The Recycle! Tutorial

If you want to make files for the Dr.Rex loop player. You need to use Recycle!
Recycle! is a very cool and super handy loopslice tool with wich you can do amazing things. There are several ways of getting a loop to be sliced in the right way. In this tutorial i'll explain you how to slice up a loop and make it ready for the Dr.Rex loop player.
Recycle! must be one of the main tools of choice for the loop maker. I couldn't imagine making loops without the use of it. Recycle! 2.0 let's you make stereo files while the former versions only allow mono files to be sliced and processed. Also a new addition to 2.0 are the effects. There's a transient shaper (compressor), the envelope and the equalizer. These tools are very handy to tailer your loop right to perfection. The compressor is very handy to make your loops sound louder while maintaining the level. You can also get really over the top effect processing out of it suitable for creative shaping of your loops.

Slicing a loop
When you have a loop that you want to use in the Dr.Rex (or cubase etc, etc) you need to have it sliced to take full advantage of the effect of the REX format (Rx2 when using Recycle! 2.0).
Almost any loop can be sliced by Recycle! As long as it has some sort of rhytmic element in it. When you want to REX a loop exsisting out of legato played strings or something you will find it very hard to slice the different notes.

After loading your Wav. or Aiff. file, first thing to do is to set the looppoints for the loop. This is done by using the L and R handles at the bottom of the file window (the graphical display).
Once you have set that right, preferably in bar lenght. You can set the amount of bars at the top of the Recycle! screen in the Bars: field. Press enter when you have done that. Now Recycle! will calculate the exact tempo of your loop.

Now there will be 2 ways of placing the slices in the file:

1.
Put the Sensitivity slider to the right. Preferably a value of 60 - 80. The value depends on the number of individual hits your loop has. If it's a loop with just some sounds you can do with a value much lower than this. But if it's a loop with lots of individual sounds in it you will find that it could still be not enough.
After doing this you will see that the individual sounds have been marked by a line at the beginning. This is a slice. You can adjust the slice by moving it while clicking (and holding) the triangle on top of the slice using the pointer tool. Remember that Recycle! will find the right place 90% of the time. Just if the sounds are a bit unclear (slow attack) you might want to adjust them.
It can also happen that Recycle! places to many slices in your loop. Then you can hide these slices using the hide tool (X). When you think the slices are in place you can push the preview toggle button on top of the Recycle! screen (the one on the left of the stop button). Now you will be able to use the effects included in Recycle! and hear if the loop sounds smooth after being sliced.
When you still hear pops or clicks you might want to have a closer look at the slices and adjust them where nesscersary. Remember that the best place for a slice is the zero crossing point. (the horizontal line in the middle of the graphical wavform)

Recycle! also has a stretch function with wich you can make notes to be made longer. This isn't a timestretching function but a way to add a tail to a sound that was created using the last bits of the sound. This will allow you to have the loop play in lower tempo's without sounding to be cut of at the end. Play with this to achieve the best results. You can lower the tempo of the loop in Recycle! using the rotary knob on the upper right of the screen.

2.
The second way to have your loop sliced is to use the show grid option from the View drop down menu after you have set the loop point and bar lenght. When you have selected this option a grid of 1/16 notes will be visible in the graphical wavform display. Now you can select Add slices to grid from the Process drop down menu.
All 1/16 notes will have a slice now. Remember that this works best when you make the calculated tempo of the loop to a round figure. Many times a loop doesn't have a fixed and round tempo. It can sometimes have a speed of 130.345 for instance. Set it to the round figure then wich in this case would be 130 bpm.
Now you easily remove the slices you don't want and replace the ones wich aren't on a sound (when the loop is in a shuffle/groove). I find this the best way wich gives the best results but you should listen for yourself if you agree to that.

After doing one of these steps you are ready to save your file or add some of the Recycle! effects to your loop. When saving you can only save as a Rx2 file wich is the native file format for Recycle! 2.0 when using earlier versions of recycle you will be able to save as REX or RCY.

Recycle! can also be very useful for cutting up recodings. like when you have a drumkit or multisample from your drumcomputer or synth that you want to sample. Then you can just record the sounds as one file and have Recycle! cut them in slices. Then it's only a matter of exporting the wavfiles. You need to set a barlenght for this action but that's not an action wich is important when using Recycle! this way. Just fill something in there and export the wavfile's (slices).