MD: PingPong Basic (Presets)

PingPong Basic is the sampler you reach for when you've read about the pack's bidirectional "ping/pong" sampler, want the benefit, but don't want to learn seventeen new knobs. Where its sibling Lite exposes the whole sampling core, Basic is a three-setting wrapper that maps to sensible presets. It's the "trust me" version, and for a lot of workflows that's the right call.

It's still a full SAMPLER node: you feed it a sigma schedule and it hands you a sampler object to drop into a standard KSampler. Underneath it runs the same bidirectional core with feedback guidance that Lite exposes, but the hidden parameters are fixed to sensible values.

The three inputs

That's the whole panel - noise_behavior, seed, enable_restarts, plus the scheduler input. There are no optional inputs at all.

• noise_behavior - three presets that tune how ancestral noise is generated: Default (Raw), Dynamic, and Smooth. Raw is the straight mapping; Dynamic bumps noise coherence up; Smooth lowers the ancestral strength for a cleaner, more averaged result. Think of it as "texture amount."
• enable_restarts - the boomerang. Flip this on and the sampler briefly raises noise mid-generation so the model can fix detail mistakes. The tooltip's recommendation is true for final high-res outputs, and so is its warning: restarts cost render time. Leave it off while iterating, turn it on for the keeper.
• seed - plain random seed, same behavior as any other sampler.
• scheduler - connect a sigma schedule node here (any standard scheduler works). The tooltip says "Connect Sigma Schedule node here," and that's literally it.

How Basic maps to the internals

It's worth knowing what the presets actually set, because it tells you what "Basic" is hiding. The source maps the presets to ancestral_strength and noise_coherence (Raw = 1.0/0.0, Smooth = 0.8/0.5), fixes the blend to lerp, sets step randomization to block mode, and - the fun part - if you enable restarts it switches the restart mode to conservative. So Basic isn't a dumber sampler, it's Lite with the dangerous dials pre-set and a conservative restart strategy protecting you.

When to use which

If you're new to the pack, start here. Get comfortable with enable_restarts before you graduate to Lite's blend_mode, restart_mode, and yaml_settings_str. The one thing Basic won't do is accept YAML presets - that's a Lite/advanced feature - so if you've built a config file for the sampler, you need the other node. And remember the pack frames the FBG variant as its production audio sampler; Basic and Lite are the image-friendly entry points.

Installing

This is part of MD Nodes:

cd path/to/ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/MDMAchine/ComfyUI_MD_Nodes.git
cd ComfyUI_MD_Nodes && pip install -r requirements.txt

Or via ComfyUI Manager - search MD Nodes - then restart ComfyUI. Same caveat as the whole pack: the requirements list drags in the audio stack and assorted client libraries even for a sampler-only workflow, so the install is heavier than the node deserves.

PingPong Basic is a low-commitment way to try the pack's headline sampler: three settings, no philosophy, and a restart toggle that does what it promises. Start there, and only graduate to Lite if you actually want to be the one holding the wheel.