Which is your favourite sampler???

[Silent Member]

4 hours ago, chim said:

Can of worms waiting to fly open in here but there's something to be said about the focused workflow and minimal disk space of a crusty sampler. I also haven't heard anyone authentically replicate the vibe of something like the SP-1200, but I'm all ears. It's like people playing up the OB-Xa (or even DX7) VST's, you can still clearly hear how much better the real thing sounds. 

I wouldn't hate having an s950 or 2000XL myself. I'm fine with my Digitakt though 

I was with you all the way until you started slagging off vst sound quality. Limited hardware capabilities forces you to work and think outside the box, which is a good thing (to a certain extent, I'm not suggesting replacing all your gear with a bunch of twigs).

[Entorwellian]

Boss SP-303. I used it for about 15 years and got lots of good use out of it.

[chim]

2 hours ago, Gocab said:

I was with you all the way until you started slagging off vst sound quality. Limited hardware capabilities forces you to work and think outside the box, which is a good thing (to a certain extent), I'm not suggesting replacing all your gear with a bunch of twigs.

I'm bad at putting my thoughts down in words - the sound quality is a very inconsequential aspect of creative work, but it may matter to some in the conjunction with a box interface. 

[Mr.Sensi]

Yamaha TX16w with Typhoon OS. It's a very well thought out system and you can't beat that old 12 bit sound. Biggest con is the sampling time and it's a big con, especially when you want to time stretch a break or something. I've only used the plugin version, but it's pretty damn neat. Passed on an opportunity to buy a mint one fairly cheap with max ram and shit ton of disks, including the Typhoon OS. Still get bummed thinking about that.

E-MU E-6400 Ultra. Lots of filter options and the deepest modulation matrix of any sampler that I'm aware of, like a modular synth. Classic machine for loads of old drum 'n' bass. I find it to be a bit annoying when saving sounds, a lot of the OS is annoying actually. Another con is the buttons on them have a tendency to "stick", tapping a button once and it will double or triple tap, seems to be common in all of them, there's probably a fix but I'm lazy.

Akai S-3000XL. Simply put, it sounds great. It's not warm like an old Roland supposedly is, but it knocks for being a 16 bit machine. Just listen to most of Paradox's records and you'll know.

Shortcircuit VST. RIP

I've definitely thought about buying an old Roland S Series sampler. Once I saw videos of how the system works (mouse and monitor, otherwise absolutely no) it seemed to be the best system of the lot.

In the end, I suppose the real answer is Renoise. It's what I've used for 15 years or so. TAL Sampler is fun, too. Use that one from time to time, but because Renoise is my main sequencer and it doesn't support stacking plugin instruments, TAL can be a bit limited for some of my uses.

I've always wanted to try a Kurzweil K2600 with the sampling option. Good dsp and modulation, could definitely create some interesting stuff with one of those.

 

[xox]

Machinedrum UW is also pretty cool sounding if you want ‘12bit goodness’, not an ADDA level bit depth conversion but still sounds interesting and quite unique.
Only mono samples/sampling tho, and only 2,5 mb in total.

[TubularCorporation]

[Taupe Beats]

Oh yeah, forgot the Bastl Microgranny. Takes a while to click with it, but now I love running drums through it. Surprisingly great bitcrunch effect.

[sweepstakes]

7 hours ago, chim said:

Can of worms waiting to fly open in here but there's something to be said about the focused workflow and minimal disk space of a crusty sampler. I also haven't heard anyone authentically replicate the vibe of something like the SP-1200, but I'm all ears.

I completely agree about the focused workflow and working with space limitations - they are a real medicine for the modern, distracted brain.

As far as replicating the vibe of the SP-1200, I've heard good things about this https://low-hiss.com/

And @thawkins I disagree somewhat about being a tool for picking up a vintage sampler for the sound, at least a cheap one. Of course there are slim pickins for anything under, say, $500 USD nowadays, and paying more than that is a bit silly.

[thawkins]

15 minutes ago, sweepstakes said:

And @thawkins I disagree somewhat about being a tool for picking up a vintage sampler for the sound, at least a cheap one. Of course there are slim pickins for anything under, say, $500 USD nowadays, and paying more than that is a bit silly.

Yeah sorry I was too strongly wording this. I meant that if you are in a position to pick whatever gear you want and you pick something based on the sound of the particular hiss, then that's getting a bit too much into audiophile territory kind of.

[sweepstakes]

3 minutes ago, thawkins said:

Yeah sorry I was too strongly wording this. I meant that if you are in a position to pick whatever gear you want and you pick something based on the sound of the particular hiss, then that's getting a bit too much into audiophile territory kind of.

Agreed. Also I think your point about a realtime-calibrated OS is HUGE. The norns platform, which is available as a DIY project ("fates") now, really proved this for me. It's literally just a Raspberry Pi with a RT Linux kernel, high quality converters, and a lot of configuration, fine-tuning, and architectural considerations to ensure low latency (~4ms round trip) operation, in a nice case with a small amount of onboard controls. But aside from some minor headroom issues (which e.g. the Octatrack also exhibits) it feels like "real hardware".

