dante wrote:
I had hardware Proteus in early 90th - was the best sounding thing ever in those days.
Well, I also had a Proteus FX for a long time, it had samples from across the complete Proteus range and I mainly used it for the orchestral sounds or layering something w/ other synth´s, DX7 p.ex., sounds.
I´ve found it useful but wouldn´t say it was the best sounding ROMpler at that time,- w/ it´s "shitty" 32-KHz SR samples.
It´s perfect and complete MIDI implementation I liked much more as well as it´s ability to "link" patches.
The Proteus FX, technically was the same than the other Proteus plastic boxes, w/ the exception it had more memory, a metal case and FX.
The FX were mediocre and the FX routing was the last in line.
The metal case made it very reliable though.
Most "personality" of sound of a hardware machine comes from components coloring the sound,- mostly output stages and the filters,- if these exist.dante wrote: Now, I run EMU Proteus refill for Reason - which sounds just as good although my ears are old.
In the Proteus range before Proteus 2000 there were no filters at all,- so when you take the samples and put ´em into a software player, it will more or less sound the same,- or better, when the converters of your soundcard are better.
In opposite,- when you have samples from EMU II p.ex., convert and put these into a player like KONTAKT (or others),- it will NEVER sound the same because of the SSM filter chips which were build into the hardware playback machines like the sampler itself and the Oberheim DPX-1.
Same rules for AKAI samplers, especially the S-1100 which didn´t introduce multplexing for the analog single outputs and the main stereo outputs,- it came w/ dedicated and really good sounding Burr Brown converters instead,- for every output.
I´d say this was and is the best sounding AKAI sampler.
I hope you´ll agree on when the industry moves on, that doesn´t have much to do w/ the evolution of music as also not w/ the evolution of the skills of a musician.dante wrote: The whole thing with Creamware samplers is they are great for legacy AKAI libraries but the industry has moved on ...
In fact it has not much meaning when industry moves on.
You mention the legacy AKAI libraries and as you know this was the largest amount of samples available ever,- definitely studio standard.
Now NI Kontakt is studio standard but previous studio standard which leaded to countless hits now doesn´t sound like it should in Kontakt anymore.
I doubt all this "progress" makes sense at all.
In my humble opinion, it makes sense to have a device w/ loads and plays back AKAI 1K / 3/ & 6K format samples and programs accurately because it saves tons of time not to have to convert all the library into a new format and build up programs all new when in the end it doesn´t sound right anyway.
20 - 30 year old youngsters may not understand what I´m talking about but I´m much older, possibly use Creamware and S|C products because I am,- and I have all the library and I´m happy when I´m able to load that stuff and use it NOW.
All the 3rd party samples stuff in AKAI format sounded good enough you find it all again in Spectrasonics Omnisphere and other software & hardware products of different brands,- and there are so many sample CDs out there which sound excellent even the samples are small footprint.
When we have something playing back GIGA,- that´s cool too.dante wrote: - first to Giga ...
All about KONTAKT is to buy the optional NI and 3rd party libraries.dante wrote: and now to Kontakt etc.
It´s a great sample player, but it isn´t a sampler though.
Film composers need KONTAKT for sure, but I doubt every musician needs it.
I have it too but use it rarely because I prefer synths anyway and have hardware keyboards based on samples in addition.
It is not only about the formats, it´s about the samples we already have in these formats and the lazyness when we don´t have the intention to convert that stuff into Kontakt format, followed by the rebuild of programs, then resave every single program.dante wrote: But there would be no demand apart from that for the old AKAI, SF or even Giga formats anymore.
It is a nightmare of a year I already went thru once for AKAI into Halion 2 format.
I also imported tons of EMU EIII sample disks into KONTAKT and it is the same nitemare.
Once imported, KONTAKT saves to internal HDD but the source is marked as the CD the imported material came from.
As a consequence you have to re-save everything once loaded for the 1st time into KONTAKT.
This doesn´t mean it sounds right then, it just only loads from where it is saved now and all the other editing is still waiting for you then.
So, I vote for to get STS running in SCOPE 6 and for 64Bit systems because actually existing STS versions sound excellent and it speeds up loading and using AKAI library stuff,- STS format anyway.
It should be possible to implement disk-streaming for at least one of the STS samplers upgrades,- when that will ever happen.dante wrote: Those days are gone and if ever S|C was ever to get back into the sampling space they should do so catering for the new 'streaming' market, and deciding if DSP is any advantage.
Bud
