supporting loop points?

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raygrote
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:04 am

supporting loop points?

Post by raygrote »

Hi all,
I have a question about Gold Wave in regards to editing samples for midi instruments (soundfont format, sfz, etc.)

For those unfamiliar with this, you can basically load an instrument in this format into a compatible player and it will respond to midi. Play a note and the instrument will play that note, release the key and the instrument sound will be stopped. There are obviously many parameters that can be controlled, but that's the basics and is all that is important for this thread.

Some of the samples I make need to be looped. The way loops work in such an instrument is that you set a start and end loop point, often in samples. While holding a key, a sample will play until it reaches the end loop point, then wrap back around to the start and will go to the end before wrapping back around to the start again, and will just keep doing that ad infinitum until you release the key.

What I often have to do is find or sometimes create good-sounding loop points. As I said above, loop points are often specified in samples, which Gold Wave fortunately can work with directly. But it cannot insert loop points into a wav header. So I have to remember the start and end values and stick them into another program. While remembering loop points and putting them down in another program is doable, it is a pain. If I could set loop points at marker positions, that would be the bulk of what I need, as well as obviously the ability to see and edit existing loop information in a file.

Just to give some context, the free Wavosaur audio editor supports loops and it is not a sampler. While it supports additional sampler info (for instance sample note, loop mode etc.), it cannot actually make use of that on its own. The only thing I use it for at the moment is inserting loop points. So I see little reason to withhold suggesting that it could be in Gold Wave in some basic form.

Features that would be useful:
Ability to not only move the loop points individually, but lock the length and move both points at the same time.
Ability to set the start or finish marker to the start or end loop point.
setting loop mode to normal or bidi (the latter plays the loop forward then backward). Not necessary, but could be useful for some samplers which support it. Don't know of any free/cheap audio editor that supports this, and there are only a couple modern sample players I know of that do, so this is rather low on my list.

Come to think of it, Gold Wave already has its own loop function. I haven't played with it very much at all so I don't know how extensive it is, but if Gold Wave could support loop info, then I believe the loop function could be extended to make use of it and that would settle it, especially if it could do the first two things on my useful features list.

Any thoughts about whether this could work in future, whether it be a plug-in or built into Gold Wave? I really hope it can happen!
Thanks for reading.
Lollie
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2020 5:56 am

Re: supporting loop points?

Post by Lollie »

Just wanted to add a vote of support for loop points. It's wild that Goldwave still doesn't support setting loop points for WAV or OGG formats. Digital instruments and game audio are the big ones when it comes to looping audio samples, and systems like FMOD support audio files with loop metadata.

It'd be incredibly useful to be able to set and preview loop metadata with the same tool that I use to edit audio, rather than having to use a separate tool to fulfill one task.
AmandaGill
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2022 6:44 am

Re: supporting loop points?

Post by AmandaGill »

Lollie wrote:
Sun Nov 08, 2020 6:41 am
Just wanted to add a vote of support for loop points. It's wild that Goldwave still doesn't support setting loop points for WAV or OGG formats. Digital instruments and game audio are the big ones when it comes to looping audio samples, and systems like FMOD support audio files with loop metadata.

It'd be incredibly useful to be able to set and preview loop metadata with the same tool that I use to edit audio, rather than having to use a separate tool to fulfill one task.
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Last edited by AmandaGill on Tue Nov 01, 2022 11:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GoldWave Inc.
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Re: supporting loop points?

Post by GoldWave Inc. »

GoldWave can loop playback. It has an "Intro/Loop/End" playback option that would work well for defining loops. The challenge is loading and saving loop metadata. Most audio file formats do not support loop metadata and some that do are not well documented. If it was just a matter of saving the metadata to a separate file or creating a custom metadata block, it would be easy to do, but then nothing else would support it.

There is not much interest in loop support (only 3 posts over 9 years and one is a bot).
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