Drag and drop samples onto pads

[dshaw]

Dragging and dropping samples onto the pads works fine for me when in standalone mode, however, when i use spark as a vst in Cubase 8 i am not able to do this.

Is there a setting i need to enable to allow this? Ideally i would like to drag samples from the mediabay straight onto the pads, at the moment i just get a circle with a line through it when i try.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Terrym]

Hi, I have this problem sometimes but tried it today and got it to work on my mac. Build a new kit then in studio view make sure layer 1 is pressed. go back to pads and try a few times. if it doesn't work save the kit and try again.


Terrym

[dshaw]

Hi Terry, many thanks for the reply.

I just tried your suggestion, building a new kit, depressing layer one in studio view and saving etc but unfortunately still had the same result.

Everytime i drag a sample over to a pad (or any where on the spark gui) i get a circle with a line through it. Midi/wav export drag and drop into Cubase works fine, i'm just struggling with dragging samples in.

I'm not against using the internal browser in spark for loading samples but it seems a bit erratic, some samples will preview & load and others won't regardless of bit rate etc being compatible.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[Terrym]

Hum ? Not sure how i got it working on mine do you have samples always saved to library in the pref .
are you on mac or pc.

What happens if you sit there hovering over the pad with the sample

Where are your samples stored external drives?

[dshaw]

I've got my drum samples folder favourited in sparks library > disk tab, not sure if this is the right way to do it?
This is on a standard internal 7200rpm hard drive, Windows 10 Pc.

If i hover over a pad with a sample i just get the circle with a line through it, almost like a 'no entry' sign.

Thanks again

[019297]

I also use cubase and cannot get drag and drop for samples to work on spark 2. It worked on spark 1, and it currently works in cubase for steinberg plug ins like groove agent and halion. I do not think it is a cubase issue. make sure you are not running cubase in "admin mode" if you are on windows.  I just end up making my kits in standalone with drag and drop from windows (dual monitors make this very quick), because the menu based sample selector sucks. "please select the moose you want to load" ahahha

[dshaw]

haha i saw the moose thing, made me chuckle, although i have no idea what it means! That individual sample selector in studio view is a bit painful to use with no preview.

Yeah it's a bit frustrating not being able to drag onto the pads like you can with groove agent, would really speed up workflow for me. I think working in standalone like you say and building kits and patterns then opening Spark as a vsti in Cubase might be the way to go. It seems less prone to crashing in standalone for me as well.

I checked and I'm not running Cubase in admin mode, i should have mentioned that i'm using Spark 2 as well. Maybe i'll stick to sampled drums with groove agent and more electronic stuff in Spark, i'm enjoying getting lost in the modular page!

[019297]

If you want to get really funky, try  programming beats with spark, but have spark send midi to the input of groove agent. Make sure pads and sequencer in spark are both sending midi out. Setup gets a bit tricky, but you only have to do it once. I made my own custom drum map for cubase so you get the pads lined up across both programs evenly. Then load up a groove agent kit and go for it. I turn the fader down on spark vst so I only hear the drum samples on groove agent. I do this because I love having 2 drum machines stacked, but I also really like the sequencer on spark a lot more than the one on groove agent, or even any of the cubase plug ins. Groove agent slaughters spark as a drum sampler, and has much better realistic sounds. And exactly what you said, I think spark is better for electronic sounds and non sampled drum synthesis.

Another handy spark cubase tip is routing the audio output in real time from spark to an audio track. This preserves good performances and is a failsafe for automation mistakes. This comes in handy very often.

[dshaw]

Thanks for the tip, i gave this a try and it works really well. I now have a hardware step sequencer for groove agent and that in itself is almost worth the purchase cost of Spark le.  Then it's as simple as dragging midi patterns to and from the DAW/Spark seq. to arrange and edit.

Still getting frustrated with not being able to drag samples into Spark though.

Resigning to the fact it's only good for drum synthesis, i really like some of the sounds you can get with those physical modelling modules in the modular page.