Do you still use Impulse?

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:16 pm

Ever since drum racks came out do you still use Impulse occasionally? One thing I've noticed about Impulse that drum racks doesn't have is the stretch parameter. It really comes in handy for making hits shorter or longer & is a much different sound than just putting a shorter or longer envelope on the sample. It also has built in drive, rather than having to use a saturator plugin on each hit, but that's a small thing.

Besides that, it's more limiting compared to drum racks, of course. I do like it's simplicity & it still does have multiple outs, which keeps it's routing flexible.

But the downside is that if you start a project with Impulse, you can't drag the Impulse cells into drum racks as the project grows. It's time consuming to migrate something you created with Impulse into a drum rack & Impulse doesn't seem to make much sense dragged onto a "pad" in drum racks. So I wonder if it makes sense to start new projects with it.

Just wondering if there are additional compelling reasons to use Impulse that I might not have thought of, or it's just a legacy plugin kept mostly for old project compatibility reasons.

Mage2k · Post by **Mage2k** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:31 pm

With Simpler/Sampler you can "stretch" the sample by changing it's tuning/pitch. What would be *really* cool, and I know it's been an open feature request forever, is if Ableton were to integrate their warping engine with Sampler.

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:43 pm

That's not the same thing. The Impulse stretch parameter allows you to time stretch (or time compress) the sample without changing the pitch. Try it & compare!

Impulse has independent stretch & pitch for each slot which is pretty cool. I haven't found any way to do this in Simpler or Sampler.

agent314 · Post by **agent314** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 7:54 pm

That's not the same thing. The Impulse stretch parameter allows you to time stretch (or time compress) the sample without changing the pitch. Try it & compare!

What would be *really* cool, and I know it's been an open feature request forever, is if Ableton were to integrate their warping engine with Sampler.

andydes · Post by **andydes** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:04 pm

Nothing wrong with putting an impulse on a drum rack pad and using one cell. I do it occasionally.

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:12 pm

OK, sorry, same thing stated a different way. I guess it seemed contradictory/confusing to me because the first statement was that you can do "stretch" in simpler easily with the transpose parameter, but then goes on to say it would be nice if we could warp (stretch) in simpler.

Anyway, so it looks like you guys are confirming there's no way to stretch (warp) a sample in Simpler/Sampler/Drum Racks but you can do it in Impulse. At least I know that for sure now.

Still curious who's still using Impulse & why...

condra · Post by **condra** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:01 pm

I never use it.

Just sayin.

antarktika · Post by **antarktika** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:14 pm

you can also put 8 variations of a hit on the impulse pads, and trigger them randomly by using random + scale devices. good for hats

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:41 pm

Impulse is a handy little tool to create little hat and glitch loops. I use drum racks for kicks and snares though.

icedsushi · Post by **icedsushi** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:43 pm

antarktika wrote:you can also put 8 variations of a hit on the impulse pads, and trigger them randomly by using random + scale devices. good for hats

Nice one! But I guess this little trick can be done in drum racks too...

Impulse also has the handy global transpose where you can tune all 8 cells simultaneously, but there we are again, guess you could do the same thing in a drum rack with a macro mapped to multiple simpler's transpose parameter.

JAMM · Post by **JAMM** » Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:44 pm

impulse is not for sale anymore(?) but i use alchemy for that trick.

1nfinitezer0 · Post by **1nfinitezer0** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:20 am

STREEEEEEEEETCH

yus, good as perc channel and for microsamples

Forge. · Post by **Forge.** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:53 am

you know what, I probably would if I didn't keep totally forgetting it exists.

That, and I only really use drum racks so I can load a specific kit or slice to MIDI

bartend7 · Post by **bartend7** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:25 am

andydes wrote:Nothing wrong with putting an impulse on a drum rack pad and using one cell. I do it occasionally.

+1 its like that "drum-pulse" concept that dubspot did a video on youtube about. great idea.

morbid · Post by **morbid** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:56 am

Yep

Use it on every track - I'm on 6 so don't have the luxury of Drum Racks

BUT

Working within its limitations makes you way more creative with sample choices etc. Impulse does some crazy shit that I can't recreate in any other way. It can colour the sound of samples in a really musical way just playing with the decay / transpose / stretch. I never used the Drive / Saturation. If you transpose sounds one way per sound and the other way with the global transpose and then counter balance the stretch and decay you can get some really musical artefacts colouring the original sounds

If you view it like an old drum machine it makes sense eg. Yamaha RMX, Korg Electribe, EMU MP7 - They all have their own quirks and idiosyncrasies.

I like impulse and its limitations

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