Whenever a product appears on my desktop that promises to make my life easier I find myself thinking back to the time I spent five hours with an operators manual figuring out how to make a similar time saving breakthrough actually work.

More often than not such claims are, to say the least, counterproductive.

So when I loaded a CD-ROM containing a ReCycle installer into a Mac and it starts talking, literally telling me what modern day miracles it is about to perform, I was to say the least a little dubious.

I should have been more trusting.

ReCycle does indeed make life easier, especially when it comes to making the amazing drum loop you just sampled fit in with all the MIDI data you just spent days recording.

Now transmit all the bits back to your sampler (they'll automatically be placed on separate adjoining notes) and create a MIDI file that will play it all back and load it into your sequencer. Still with me? Good.

Now comes the fun part. Hit the play button and listen how it plays back, one slice at a time, seamlessly. Now knock the tempo down a few BPM and take a listen.

Whoa! Hear that? The sample has slowed down but the pitch is the same. ReCycle has effectively done in a few seconds what would have taken a good ten minutes to do by hand. And that's not all it can do.

Put the cursor over a section of the sample, in this case a snare sound, and click the mouse. What you'll hear is the snare and nothing else. This alone is a great way to pick out one particular element of a sample that may have lots of similar bits but only one that has everything you need for your purposes.

Another helpful features is the way in which the loop markers literally spring into place when you drag and move them close to a slice point. If the constituent elements of your sample isn't as defined as a drum pattern just hold down the option key and position them exactly where you want.

And to make the process of selecting loop points freely even easier, just move the little magnification slider until you can see exactly what's happening with the sound wave itself.

Once you've got your sample all sliced up, and created the MIDI file that helps run it, ReCycle can now be closed, ready for the next time you need it.

We actually spent hours importing samples from an Akai S3000, slicing them up into different bits and pieces before sending them back ready for replay at different speeds with hardly any noticable changes in pitch. Being advocates of the Virtual Studio we were very pleased to see Digidesign's Sample Cell on the list of hardware that ReCycle supports.

For anyone who uses samples extensively in their music we thoroughly recommend ReCycle. It takes the guess work out of selecting loop points and making samples fit into your music regardless of its BPM.

For more information about this product visit our Manufacturers department for contact information.

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