Map MIDI signals to play custom audio clips

Question

I'm trying to guess how to play audio clips using a MIDI controller. My controller is Yamaha DTX-MULTI 12 (Percussion pad). I've tried with Ableton Live 9 and it does what I'm looking for but I've found several problems that make the program useless for me.

What I do in Ableton is to create a "drum rack" and assign my audio clips to the different notes (sent by my MIDI controller). Then the program plays the clips. The problem comes when Ableton fades out the clips after 60 seconds (everybody says that it can't be modified!) and I need to play longer clips.

Do you know any software I can use to play clips mapped to different notes sent by my MIDI controller?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I've used Native Instruments Kontakt sampler to achieve exactly what you're looking for, to produce a radio show with pre-configured audio clips mapped to different notes of a MIDI keyboard. It's able to do one-shot sample playback and can certainly manage more that 60 seconds (which seems very limiting of Ableton!).

Maybe there's a cheaper option out there though?

Answer 2

Seems like you should be able to use midi messages to launch clips from within Ableton, rather than doing it from within a drum-rack. That might be easier, and you wont be ham-strung by the volume envelope of a simpler/sampler device.

If you use the Release Enabled mode on the Sampler device, that should do what you need. It's the button (it looks like ->| )

The One-Shot mode of the Simpler should also do what you need.