Resampling Rack

This rack is not meant to stay on a track. It is a mangling chain you throw on a loop, randomize until something interesting falls out, print, and then throw away. Roar for density and pitch feedback, Auto Filter for shape, Shifter for frequency- and pitch-shifting, Grain Delay for smear and pitch clouds, Erosion for digital grit — five devices that each turn a sound into a different sound, with a Chaos macro that modulates everything and a Randomize gesture that uses Live 12 macro randomization with the dangerous parameters excluded. Use it for IDM and glitch percussion, dubstep growl variations, techno texture layers, trip-hop drum tails, and for turning a boring synth stab into fifty variations in ten minutes.

Layout

How it's built

1. Add an Audio Effect Rack on a track that carries the loop you want to mangle. Name it "Resample Mangler". One chain "Mangle" plus a second chain "Dry ref" holding a Utility at −inf gain, so you can blend the original back in.
2. Roar first. Routing Serial. Stage 1: Soft Sine, Drive 6 dB, Tone 0. Stage 2: Fold, Drive 0 (silent until the Drive macro raises it). Stage 3 off. Post-filter LP 12 kHz. Feedback section: amount 0%, Pitch +12 st, Time 10 ms — the semitone setting means that when Chaos opens the feedback you get a screaming octave harmonic rather than a hum. In the modulation matrix: LFO (sine, 0.4 Hz) → Stage 1 Tone at 0% amount (Chaos drives it); Envelope Follower → Stage 2 Drive 25% so loud hits fold harder.
3. Auto Filter (12.2 redesign). Circuit MS2, Bandpass, 12 dB, Frequency 1.2 kHz, Resonance 35%, Drive 0, Envelope amount 20% with Attack 5 ms Release 150 ms (hits open the band), LFO amount 0, LFO rate 1/8 synced, shape sample-and-hold (so Chaos makes it stepped, not wobbly).
4. Shifter. Mode Pitch, Coarse 0 st, Fine 0, Window 20 ms (shorter = more metallic on drums), Delay time 0, Feedback 0, LFO off, Dry/Wet 50%. At 50% you hear the original against the shifted copy, which gives you intervals and beating for free.
5. Grain Delay. Spray 0 ms, Frequency 30 Hz, Pitch 0, Random Pitch 0, Feedback 20%, Delay Time 1/16 synced, Dry/Wet 40%. Frequency is the grain rate: around 30 Hz is the border between rhythmic ticking and a pitched buzz.
6. Erosion. Mode Wide Noise, Frequency 2 kHz, Width 0.5, Amount 20%. Erosion modulates the signal with filtered noise or a sine; it is the cheapest "digital dirt" in Live and, unlike Redux, it does not alias.
7. Enter Map mode. Chaos → Roar LFO modulation amount (Stage 1 Tone slot) 0 → 100%, Roar Feedback 0 → 55%, Grain Delay Random Pitch 0 → 60, Erosion Amount 10 → 90%, Auto Filter LFO amount 0 → 40%. Five targets so one knob moves the sound from "processed" to "unrecognisable".
8. Pitch → Shifter Coarse −24 → +24 st (macro centre = 0) and Grain Delay Pitch −12 → +12 st. Both move together so the shifted copy and the grain cloud stay harmonically related.
9. Smear → Grain Delay Spray 0 → 200 ms, Feedback 0 → 85%, Dry/Wet 20 → 100%. At the top the loop becomes a cloud with no transients.
10. Drive → Roar Stage 1 Drive 0 → 24 dB and Stage 2 Drive 0 → 18 dB. Keep this out of randomization — it is the loudness control of the rack.
11. Filter → Auto Filter Frequency 120 Hz → 8 kHz, Resonance 20 → 70% (resonance rises with frequency so low sweeps do not boom).
12. Shift mode → Shifter Mode (Pitch / Frequency / Ring — the macro steps through the three) and Shifter Fine in Frequency mode −500 → +500 Hz. Frequency shifting breaks harmonic relationships: a drum loop turns into bells and sidebands.
13. Grit → Erosion Frequency 500 Hz → 8 kHz and Width 0.1 → 1. Dry → Chain "Dry ref" volume −inf → 0 dB. Exit Map mode.
14. Open the macro randomization settings (dice icon's context menu / the settings next to the Rand button) and exclude Drive and Dry. Everything else is fair game. Also set the Chaos macro's randomization range to 0–70 if the settings allow a range, or accept that some rolls will be full Chaos.
15. Save Macro Variations for the "safe" states: "Mild" (Chaos 10, Drive 20, Smear 15), "Bell" (Shift mode Frequency, Pitch 70, Chaos 20), "Cloud" (Smear 90, Chaos 40, Filter 60), "Screech" (Chaos 75, Drive 60, Filter 80). Randomize from these rather than from zero.
16. Print workflow A — Resampling input: create a new audio track, set its Audio From to Resampling, arm it, and record while you turn macros and hit Rand on the beat. Every roll of the dice becomes a region of the recording. Afterwards, slice the recording to a Drum Rack (Cmd+Shift+T on the clip → Slice to New MIDI Track) and you have a kit of variations.
17. Print workflow B — Bounce in Place (12.2): once a setting is good, select the clip (Arrangement) and Bounce in Place (right-click the clip): the processed audio replaces the clip on the same track, device chain kept but you can now delete or disable it. In Live 12.3 Bounce Group does the same for a group of layered tracks. Freeze/Flatten remains the way to bounce an entire track including automation.

