Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Sampling Tutorial VST-Plugin xlnaudio

Live by XLN Audio: The Ultimate Slicing VST Plugin

Tutorial | Dec 05, 2023

In this video, I introduce the new VST plugin called Live by XLN Audio. It allows users to find slices within audio material and create percussion loops using different patterns. The plugin offers features such as auto slicing, denoise option, pattern variation, and the ability to drag in samples or record directly from the iPhone app.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

Hey everyone, welcome back to my video on "Live" by XLN Audio, a new VST plugin. Here's a quick summary of what I covered:

Questions & Answers

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is Live by XLN Audio and how does it work?

Live by XLN Audio is a new VST plugin that allows users to find slices within their audio material and create percussion loops. Users can either use the auto slicer to find slices or manually adjust them, and there is also an option to remove noise and clicks. The plugin features an easy mode where users can create beats using different slices and patterns, or an edit lane for more precise adjustments.

How can samples be loaded into the plugin?

Samples can be loaded into the plugin by dragging and dropping them, trimming them as needed, and then uploading them to the XLN cloud. Alternatively, users can record samples using the iPhone app provided by XLN Audio, or use the plugin's library of predefined sounds with predefined patterns.

What features and options are available within the plugin?

The plugin offers various features and options, including the ability to add pattern variation, browse the beat browser, adjust density and syncopation, and apply different audio effects using the snob. There are also options to change the pattern and sound of the kick drum, adjust pitch and volume, apply EQ and panning, and use the transient shaper. Additionally, the plugin allows for the creation of presets and provides options for saving, switching between, and deleting them.

What are the limitations and potential concerns with using the plugin?

One limitation is that the samples uploaded to the XLN cloud may be subject to space limitations or potential subscription models. Additionally, there is currently no information about the availability of an Android app. There may also be concerns about the cloud-based nature of the plugin, particularly for copyrighted materials that cannot be uploaded externally.

