I’m currently battling quite an interesting case of sample playback on Motif XF7 - loops are played differently on Windows sound editing programs and Motif. When I prepare a sample and tweak the loop on Sound Forge to be perfect, it sound clean and has no clicks or other distortions there. But when I transfer this sample to Motif, the loop region starts clicking. I have tried many programs, like FL Studio and Kontakt - they all play the sample smoothly, no issues. During all this thinking I got an idea maybe I could try that sample on other hardware, so I have transferred the sample to my Akai MPC1000 sampler. And surprise - it clicks there too! Actually I was able to set non clicking loop point on MPC1000 and enter the loop positions on the Motif. I got perfect sound. This leads to the conclusion, that sound playback on Windows programs is slightly different than on these hardware devices.
So the question is - how can prepare the samples on my PC? I need to hear them as they will be played on Motif or MPC. Looks like Sound forge, Kontakt, FL are somehow smoothing the loops. Maybe you know some programs that could give me the right sound, as it will play on Motif?

Here’s a loop part from the Motif, recorded from digital out:
https://soundcloud.com/dr-rox/sample-from-motif

And this is how the sample sounds on PC - clean:
https://soundcloud.com/dr-rox/sample-from-pc

Hi Dr. ROX,

From listening back on a variety of monitors, there is a pronounced glitch at the very start of both clips. 

Is that what you are talking about?

If it is, it is not really anything to do with how clean your PC sounds by comparison to the Motif. It is more to do with how the software deals with waveforms, edits and cuts etc and then how the Motif does. 

The PC one, appears to be less problematic than the Motif one, but is still what I call a glitch.

The clips demonstrate to me just how transparent the Motif is, because if you put something bad in, you get something bad out.  There’s no denying that the same problem exists on both clips, but they just sound a little different.

Do you have any filters or EQ or compression on the PC version?  Do you know for sure that the PC version is the same level as the Motif one at the time of recording? ...because it may just be right at the point of crapping out on the attack if it is louder on the Motif.

Is the Motif processing the audio in any way?

After taking all of that in to consideration, If it were my sound, I’d create the tiniest fade whilst zoomed all the way in to ‘sub-atomic level’ to just take that noise away and then try it on the Motif. I’d also consider a low pass filter, as far as I could go without taking anything away from the meat of the sound. 

You shouldn’t be able to notice the fade I’m suggesting as an obvious fade in, but you should notice that your glitch is gone. So, I mean an extraordinarily delicate and short fade in, of perhaps a few samples or enough to get the job done.  Failing that, you could try retrimming in the hope you get less of a glitch.

Thanks for the reply! The problematic clicking on each loop cycle starts after 1-2 seconds from the start on the Motif sample. The glitch at start is just a result or my quick copy-paste disregarding zero-crossing, so the wave starts at it’s negative peak and causes the sudden pop. The record from Motif is done in Integrated Sampling mode pressing Audition button, so it goes clean. From PC it’s also recorded clean without any processing. Both samples were then normalized.
The loop was done using automated software, it actually doesn’t start on zero crossings.

Logically it starts where it ends, so it should do ok. And on PC it sounds ok. But on the Motif it starts clicking on each cycle. This is quite interesting as this shows the different behavior of these systems. Though the same issue is on MPC too. Looks like they both don’t like loops not starting on zero crossings. On MPC I was able to tune the loop to be on zero crossings, there was almost no clicking, just some very silent repetitions. Then I set these loop points on Motif and there was no audible clicks at all. So probably the loops always needs to be on zero crossings. But from my past I remember setting them manually on zeros, got the same issue where on PC it sounded clean and clicked on each cycle on Motif. So looks like there is no proper way to audition the samples on PC. Loops should be done on zero crossings, transferred to Motif, checked there, notes written about bad ones and then blindly fixed on PC or probably on MPC as that one gives similar sound as Motif :) Quite a complicated way to do samples :)

Use an audio editor that locates and cuts at zero crossings automatically. Trying to find them manually just wastes time.