[marf]

s612 was designed by the guy who made the Ems synthi. These days. Id go Euro rack with a touch screen. Pump that through a million different Euro things. Say good bye to 1980's screen diving

[sweepstakes]

This is basically a eurorack S612, as far as I can tell (although I've never used either):

 

[chim]

That Low Hiss app looks juicy, will have to try it out. I bet it sounds great after tape bouncing or outboard compression, I've had some good results when applying that to drum machine samples in a modern sequencer. I have a sample folder of stuff processed through an SP-1200, and 909 hits ran through some API desk, both are really fun to work with. The digitakt has a slight mid-high bite and is a bit thin in the bass (some people call the elektron sound toyish but it's a bit of a stretch) so it needs selective sampling and post-processing if you want a beefier result. I have had the same issues with software so it's probably universal for modern clean sampling methods. It's not necessarily the right amount of hiss you're after, 12-bit sampling can turn out really punchy. 

[Limo]

3 hours ago, sweepstakes said:

This is basically a eurorack S612, as far as I can tell (although I've never used either):

 

Looks like a fun toy, but with due respect: this is just a computer with knobs. The blurb reads "Using an 8-bit microcontroller and 32kB of SRAM (no prefab delay chips here) so I'm guessing it's something like an Arduino, albeit programmed to do sampling. The main attraction would be it's a convenient way to get your samples into Eurorack, I suppose.

Anyway, I'll bow out again. I've never understood the appeal of samplers. To me they've always been CoolEdit but with a clumsier interface.

[sweepstakes]

4 hours ago, rhmilo said:

Looks like a fun toy, but with due respect: this is just a computer with knobs. The blurb reads "Using an 8-bit microcontroller and 32kB of SRAM (no prefab delay chips here) so I'm guessing it's something like an Arduino, albeit programmed to do sampling. The main attraction would be it's a convenient way to get your samples into Eurorack, I suppose.

Anyway, I'll bow out again. I've never understood the appeal of samplers. To me they've always been CoolEdit but with a clumsier interface.

I don't think it even has nonvolatile storage, so that description is a bit generous. I was mostly referring to the front panel with the big start/end faders.

Samplers certainly aren't for everyone. For me there's always been an appeal to playing a recording like an instrument. There's also a kind of beautiful emptiness to samplers and delays that's harder to articulate. They're like lenses or frames. They don't care what source material you use, and you work with parameters that are sort of around the recording, rather than changing the recording itself. This is emptiness is more apparent to me when working with delay or live sampling. I'm not the type that hoards sample packs, though.

[Leon Sumbitches]

^ Lovely post man, very lyrically put.

Poor man's choice/ 'Not Actually a Sampler' option: Boss BR-600

It's a digital multitrack thing designed for guitarists to record crap bedroom opuses on, but you can force it into sampler duty. It lets you throw over the built-in drum sounds for ones sampled off the 8 tracks, so workflow is: record sample onto tracks 1 and 2 > chop to desired length and assign to the rubber pads on the right > put into drum mode and play your samples like a cheapo MPC. Used to have loads of fun doing short tracks like that, e.g:

The inbuilt effects are actually half-decent, probably similar to what you'd get on a SP303.

[psn]

6 hours ago, rhmilo said:

 this is just a computer with knobs.

Like all digital samplers?

[exitonly]

im all for sampling and samplers but between uvi falcon, kontakt and max/msp, i would never need a hardware sampler except for live use.

[xox]

14 minutes ago, nikisoko said:

im all for sampling and samplers but between uvi falcon, kontakt and max/msp, i would never need a hardware sampler except for live use.

If I knew max well enough I wouldn’t need oxygen!

[marf]

depends on what u r sampling. Orchestra stuff? There are crazy things now on the computer. Whole programs dedicated to recreating an orchestra.  It's a work flow thing for me. where is the joy? Samplers always lacked that immediacy. Id love something that sounded like tape. Musiq concrete stuff. I know Neve sells a 500 rack with some tape head tech. 

[marf]

Here' some haptics

 

 

[xox]

[Silent Member]

That's a strange promo clip

FFS, damned page break

[Mr.Sensi]

2 hours ago, nikisoko said:

im all for sampling and samplers but between uvi falcon, kontakt and max/msp, i would never need a hardware sampler except for live use.

Wanted to give Falcon a try since it seemed like it would be good for creating drum kits and lots of other things with all the mixing of sampling and different synthesis stuff, but they don't offer a demo.

[exitonly]

It is pretty dope but can be a resource hog. Some of the ui is not intuitive and I feel like the modular amount sliders are a little to extreme, it takes some work to add subtle modulations in there.  That being said, I think it's leagues ahead of Kontakt, which is pretty long in the tooth these days. 

one thing I really like about it is how you can assign (most) effects to a selection keygroups but then edit the parameters on each keygroup individually. This can get computationally expensive though, and I think its probably preferred to add effects/filters etc to a layer, which is a group of key groups. I find myself maxing out my relatively well equipped machine a lot from doing keygroup specific effects chains on 100+ samples.

Its also really nice to have standard sampling along with pretty good granular sampling and the ircam stretch processing in there. The stretch processing is also a resource hog and I find myself bouncing out samples a lot of I'm using really slow speeds.weird that there is no demo though yeah