When loops and phrases play together, or play along with the tracks in your host software, there are many ways in which the loop can interact with other loops and your host's time line. It could play back at its own tempo, or it could match the tempo of other loops and your host. But where will the loop start - and when will it come in - after it is triggered? Right away, or at the next downbeat? Will the loop's beats and barlines line up with your host software's time line (or the beats and bars of other loops)? Or will the loop always start at its own first beat?

When you get down to the business of crafting music with loops and phrases, all of these considerations quickly come into play. Fortunately, the Ethno Instrument provides a wide range of features to handle all of the scenarios, independently for each loop, so that you can get exactly the results you want for each loop. The bottom line is that Ethno provides perhaps the easiest, yet most flexible and capable, playback engine for a loop/phrase library ever devised.

A quality sound engine

Even more importantly, it has to sound good. The Ethno Instrument employs a combination of beat slicing and very high-quality time-stretching technology to play loops at an extremely wide range of tempos without sacrificing sound quality or rhythmic accuracy. To demonstrate Ethno's extreme tempo ranges, here is an original example that includes AfroCaribbean drums, West Indies bass, Indian tabla and Spanish guitar. Each loop comes in separately, so you can hear it (notice that each loop comes in at the next downbeat after being turned on):

The original example above is at 120 beats per minute (BPM). Now listen to these same loops at 90 and 60 BPM. Slowing down is much harder to do that going faster:

Now let's go faster. Here's an extreme example at 170 BPM:

Ethno Instrument uses a combination of slicing and audio time-stretching to achieve optimal results at any tempo.

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