screenshots do not show the position of the MIDI, nor do they show that the timing of the resulting audio shuffles in time by random amounts for each MIDI note (rather than a fixed amount). The shuffling in time is an important distinction because it means that the resulting audio can’t just be nudged into place (a relatively easy temporary fix). Ideally the timing would be lined up to the MIDI, and it would remain the same at all sample rates.
