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Open the editor

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Listen to the slices

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Switch modes

Press ⌘1 for Slices, ⌘2 for Tempo, ⌘3 for Stems, or click the segment picker in the header. The bar at the bottom changes to that mode’s controls.

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Zoom in on an attack

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Which page do you need

  • Slices: place and move the transient markers, play the slices, shape every slice at once.
  • Tempo and Beat Grid: name the sample’s real tempo and line the grid up with the audio (Tempo mode).
  • Stems: split a clip into stem tracks, or balance the stems inside the sample (Stems mode).
  • Sampler: play one sample across the keys on an instrument track.
  • Audio to MIDI: turn a recording into notes.
  • Reverse Reverb: a swell that rises into a clip.
  • To fit a sample to the song’s tempo and key, use the Warp section: Time Stretching.

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Good to know

  • The editor works on the sample, not on one clip. Every clip that plays the sample follows what you change here. Nothing touches the audio file on disk.
  • It is the only place where transient markers and the start of the beat grid are edited.
  • Space loops what is selected: one slice, a range selected with ⇧← / ⇧→ as one region, or the whole sample when nothing is selected (↑ / ↓ clears it). Space again stops it. In Tempo mode it plays the whole sample with a click.
  • Clicking outside the sheet closes it too. Return does not: it drops a marker at the playhead.
  • Normalize and Trim Silence change the sample without changing its file. The two chips sit in the top-right corner of the waveform, in Slices mode. Press the same chip again to remove the effect.
  • More ways to open it: click the waveform preview in the inspector’s Sample section, the track’s icon in the track list, or Open Sample Editor in an audio clip’s focus bar. In the Sample Library, ⌥X opens the editor for the sample selected there. On a track that plays the built-in sampler, ⌥X opens the Sampler instead.
  • The editor opens in Slices mode, sliding down over the Timeline, with the sample’s name in the header and its slice markers on the waveform. The Timeline behind it takes no input while it is open.
  • The waveform fills the sheet, with one bar at the bottom for the controls of the current mode. Waveform and controls take the color of the track that owns the sample.
  • The sheet resizes from its minimum, 1280 × 540, upward.
  • Zoom reaches as deep as the Timeline’s, down to individual samples. Slices and Tempo mode share the navigation gestures; Stems mode has none of them.
  • The selected slice’s start marker is drawn brighter and thicker, and the camera always frames it the same way. While the slice fits on screen it is centered. Once it is wider than the viewport, its start marker is pinned one third in from the left edge.
  • Zooming in with ⌥→ walks a slice from centered to pinned, so the transient stays in view all the way down to sample level.
  • A letter key also selects its slice, and a playhead line sweeps across it. The keys follow the slice key map.
  • Every seam the loop cuts is de-clicked: the turn-around, a jump to another slice, and stopping. The outgoing pass rings out over roughly 8 ms of the audio after the slice, the incoming pass ramps in over 2 ms, so attacks stay sharp enough to judge. The timeline and the keyboard audition use the same shape.
  • Trim Silence works only while the sample plays raw, Stretch off and Pitch at 0, since stretched and varispeed buffers don’t share trim semantics. Clearing an existing trim stays available.
  • Both chips have palette commands: Normalize Sample and Trim Silence on Sample, in the Audio Tools group.
  • Warping lives in the track Inspector, not here. Character, Stretch, Target BPM, Pitch and Formant fit a clip to the project, which is a different job from naming the sample’s tempo.
Marker and grid keys: Slices, Tempo and Beat Grid.
Last modified on October 22, 2026