What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Talk about the STS series of Creamware samplers.

Moderators: valis, garyb

What do you want from STS Samplers.

Nothing more - I rarely or never use it and SC should focus on other things
4
10%
Make it work on 64 bit.
14
34%
Add virtual instrument GUI and improved technology.
13
32%
Compatibility with more libraries.
9
22%
Other.
1
2%
 
Total votes: 41

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dante
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What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

For mine, I vote nothing. I'd rather see time spent on other features of Scope and use Kontakt. Why reinvent the wheel ?

Check out the average number of posts in STS Talk per year over the last few years. Maybe 3 ? I think that says it all.

The simple fact is that soft samplers are no longer just samplers. They are virtual instruments with dedicated GUIs. You get an electric piano GUI with Neo Suitcase Rhodes, a violin GUI with string sample set, amp and cab set ups with Guitar sample sets etc etc.

S|C should provide a playback engine to which JUCE or OpenGL developers can do the same, or forget it altogether. The native DAWs already provide inbuilt 'virtual instruments' as part of core features. Eg Halion SE, which far outstrip free set provided with STS.

There is a case for fixing 64 bit STS for some synths and Modular, but it's also just as likely that development community could fill the gap.

Seems to me that the vast majority of sampler user want virtual instruments, not just sample playback.

What do you say?
Last edited by dante on Fri May 02, 2014 12:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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YISH313z
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by YISH313z »

I have a different opinion on the samplers in Scope...

First I think the reason there has been limited users is because the samplers are indeed a bit dated and are not the easiest to use, considering how quick and easy VST samplers are today, and as well, the need to reduce your 12 core machine to one core to even use the samplers has always been a roadblock for most I assume, but being able to fix these issues should provide more usage from the samplers themselves. With that being said...

...To my ears they sound different than VST, I love the endless function of VST samplers, but the sound is not the same. Again there is something about using DSP processing that allows the Maximum quality to be achieved. I use mostly Virtual Instruments in the STS samplers, a lot of these are indeed from sound fonts and converted files from various other sources such as s1000, and S5000 formats. I have only found one piece of recent VST software that comes close to what would be labeled as a hardware sampler sound, but its 12 bit, it is an emulated Motorola chip with an original OS, and emulated Custom DSP chips that were used on the hardware itself. Ironically it caused me to fire up my Scope cards and dig back in.

I welcome a new sampler myself that maintains the sonic quality of DSP chip processing and possible new formats and/or functions. Hard disk streaming wouldn’t hurt, and with Open Scope, it would be nice to be able to create a Custom interface to one’s personal liking using for the innards the core engine of the sampler module similar to the STS modular function.


my 2 cents worth
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by Mr Arkadin »

Well I can't vote as my option would be somewhere between the last two options: 64-bit with updated GUI.

One of the things I love about the STS was that it actually is a sampler, rather than a sample player which is what Kontakt et al really are.
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

for me the sts modular osc is where it takes on a life of its own

as you get to chose how you want it to act

as i still use hardware samplers for there sound

and why the second hand market for hardware samplers is rising

kontakt is good be cause of size of samples and disk streaming but it sounds like kontakt

and every sample instrument made with kontakt sounds similar sonically as they use the kontakt engine and filters

now mach5 3 is a much better sampler engine and its has better modular capability

i have an EII and EIII and i have converted a number of the EII banks to kontakt format and it does not do them justice

but the sts modular osc that i had sharc create using the doubling and detune feature that is present on the EII and the modular filters ikt sounds much better

for me they work great and play 1gb multilayer multisample files fine

i have been using samplers since 1984 and i like the hands on approach and using your ears for correct loops and slices

but for software samplers there are much better tools for that like sample robot or awavestudio then you can save to multisample instrument files rather than a sampler doing it i think the sample players are better for it just programed for creating presets the more complex a program the more bugs you will get its much better to have utility tools for that job i use awave studio for conversion of my sample files to akai s1000 format for the sts osc
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Bud Weiser
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by Bud Weiser »

Mr Arkadin wrote: One of the things I love about the STS was that it actually is a sampler, rather than a sample player which is what Kontakt et al really are.
I second that !
Most software is sample players, this IS a sampler.
There are more advanatages for the old fart musicians because we own old libraries on CDs or old hardrives,- all AKAI and EMU.

I appreciate STS loads AKAI without the need of conversion using other programs and the STS´s filters are excellent.
The AKAI stuff sounds significantly better in STS compared to Kontakt and other native sample players after I did conversions using CDXtract or the virtual instruments routines.

I´d like to see a update enabling loading of EMU III format CDs or from HDDs and removable media.
SD2 format would be great too.

Also, don´t underrate the value of STS,- it runs on DSP latency free when SCOPE is in standalone mode,- no other soft-sampleplayer will do that.
It doesn´t eat your CPU & cache w/ polyphony,- think what 2 or 3 samplers, 32 or 64 voices each and loaded w/ Multis (Kontakt), will grab from your host computer´s CPU and cache.

Actually w/ STS we can run up to 3 32-voice samplers on XITE on dedicated DSPs and once optimized they might offer 64 voices and run in 64Bit.

AKAI and EMU libraries (as also the hardware samplers) sound very good live and AKAI was studio standard for decades.

I want a sampler in my live rig, not being forced to use the aged 19" samplers or VST stuff and a host,- just only XITE-1, SCOPE, an additional AD/DA (I hope Ferrofish comes w/ A16mkII Z-Link version !), my hardware instruments and amplification or in-ears.

Cannot vote because not enough options above, nothing fits my demands.

