Looping Audio Files

[russhart]

Hi, First post. I am setting up the que files for a show in September, and one of the things I need to do is loop a didgeredoo track to the song ends.
I have recorded the track, worked out the loop points in Sound Forge, then put it into SCS, and found out that the start and end times for the loop function only have two decimal places where as the correct loop points need to have three decimals. Is there any way around this other then having a cross fade running in which I can still hear where it is looped, where as with the three decimal places in Sound Forge it was completely seamless.

[Mike Daniell]

SCS holds this information in milliseconds but currently the user interface only displays times to 1/100 second. It would be a reasonable feature request to have the interface changed to display times to 1/1000 second, especially as there shouldn't be too much work to implement this. If you don't mind a bit of experimenting, the cue file (ie the .scs file) could be edited to set loop start and end points at the required millisecond times. Let me know if you'd like to try this.

[russhart]

No worries. I would be willing to try it if you would like to tell me how.

[Mike Daniell]

OK, here's what you need to do:

• Start SCS and in the editor set the approximate times you want for your loop start and end points, and clear any loop crossfade time.
• Save your changes and close SCS.
• Take a copy of your cue file (the .scs file) in case you need to revert to it!
• Using a text editor such as Notepad, open the cue file.
• You should be able to locate your cue quite easily, and in the group of lines for that cue you will find lines something like:

  Code: Select all

  <LoopStart>24550</LoopStart>
  <LoopEnd>36860</LoopEnd>

  where the numbers are the loop start and end times in milliseconds. Note that they currently will end with '0'. Change these times to the required loop start and end times in milliseconds.
• Save your changes and close the text editor.
• Re-start SCS and try playing that cue. This should now loop according to the millisecond timing you have entered.

[russhart]

After posting my last reply and before seeing yours, I went and had a look at the cue file and discovered it was XML. Didn't take long to find what I needed to change. Been experimenting for the last 1/2 hour and here's my findings.
Changing to the correct timings and trying it straight always left an audible click each time it looped. Only way I was able to get it to a stage were it was acceptable was to have a .2 sec cross fade and then to keep the loop in time was to start the loop .1 sec earlier and end the loop .1 sec later.
Doing this with the millisecond timing gives me a seamless loop.
Thanks for the assistance.

By the way, as long as you don't select the loop start and finish times after directly editing them, they won't be altered if you save your file later on while working on other cues.