4ms Company STS User Manual Download

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Tutorial 3: Recording Samples

Enabling Recording

To use the

RECORD

section, you first have to enable (or

“arm”) recording by holding down the

REC

button for 2

seconds. This is to prevent accidental recording. When
recording is armed, the

REC

button will flash.

Notice the blue

Monitor

light turns on. This means whatever signal is present

on the

RECORD

inputs will be routed to

OUT(L)

and

OUT(R)

If you have a mono signal, patch it into the

Left

RECORD

jack. If you have a

stereo signal, patch into the

Left

and

Right RECORD

jacks. The STS always

records in stereo—the Left signal will be copied to the Right if nothing is

plugged into the Right jack. You should be hearing your input sound coming
out the

OUT

jacks, but it’s not recording yet— just monitoring.

Start/Stop Recording

Tap the

REC

button to begin recording (or fire a trigger into the

Rec

jack). See

how the

Busy

light turns on and starts flashing a lot? That means it’s actively

recording your audio to the microSD card.

Tap the

REC

button again (or

fire another trigger) and wait
a moment until the

Busy

light

goes off. Congratulations! You

just made a sample! If you were to put the

microSD card into a computer now, you’d see a

new stereo WAV file with your sounds on it. But

let’s try playing it back first.

Where is my recording?

The sample you recorded is automatically loaded
into whatever bank the

REC Bank

button was set

and whatever slot the

RECORD Sample

knob was pointing to when you

started

recording. By default,

the STS boots up with the

REC Bank

set to the first empty bank— this way it won’t change your

existing banks when you start recording.

Teleport to the Rec Bank

To hear the sample you just recorded, we need to go to that bank in one of the
play channels. You already know a couple ways to browse banks (tapping

Bank

, or

holding

Bank

while the turning the

Sample

knob), but let’s learn a new trick for this:

Hold down the

REC Bank

button and a play channel’s

Bank

button for half a

second. The play channel

Bank

will teleport to the

REC Bank

. You should see the

play

Bank

button change color/blink to match

REC Bank

Now that you’re in the right bank, turn the play

Sample

knob to match the

RECORD Sample

knob, and

hit the

PLAY

button. You should hear your sample play

back! Notice that when you turn the Sample knob on

the play channel the play light blinks either red or white.

Red means the slot is empty, and white means the slot

has a sample.

Before you hit

REC

again, move the

RECORD Sample

knob to a new slot. Otherwise you’ll record over the slot

(the file will still be there, just not assigned to any slot).

Page of

Bank

Jump to Rec Bank:

Hold both 0.5 sec

REC

Arm Recording:

Hold 0.5 sec

Monitor

Sample

REC

Bank

Rec

Busy

Monitor

RECORD

Left

Right

REC

Start/Stop Recording:

Tap button

Busy

Monitoring:

When you hit a

PLAY

button,

Monitoring is disabled (the blue
Monitor light will go off, and the

REC

button will turn purple). To

turn Monitoring back on, hold
the

REC

button for half a

second.

Monitor

Levels:

The  STS  is  made  for  modular-level  signals,
but  it  does  a  decent  job  with  line-level
signals. (You can boost line-level to modular
level  digitally  later  using  the

Edit

Gain

feature). However, for the best quality, use a
suitable  line-to-modular  level  converter
module. Even a low-cost “input” module will
greatly  increase  the  quality  of  line-level
recordings  from  your  phone,  computer,
guitar pedals, etc