Stay clean
1No matter the nature of the sound to be sampled, keeping the initial recording clean will be key in 99% of cases. It is important to be clear as to where the source ends and the capture begins. For example, that vinyl break you want to lift sounds good to you partly because the DJ mixer is slightly overloaded and the bass is pumped, therefore the mixer is part of the source and what follows is where ‘clean’ needs to be the priority. The single most important component of cleanliness is headroom, making sure that nothing post-source clips or incurs unnecessary distortions, so keep peak input levels below -12dBFS. The low noise floor of
