AUD · Audio tools

Audio Beat Repeat

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Often followed by + Bitcrusher + Filter + Limiter

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Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Stutter a beat on a grid

Beat repeat holds a rolling capture of the recent past. On steps of a tempo grid it replays a slice of that capture in place of what actually comes next, which produces rolls, stutters, and glitch fills without editing the file.

Four things decide the result: the tempo, how often the effect fires, how much audio it replays, and which steps it picks.

Grid and slice

These are the two controls people confuse, and they do different jobs.

Grid is how often the effect gets a chance to fire, and how long it holds once it does. Slice is how much audio gets replayed inside that window.

  • Grid 1/4, slice 1/16: the last sixteenth of the previous beat repeats four times across the beat. This is a roll.
  • Grid 1/4, slice 1/4: the whole previous beat plays again. This is an echo of the bar, not a stutter.
  • Grid 1/8, slice 1/32: eight repeats inside an eighth note, which reads as a pitched buzz rather than as rhythm.

A slice longer than the grid step would still be playing when the next step arrived, so it is held to the length of the step it has to fit inside.

Chance and pattern

Chance is how many of the grid steps fire, from none to all of them. Around 20 to 30% gives occasional fills that sound placed rather than mechanical. 100% fires on every step, which is a constant stutter.

The choice is not random at playback time. Each step’s index is hashed, so the same file always produces the same pattern, the preview always matches the export, and seeking to the middle of a track does not change what happens there. Pattern selects between 32 fixed arrangements at the same density, which is how you audition alternatives without changing how much is happening.

Tempo and the grid origin

The grid is measured in frames from the start of the file, so step zero is the first sample. A track with silence, a count-in, or a fade before the downbeat will have its whole grid offset by that amount.

Trim the file so it starts on the beat, or export a range that begins on one. Confining the step to a region does not help here: a region decides where the effect is heard, not where the grid starts counting, so a region that begins off the beat still fires against the original grid.

Use the BPM detector to read the tempo off the file if you do not already know it.

Edges

A slice butt-joined to itself steps the waveform at every wrap, which clicks. Each repetition is faded over about 3 ms at both ends, and the dry signal is carried back in underneath that fade rather than the level dropping to silence, so a join sounds like a join instead of a gate.

On a 1/32 slice at a fast tempo those fades are a noticeable fraction of the slice, which softens the attack of each repeat. That is the trade for not clicking.

In a chain

Put it before the filter and the bitcrusher, so those process the stutter rather than the stutter chopping up an already-processed signal. Reverb after it, so the repeats are placed in one space instead of each repeat carrying its own tail.

Watch the level. Replacing a quiet moment with a loud slice raises the peak of the file, so a limiter after it is worth having.

Frequently Asked Questions

It keeps a rolling capture of the last few seconds and, on chosen steps of a tempo grid, replays a slice of that capture instead of the audio that actually comes next. Setting the slice shorter than the grid step makes it loop several times, which is the stutter.

The trance gate multiplies the signal by a rhythmic envelope, so it can only ever remove what is there. Beat repeat substitutes audio the file has already played, so it can put material on a step the source has nothing on.

Whether a step repeats is decided by hashing that step's own index rather than by drawing from a running random generator. A generator would give different answers depending on how much audio had been processed to reach a point, so the preview and the export would disagree and seeking would change the pattern. The Pattern control picks between 32 different fixed arrangements.

Set Tempo to the track's BPM. The BPM detector will read it off the file if you do not know it. The grid is measured from the start of the file, so a track with silence or a count-in before the first beat will have its grid offset by that amount.

Grid is how often the effect gets a chance to fire. Slice is how much audio it replays each time. A 1/4 grid with a 1/16 slice repeats a sixteenth four times across the beat, which is a roll. A 1/4 grid with a 1/4 slice replays the whole previous beat once, which is an echo of the bar rather than a stutter.

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