Akai S950 Operator's Manual page 27

The art of looping is to find two points in the sample which ere of a similar
level so that the end of the loop and the start of the loop are matched (see
Fig. 2) - this 1s called a ZERO CROSSING POINT. Sometimes, this can be easy
to achieve, sometimes it is impossible. To help you with this sometimes
tedious task, the S950 has an AUTOLOOP function where the S950's computer
will automatically look for a good zero crossing point and loop the sound for
you. Sadly, there is only so much a computer can do in the case of a
difficult sound end so the S950 has two looping modes which we looked at
above on Page 4 of EDIT SAMPLE. Mode 2 - LOOPING - will loop the sound as
described immediately above - i.e. the sound will play from start to finish
and then ,lump beck to the point in the sound defined by the LOOP LENGTH
parameters. Made 3 - ALTERNATING - rill cause the sound to play beck to the
end and then, instead of ,lumping beck to the start of the loop, It will play
the loop backwards and then it will play it the right way round then
backwards then forwards then backwards, etc., for as long as you keep your
finger on the keyboard. This is also known as a BACXWARDS/FORWARDS loop and
can certainly help in looping sounds that would otherwise be difficult to
loop using ,lust the normal looping mode. Figs. I and 2 show the difference
between the two modes and you can see how the alternating loop has smoothed
out the loop portion of the sound. In conjunction with the AUTOLOOP function
described above, good loops ere often easy to ttain. But even this is
sometimes not enough to loop certain sounds, especially harmonically rich and
varying sounds so the S950 has one further old in the search for the perfect
loop celled CROSSFADE LOOPING.
FIG. 1 - Normal looping. Note the abrupt level changes giving rise to
'glitches'
FIG. 2 - Alternating or back wards/ forwards looping of the same sound. Note how the
level changes are smoothed out gluing a glitchless loop.
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