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back to another video. The day it's about live by XLN Audio,
[00:00:05] which is a new VST plugin that just came out. And this plugin tries to find
[00:00:10] slices within your audio material. So we can see here down here we have basically
[00:00:15] some kind of sample loaded in. And you can run the auto slicer to find these
[00:00:22] slices or you can change it manually if you want to. You can also use a denoise
[00:00:26] option here to remove humming noise and clicks and pops. And when you are happy
[00:00:31] to just hit done and then go down here and create your beats. So you can just
[00:00:36] hit randomize here and it uses different slices and different patterns every time
[00:00:42] I hit randomize. So it sounds like this.
[00:00:46] [Music]
[00:01:00] So these are basically kind of all percussion loops just from one sample I
[00:01:06] loaded in. You can randomize like I said down here. You can also send these
[00:01:12] lanes into different audio effects by just using the snob here. It sounds like this.
[00:01:18] [Music]
[00:01:27] Or you can add pattern variation.
[00:01:29] [Music]
[00:01:38] Or browse here the beat browser.
[00:01:41] [Music]
[00:01:51] You can increase the density here.
[00:01:53] [Music]
[00:01:57] Syncopation, symmetry.
[00:01:59] [Music]
[00:02:13] When you are happy you can just save it here as a shortcut. Then create something new.
[00:02:19] Save it. Create something new. Save it. Then you can switch between these shortcuts here.
[00:02:25] [Music]
[00:02:35] Down here we have some kind of kick drum lane. So you have some kick drums included.
[00:02:41] So you can enable that. You can change the pattern of the kick drum here. You can also
[00:02:45] change the sound. And I don't think you can load in your own sounds here but you have
[00:02:50] some pre-made ones. So 909, 707, whatever. Knock.
[00:02:58] So let's play with this.
[00:03:00] [Music]
[00:03:05] So it gives your beat or your percussion some kind of straightness.
[00:03:09] [Music]
[00:03:13] Let's go for 909.
[00:03:14] [Music]
[00:03:21] So it's really fun to play around with to get everything out of your audio recordings up here.
[00:03:28] If you are not happy with this easy mode here you can switch to the edit lane.
[00:03:33] It looks like this. You have the easy mode on the left side here. Still available.
[00:03:38] You can still hit randomize here and then see what's going on on the right side.
[00:03:43] On the right side you have some groove lanes. One, two, three and four.
[00:03:49] And you can map these slices to these groove lanes. You can for instance track this over here.
[00:03:54] And then you can make some adjustments on these lanes. You can change the pattern.
[00:04:00] You have by the way two patterns here A and B. And then you can say up here switch between A and B all the time.
[00:04:09] You can alternate between A and B or use something like A, A, A, B.
[00:04:14] So it plays A three times and then B the last iteration.
[00:04:20] So you can create kind of more like structure, a song structure with this.
[00:04:26] But I usually just use A here, A, B and use one line.
[00:04:31] Then you can nudge this around. So offset basically all these steps to the left or to the right time wise.
[00:04:38] So you can nudge it around. It's kind of offset.
[00:04:41] You have an transient shaper here, attack, hold, decay.
[00:04:45] We have here outputs. You can send it to different outputs because it's a multi-channel output plug-in.
[00:04:52] So you can send us to different channels in your DAW.
[00:04:55] You have mute groups. You can send it here to internal effects reverb, delay.
[00:05:00] You have a high cut. You have a low cut.
[00:05:04] You have a tilt EQ here, which just, you know, tilts the EQ.
[00:05:09] So we have increased the high end here and decreased the low end and vice versa.
[00:05:14] You have a panning knob. So left side, right side.
[00:05:18] You have also on this panning knob here two buttons.
[00:05:22] So this one basically delays the left channel and this one delays the right channel just by a small amount.
[00:05:28] So you can create a stereo effect from mono samples, right, which is nice to have.
[00:05:35] There's also pitch knob here. So you can change the pitch of these samples.
[00:05:39] And there are also two buttons here where you can change the pitch on the left side slightly differently than on the right side,
[00:05:46] just to increase also the stereo feel of some mono samples.
[00:05:50] And there's a volume knob and solo and mono, which is kind of nice.
[00:05:55] So you can dive into that and really, yeah, dial in precise patterns for your ideas or for your samples, for your slices.
[00:06:07] But I'm really happy with this easy mode.
[00:06:10] It's really neat to play around with this and just create percussion loops from random samples.
[00:06:16] So the next question is, of course, how do I get samples into this plugin, right?
[00:06:22] So the first mode is that you can just drag stuff in.
[00:06:26] So I show you this.
[00:06:28] So I use here my sample library, just going here for some drums, maybe something like this.
[00:06:37] So it's drum bass drum loop here.
[00:06:39] So I drag this in into here and it forces you to kind of trim the sample because we probably don't need the whole thing.
[00:06:47] It just repeats over and over.
[00:06:49] We just need some kick and snare in here.
[00:06:52] So I just trim this down, hit OK.
[00:06:54] And then I can define a name here, maybe beats, or you can just hit randomize.
[00:07:00] And in my opinion, this should be on every plugin on every door where you need to define preset names, project names.
[00:07:08] I want to have this here, right?
[00:07:10] I use so much or spend so much time on finding the right names for presets and songs than I actually write songs.
[00:07:18] So I really like this idea.
[00:07:21] So you can hit dice and you get a random name.
[00:07:24] You can also define a color and the icon.
[00:07:26] And then you hit OK.
[00:07:27] And then something happens.
[00:07:29] It uploads the sample to the cloud.
[00:07:32] This is where the problem starts.
[00:07:36] So this gets uploaded to the XLN cloud.
