Hi ya'll.
 
I'm curious if anyone knows a way to extract an element out of a loop in dimension pro? There are several drum loops in the presets that I really like but only want to use certain parts of, such as the bass pattern or a single synth hit. I can't seem to find a way to remove anything in the interface, and the entire loop itself seems to be all contained in one section of the 4 "elements" available.  I see it is an sfz file in my multisamples folder. Is there any way to do this? Thanks.

I don't know if Dimension Pro is the right tool to use, you might want to look at the sample editing stuff in X3 (groove clips, audiosnap, etc) instead. Other DAWs have tools that work too. What you want to do is extract the sound from the individual hits and put them into something that can play them back. Without multisampling, you'll get either the helium or sulfur hexafluoride sample sound from Dimension Pro, Rapture, etc. depending on whether you go up or down the scale from the original sampled pitch.
You might want to look at ReCycle or something similar.
 
 

The "loop" is a wave (or other audio file).  It will be in a folder w/ the same name as the sfz file and program (hopefully).  You'll find the name in the element header too.
 
Pull the audio file out into SONAR or better still, Sound Forge.  Both will let you turn it into a groove file, or acidized file so the loop will match the tempo of the project.  Edit away in Sound Forge.
 
If the loop is several hits triggered by midi, you can do the same type of operation, but you have to drag the associated midi file into SONAR.  Edit away for the hits you want to keep.
 
@

AT
The "loop" is a wave (or other audio file).  It will be in a folder w/ the same name as the sfz file and program (hopefully).  You'll find the name in the element header too.
 
Pull the audio file out into SONAR or better still, Sound Forge.  Both will let you turn it into a groove file, or acidized file so the loop will match the tempo of the project.  Edit away in Sound Forge.
 
If the loop is several hits triggered by midi, you can do the same type of operation, but you have to drag the associated midi file into SONAR.  Edit away for the hits you want to keep.
 
@

 
AT's method is the most direct and I can't see any reason to go another direction but....
I figured I would see if there was a different option and practical reason i would do it any other way.  I have a plugin called geist which is a sampling drum machine that will sample from any output on computer, including outputs within Sonar.  If for some reason I just wanted to sample one portion of a multi-sample file to be used within Geist, I could just turn off the undesired elements in Dim Pro and set Geist's sampler mode to sample one bar exactly, which woulld pretty much import that element into Geist.  Never had to do that and probably won't but figured it doesn't hurt to show there are typically multiple ways to do the same thing.

Here's an addition to the above suggestions. Quickest way to get a synth sound into a loopable clip lickity-split is to:
a) record a measure of the sound you want (hold down a note on your keyboard or controller, or just click add a note in the piano roll). Advantage here is that you can pick the note to hold down (if the synth patch is tunable) for a higher or lower sounding result.
b)bounce the track (tracks|bounce to track in track view) and voila! (french for "flower") you have a editable clip of the sound you are after sitting on a track.
c)edit the clip to your heart's content. Chop it, trim the ends, acidize it, loop it, whatever.
d)open the media browser and drag the _fixed_ clip to the folder where you want to save it and, again, "voila!" ("flower!") it's saved and ready to use. You can change it's name from "clip.wav" to something more useful, like "voila.wav"?
(It took me way longer to type these instructions than it would to perform the steps--AND drag the new clip into a matrix view column to play with it.)

I love seeing all the various ways to skin a cat.  that sounds less disturbing to say on Halloween!