Macro map

Signal flow notes

Order matters here more than in a mix rack. Shifter before Grain Delay means the grains are of the shifted signal, so Random Pitch spreads around the new pitch. Swapping them puts the shift after the cloud and the result is a single transposed cloud — cleaner but less alive. Roar's feedback path is internal to Roar, so it does not re-enter the whole chain; if you want a chain-wide feedback loop, see the feedback rack.

Variations

Drum-safe version

Put the rack in a parallel chain of a second Audio Effect Rack (Dry chain at 0 dB, Mangle chain at −6 dB) and high-pass the Mangle chain at 200 Hz. Kick and snare stay intact; only the top end gets eaten. Good for trap and drill hi-hat rolls and for techno percussion layers.

Spectral version

Replace Shifter with Spectral Time (Freeze mode, Fade In 50 ms, Tilt 0, Spray 20%) and Grain Delay with Spectral Resonator (Decay 2 s, Pitch via MIDI sidechain). Map Smear to Spectral Time Freeze on/off plus Tilt, and Pitch to Spectral Resonator Frequency. Turns anything into tuned drones; see spectral processing.

Vocal destruction

Shifter in Ring mode with Fine 80–200 Hz, Roar Multiband routing (Soft Sine low, Rectify mid, Bit Crush high), Erosion Sine mode at 440 Hz. Chaos mapped additionally to Roar's Multiband crossover frequencies. See voice & vocals.

Dubstep growl variations

Feed a static Operator growl through the rack, record 8 bars of macro riding on the Resampling track, then Slice to New MIDI Track with 1/4-note slices and play the slices as a new bass. Erosion off, Roar Stage 2 Fold with Envelope Follower at 60% — the fold tracks the growl's own envelope.

Hardware-in-the-loop

Insert an External Audio Effect after Erosion sending to a eurorack module (Data Bender or Ikarie) and back. Resampling captures the round trip including the module. Set the External Audio Effect's hardware latency so the dry blend lines up; see modular hybrid rack.

Performance notes

• Push: macros 1–8 fill the encoder row. Map Rand (the rack's randomize button) to a pad with MIDI mapping so you can roll the dice on the beat without reaching for the mouse. Macro Variations are in the device view: recall "Mild" between rolls to get back to a usable sound.
• Live use: this is a studio tool first, but on a dedicated "texture" return with Dry at 0 and Drive capped at 50 it is a safe live mangler. Never leave Chaos above 60 on stage unless you want the Roar feedback to take over.
• Automation vs macro: since you print the result, automate nothing — ride and record. If a particular evolution is good, record the macro moves into a clip envelope on the Resampling track's source clip and re-print at a different tempo.
• CPU: Roar with feedback and Grain Delay at high feedback are the two hungry parts. The rack is heavier than it looks; Bounce in Place and disable it as soon as you have the audio.
• Clean-up after printing: Utility Gain to taste, EQ Eight HP 60 Hz, Limiter if the fold spiked. Frequency-shifted material often has a DC offset — Saturator's DC filter or Utility's DC toggle fixes it.

Related

• Resampling workflow
• Routing & resampling
• Roar & saturation
• Glitch & IDM sounds
• Textures, foley & noise
• Texture rack
• Feedback rack
• IDM & glitch