Slice

Intro

Slice is a "Dynamic Looper" designed to work with the AU, AAX, and VST3 plugin standards, on Windows & Mac OS. This manual serves as a full explanation into every parameter and system featured within the scope of the plugin. It will be updated along with the program itself.

Be sure to check out the Common Features page to learn about capabilities that every Lese plugin has.

Controls

These controls are listed from top to bottom, for clarity’s sake. Some of these controls may not make sense unless they are cross referenced with others, which we will attempt to deal with.

Looper Control Systems

Slice's 2 looper control systems allow for different kinds of high level control of the individual loopers. The switch at the bottom right of the upper screen switches between the two modes.

Petal Mode

The default looper control system is referred to as "Petal Mode". with this system, the length of each of the petals determines the position of an individual looper, or the length of the looper, depending on which of the petal controls is selected, which is done on the left side of the interface.

The slider control on the right determines the position & length ranges that the petals can map up to; and at the default settings they cover the entire supported range.

Additionally, the knob on the bottom left of the petal control panel is a phase control, which offsets the rotation of all of the petals at once. adjusting this knob essentially has the same practical effect as moving the petal control handle in a circular fashion.

Note that both the position & length control panels both have their own sets of parameters, including range minimum / maximum, X/Y, and phase.

Pad Mode

The pad control system allows for simple 2-axis control, where moving the handle up and down adjusts the spread of the looper positions, and moving it left and right adjusts the position of the loopers.

Buffer Visualizer

Underneath the looper control systems (also known as the upper control panel) is the buffer visualizer. The buffer visualizer just displays the incoming audio that the processor is using, as well as the current positions of the various loopers. the button on the right can freeze the input of the buffer, allowing for unending looping, and the button on the left opens up a menu to adjust the visual scrolling behavior of the buffer visualizer, as well as the internal buffer's length.

Bottom Control Panel

The lower control panel contains the rest of the controls, and are much simpler; just being individual knobs with intuitive readouts. We will go from the top to bottom.

Slices

Controls the # of parallel loopers that are being processed. The minimum is 3 and the maximum is 9.

Multiband Mode

The button on the right of the Slices knob toggles multiband mode, which allows for each looper to take up an individual section of the frequency spectrum, split apart by an internal dynamic multiband crossover system.

Length

Sets the maximum length of audio that a looper can process before restarting. If a loop is too long, or even longer than the total length of the buffer, it will reverse itself (or go forwards, if reverse) to avoid going out of bounds.

Sync

The length of the loopers can be synchronized to the host BPM by pressing the button to the left of the Length knob. When turned on, the Divisions slider underneath will become available, which sets the maximum # of divisions that a looper can process at, while the length slider will now specify the specific synchronized time length of the loopers.

Transient Mode

"Transient Mode" is enabled by pressing the button to the left of the Threshold knob. In Transient Mode, Slice will listen to the incoming audio and set "markers" for points where transients occurred. The loopers will then snap their positions up to those markers.

Threshold

Adjusts the threshold required for Slice to set a transient marker. Increasing it reduces this sensitivity, and reducing it increases the sensitivity. A live readout of the current "transient value" is displayed on the knob when Transient Mode is active, making it more intuitive.

Reverse

Adjusts the percentage chance that an individual loop of audio may move forwards or backwards. At 0% all loops will move forwards, and at 100% all loops will move backwards.

Drift

Adjusts how the individual loopers slowly change in position & length over time. increasing it turns up the potential drift, and also makes the potential drift more erratic.

In the case of transient mode, as the drift is turned up, the length will continue to drift, and the position as well, but the position will still only snap to the nearest transient.

Form

Adjusts the gain windowing shape of an individual audio loop. By default, the shape is set to a soft ramping window that fades smoothly. Turning down the value causes the value to ramp downwards, and turning it up causes the value to ramp upwards.

Mix

Mix is the dry / wet control, which is standard in most audio plugins. Turning it down puts more of the original sound through, and turning it up puts more of the processed sound through.