[00:07:40] And I don't know if you have unlimited space there or if there's a subscription model coming or if there's a limit.
[00:07:47] I have no idea for the moment.
[00:07:49] It just works through your upload the sample then into the cloud.
[00:07:55] Right.
[00:07:56] Then you can select it.
[00:07:57] You can also rename it here.
[00:07:58] You can edit the image.
[00:07:59] You can also delete it.
[00:08:00] And then you hit OK.
[00:08:01] And then you have it inside of your slicer here and then it already find all these slices in here.
[00:08:08] And it uses them to create some kind of percussion loop out of this sounds like this.
[00:08:14] Maybe without a kick here.
[00:08:16] So this is how it works.
[00:08:38] So you can drag in audio.
[00:08:40] You can trim it and then it gets uploaded to the cloud.
[00:08:43] You also can download an iPhone app and record on the fly on mobile on your iPhone.
[00:08:51] So I just did this earlier here.
[00:08:53] I just opened it opened and closed some doors in our house.
[00:09:06] OK.
[00:09:07] And then you can just use that.
[00:09:08] And you can see some of these samples are too quiet.
[00:09:12] In my opinion, there needs to be a normalize feature here, not only the noise.
[00:09:17] You also want to have a normalize.
[00:09:19] So normalization maybe normalize here over everything or normalize each slice individual would be nice to have, in my opinion.
[00:09:29] So we can then create from this iPhone recording also beats.
[00:09:41] Sounds pretty nice.
[00:10:00] It sounds almost like a cinematic percussion library, in my opinion, if you use it right.
[00:10:07] So if you use your iPhone app, it's it works in the same way.
[00:10:11] You basically hit record on your iPhone and then you make some stuff, hit some stuff and record it.
[00:10:18] You give it a name.
[00:10:19] There's also a randomizer for the name in on the iPhone.
[00:10:22] And then you upload it to the cloud.
[00:10:25] And then it shows up in this browser here in your plug in.
[00:10:29] Right.
[00:10:30] And then you can just use it.
[00:10:32] So dragging in stuff, you can record with the iPhone.
[00:10:36] By the way, the iPhone app is free.
[00:10:38] I don't know if there's an Android app at the moment.
[00:10:40] I have no idea what there's an iPhone app.
[00:10:42] And then you have also here a small library of predefined sounds with some predefined patterns.
[00:10:49] You can use that if you want to.
[00:11:02] So you have predefined sounds and there's a record feature up here.
[00:11:07] Right.
[00:11:08] And if you want to use that, you need to use a separate plug in called live door recorder.
[00:11:16] And I have you on the second channel, a radio running.
[00:11:20] It's just just a radio station here.
[00:11:23] Maybe you can load up here different different channel.
[00:11:28] You can see as it jazz maybe.
[00:11:32] So it loads up the different channel and it goes straight into the second plug in here.
[00:11:37] Looks like this live door recorder.
[00:11:40] And you can use multiple instances of this recorder here.
[00:11:45] And you can then select basically different instances from your door.
[00:11:50] So it's very neat to record from different sources at the same time.
[00:11:55] So you have to have it's record here.
[00:11:57] And now it samples basically stuff from my radio plug in here.
[00:12:01] Right.
[00:12:02] Then when I'm done, I just hit pause or maybe it done trim the selection here down to this.
[00:12:08] It.
[00:12:09] Okay.
[00:12:10] Give it the name, give it the color.
[00:12:13] And then it uploads everything to the cloud.
[00:12:16] And then I can go in here and then select basically the first thing here.
[00:12:23] Oh, it's actually a nice pop recording.
[00:12:29] So it tries to find some slices here.
[00:12:32] And then we can hit randomize and listen to the beat.
[00:12:35] So and that's basically it.
[00:12:58] So you have a nice slicing plug in.
[00:13:02] You can drag in sounds.
[00:13:04] You can record sounds from a separate plug in.
[00:13:07] You can also use your iPhone to record stuff.
[00:13:11] Everything is uploaded into the cloud.
[00:13:14] And then you can use these samples in here to create beats with the easy mode.
[00:13:20] Or you can go to the edit mode, edit everything and then create great beats with that.
[00:13:25] And then you have also here some kind of export thing option where you can export the beat
[00:13:31] and also the samples to a folder or maybe drag it out.
[00:13:37] So that's basically the main idea behind this.
[00:13:41] And it works really well.
[00:13:43] The only downside for me is actually here the cloud part.
[00:13:46] I don't know how this works in the future.
[00:13:48] And it's maybe also problematic with some copyright material where you can't actually upload stuff to somewhere else
[00:13:55] and you need to have everything locally.
[00:13:59] So maybe there's an option for that to get this in the future to actually send stuff directly to your plug in
[00:14:06] or to your local Windows PC in some way.
[00:14:10] There's no iLog.
[00:14:12] So it's completely iLog free.
[00:14:14] You need a separate application to install this.
[00:14:18] It's the XLN downloading application or whatever it's called.
[00:14:24] So that's that.
[00:14:25] The introduction price is one of the bucks.
[00:14:28] I think the normal price is one of 40 bucks.
[00:14:31] It's the same price as XO if I'm right.
[00:14:35] So it's perfect in combination with XO when you make beats and you want to add some percussion to it
[00:14:41] or maybe some melody loops to it.
[00:14:43] It's basically perfect.
[00:14:45] So that's my overview video of life.
[00:14:48] I probably do some more videos on how I use it and what kind of beats I do with this thing.
[00:14:56] But I really like it and I want to show you this.
[00:14:59] It's out now.
[00:15:00] Link is in the description below.
[00:15:02] I'm not affiliated.
[00:15:03] This is a trial version here.
[00:15:06] So you can also use the trial version if you want to and see if it's something for you.
[00:15:13] Okay.
[00:15:14] Thanks for watching.
[00:15:15] Leave a like if you liked the video.
[00:15:16] Hit me up with the interesting comments down below.
[00:15:19] It's always nice for the algorithm and I see you in the next video.
[00:15:23] Bye.
[00:15:24] [ Silence ]