Bud
S|C Scope/XITE-1 & S|C A16U, Scope PCI & CW A16U
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

dont worry bud im converting them as single instruments as a and b layers so that you can put them in the a and b sts double and detune osc

and i have enough done to release the modular project
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

Ok I made the voting options more flexible - you can select 2 priorities, and theres an additional option.

Unfortunately by me doing that, it wiped out existing votes, so can I ask all to re-cast votes :)
neuromantik
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by neuromantik »

Besides what jhulk said, at the very least prevent scope from bsoding the machine whenever a sample osc enabled synth is played!
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Bud Weiser
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by Bud Weiser »

dante wrote:Ok I made the voting options more flexible - you can select 2 priorities, and theres an additional option.

Unfortunately by me doing that, it wiped out existing votes, so can I ask all to re-cast votes :)
thank you,- I voted now.

:)

Bud
S|C Scope/XITE-1 & S|C A16U, Scope PCI & CW A16U
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Mr Arkadin
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by Mr Arkadin »

Cocked up my vote a bit. Meant to do 64-bit and Other. Just did Other. Any it would be good to have 64-bit support as I'll be going that way soon for Kontakt, but I like the simplicity of sampling, editing and assigning with speed that I could do on the STS.

My Other is to improve the GUI and technology. The option in the poll seems to imply a VSTi GUI? Wasn't sure but I can't see why I'd want that, hence my slightly different wording on that option.

Is there a technical reason that no developer has ever tackled a full-on STS replacement?
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

I meant Scope GUI - like the Scope synths, or say the slap bass that Peter did, but with STS engine. Like Kontakt but in the Scope project.

Reason you'd want it ? Same reason you'd want instrument specific GUI's in Kontakt - coz they are instrument specific.

Issue for developers could be the AKAI dll, I think jHulk or Sharc mentioned.
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

sts for 64bit will have to be re written to work because of the coding way the 32bit was done many years ago

as a vsti

all the vsti is, is a gui done in host and not the sdk these are .dll files and what the guisdk is for

it means you can create new custom grafix gui and connect this to sdk modules to create a sdk dev or module

this can be done already for the 32bit system using the akai.dll file

if you have sdk you can create a new upto date gui for the sts samplers

and how there is sts sample players for bcmodular
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

i would love to see a script engine like kontakt as a separate module for scope so that modular you could create your circuit then build a gui for your circuit to look like a instrument

the same way you can also on reaktor

the modular engine is much more vast than kontakt but the the gui scripts that make the synths look like synth so that you can just see controls makes it look nice

there has been lots of new bcmodular modules to help with this

but a custom mdl for gui make and control would be great as seeing that 31bit control is possible with m4l
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

So there's no 64 bit Akai.dll ? And if there was, how would that change the developer landscape ? Would it provide an easier fix for 64 bit STS ?
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

if there was a 64bit akai.dll file there would be no problems with the sts samplers
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

Thought so. Whose got the source code then ?
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

as i have said before it is being looked at by s/c

means recoding the .h and the .ccp file

means looking through the codes and rewriting it so that it can address the new 64bit code instruction sets its still an 32bit program even in 64bit it will still be an 32bit audio and memory process but its an memory host process int is 4byte per pointer int32 is 8 bytes per pointer in memory

now the big problem could be that the akai.dll is just that and they dont have the .h or the .ccp file

this means they have to dis-assemble the .dll file now that can take a very long time and debugging

as the akai file was created over 12+ years ago who knows what files when s/c took over from creamware had

so for a 64bit sampler its either try and reuse code and update it or totally write a new sample player

there are available source codes for the sfz format players which a lot of new samplers use

and is the most upto date format so far and it has compression formats and allows disk streaming
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

Ok so Creamware wrote AKAI.DLL - it wasnt an AKAI thing - thats what I wanted to clarify. On top of that, S|C may not have the source .cpp or source header .h.

And without those, its more or less a complete rewrite (with maybe some reverse engineering from disassembly). Or they find the guy that wrote it originally :) Id be surprised if he doesnt have a copy of source.
jhulk
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by jhulk »

you would be suprized how many c code files are lost or essembler

as doing stuff for hardware we need source code so we can see how much rom is taken up how many page addresses are left to implement new code so that we can add usb or bigger paged memory

but so far we have been able to get only 2 source codes to help

the others we have had to dis assemble the os codes then dis assemble the floppy os software code

put it this way it has taken 2 years to write down all the functions of a dsm1 os roms and all the function calls

for the memory and usb expansion thats being created now we have all the functions and memory maps

we then have to design a new memory controller using fpga and find all the points on the mother board to add this controller the fpga has a spi controller which a usb controller will be interfaced to

then we prototype and then have to write the new rom code so that it can interface with the new memory controller and usb i/o

but if you have the code source it would of only taken a few weeks to find all the call functions

dis assembling is time consuming and why anybody does it its usually as a spare time hoby as if you had to pay some one to do it it would be in excess of £200000+ for 2 years work
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dante
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Re: What do you want from STS Samplers ?

Post by dante »

Yeah - thats why we want the original guy. I had a dream, influenced due to watching that movie 'The Hangover' for the fourth time last week.

We were standing on top of Ceasars Palace, and found out that the guy who sold Alan the roofies also had access to the STS Source code.

Atfer taking a few and a night on the town searching for Chang in a beaten up cop car, chased by Lions, Strippers and Mike Tyson we found the source code and were downloading to Holger from a private jet whilst fighting one of Changs gang members who had blown a hole in the side of the fusalage. We were all sucked out but the download completed before the jet crashed and at the next NAMM they held a memorial for us outside the center as Scope6 went into production in a flash new box.
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