My fourth descent into ADD

My friends Nathaniel, Charlie and I figured out a better way to map rex files into Logic using EXS 24 instead of Ultrabeat:
-Create a new EXS 24 instrument, open EXS 24 and click on edit.
-Click on Instrument > Recycle Convert > Slice Loop and Add Samples to Current Instrument. Extract MIDI Region and Make New Instrument.
Now everything’s automatically mapped to the keys. That’s way easier and you don’t have to deal with audio slices in your arrange window. There’s one bug where the slices start in the right place but end at the end of the whole loop, but that’s only if you keep holding down the key. Meh.
Edit – Wow, ok this is a feature. If you ‘Extract MIDI Region and Make New Instrument’ it doesn’t end each loop point at the end of the file, it puts it at the end of the slice. The “add samples to current instrument” ending the samples at the end of the file was actually intentional. The Logic 8 Instruments and Effects appendix says “This kind of loop trigger techniques allow for old school drum’n’bass style triggering.” That’s so bad ass that the manual talks like that. – edit
-Use Instrument > Save as to save the instrument as something else to be able to access it in other projects.
If you want to hear the original loop, you can export the rex file as MIDI in reason and import the midi file into logic and assign it to that instrument. If you’ve remixed the rex in reason, exporting the whole song and then assigning that midi track to the new instrument will work. Logic also automatically assigns instruments to your other tracks, so importing whole songs from Reason is pretty easy!
The method of dragging the rex loop into an audio track still works well if you don’t need the slices mapped to the keys. In both methods, changing the tempo will have the loop stretch to match (either as slices in a folder or as MIDI data triggering slices).
-Edit-
I’m still looking for an easy way to map apple loops to keys in Logic. Currently I drag them to the arrange window, right click and export as an audio file, import it into Recycle, chop it up, save it as a rex, and then follow the steps above. I know you can chop up regions in the arrange window and drag them all into the EXS Instrument editor, but they sound more choppy and clippy than the Rex versions. Recycle automatically crossfades each slice which I really like. I’ve tried converting the loop to an audio file, option-cutting the region (which chops the sample up into equal bits), changing my drag mode to X-fade, dragging the beginning of the regions to crossfade with the one before it, and dragging those into the EXS Instrument editor, but the Instrument editor does not support the region fades. There are several xfade parameters inside the EXS but they are for crossfading layered groups, not linear samples. I’m still looking for an easy way to do this in Logic.