Area Select¶
Area Select confines grain reads to a sub-region of the sample. Instead of scanning the whole buffer, grains draw only from the part you mark between an in point and an out point. Use it to isolate a syllable, a hit, or a section, then granulate just that.
Open Edit Area¶
Long-press the waveform to open the "Grain buffer" menu. When a sample is loaded, the menu includes "Edit Area…". Tap it to enter edit mode. With no sample loaded there is nothing to select, so the item does not appear.
In edit mode the waveform un-zooms to show the whole buffer and two handles appear, one for the in point and one for the out point.
Drag the handles¶
Drag the left handle to set the in point and the right handle to set the out point. The handles can't cross or touch: the app keeps a minimum gap between them (2% of the buffer) so the region stays usable. Each handle also stays within the ends of the buffer.
As you drag, the selection updates live and the grain read region follows, so you hear the change while you set it.
Done and Cancel¶
A Cancel and a Done button sit over the waveform while you edit.
- Done commits the selection. The loop turns on over your in/out range and the waveform zooms to fill the view with just the selection. If you dragged the handles back out to nearly the whole buffer, Done treats that as no selection and returns to the full buffer with the loop off.
- Cancel throws away your edits and restores whatever region was there before you opened Edit Area, including its zoom.
Zoom to the selection¶
Once committed, the waveform zooms so the selection fills the width. This gives you finer control over position when scrubbing or playing within the region. While you are editing, the view always shows the whole buffer so you can place the handles against the full sample; the zoom applies after Done.
Clear the selection¶
With a selection active, long-press the waveform again and the "Grain buffer" menu shows "Clear Selection". Tap it to return to the whole buffer with the loop off and the zoom removed. Clear Selection appears only when a real sub-region is set.
How it maps to the engine¶
A selection drives three engine loop parameters together: loop enabled, loop in, and loop out. Committing, dragging, or clearing all push these in one step. A selection is a genuine sub-range with the loop on; the whole buffer with the loop off is not a selection, which is why "Clear Selection" only shows when a real region exists.
Presets¶
The in point, out point, and loop-on state are stored in presets. Save a preset with a selection active and it comes back with that same region when you load the preset later. A preset with no selection loads as the whole buffer.
See also: Recording into the buffer to capture audio you can then select within.