New samplers needed !!!

[GYORGYL]

Is it great time to change the samplers don't you think ? AKAI format is nearly obsolete, why not develop a sampler like KONTAK or GVI ???

[next to nothing]

if kontakt and GVI is what you need, why not use it?

(...and by the way they are not samplers, they are sample playback devices).

[Mr Arkadin]

STS is probably one of the few actual samplers out there - i like the fact it has audio inputs - all so-called samplers should have these.

[maky325]

I like STS 5000 and AKAI is far from end IMO.

[dawman]

STS has definately outlived all of them.

I will be using STS to trigger some loops that I make in VDAT if Gigastudio 4 isn't up for the chore.

Of course I will be using GVI and Kontackt since that's where the sounds are really happening as far as quality instruments go.

Correctly stated though, STS is a SAMPLER, the rest are strictly playback devices. Once you are in the box, who cares?

[lagoausente]

No pay back?

I don´t understand.

I use STS a lot. It´s fine, but I agree with GYORGYL that would be interesting a improvement. I miss can drag and drop the samples and have move them along the keyboard position with just the mouse. Editing programs is very hard.
Another issue is that STS doesn´t allow to load above 730mb, so I you want to load a Giga type instrument (converted), will have to use just one at time (in the best cases).
Another usable thing would be a format converter that works ok. No one works ok, even CD-extract fails converting some giga instruments.
Today, memory is affordable, and so could use Giga type libraries in Scope would be a great improvement.
Just a question, can be done a sampler DSP based by a 3rd party developers? Or are limited in this device type?

[FrancisHarmany]

I think its more important we create new sounds we can sample

[hifiboom]

btw you can now make a good deal, everyone out there seems to jump on software.

you can get an S5000 or S6000 for peanuts. and it will have decent D/A converters also. I guess 16, which sound way better than almost any soundcard converters available. (especially the semi-pro stuff like m-audio etc.)

They have decent punch !

and such a system may be a bit more timeconsuming till you have setup all your samples inside. But once you have, it`ll never crash.

thats sometimses worth a lot.

[okantah]

So,what's the needs,if GVI and Kontackt exist and are doing fine job ?
some times i wonder about how people maintain their's CONSCIOUSNESS ?
cheers

[dawman]

BTW,

Gigastudio sized libraries are editable.

You can delete several layers and use 4 or 5 instead of 16 w/ 16 release sample layers.

It is way overbloated, and most modern controllers can't send the right velocities anyway.

For example, in a Scope project window call up your MIDI Monitor and play very light w/ increasing amounts. On most controllers you will notice from 0 to 127 means very little. Your lightest touch might play 40, then if you hit 60 or 70 that's your medium striking force, and 127 is always easy to hit. Just delete several of the layers you won't hear anyway.

I can actually get my Yamaha QY700 sequencer to trigger the velocity layers after editing a track and inserting crescendos, or different striking velocities. But w/ 3 layers saved from a Gigastudio library, the same sequencing editing will yield the same sounding results !!

These developers are simply making instruments that are full of wasted space.

Wavelore is a new developer for Gigastudio, and he actually uses every little performance trick the application offers developers. Sure he has dozens of variations on a theme, but they do sound different and are very playable.

Unfortunately those libraries are not available to other formats anymore.

But all of the old Gigastudio / Akai stuff is 16bit, and sounds better when converted to 24bit through an editor or translator like ESC.

The hardware samplers are still useful, but I think that this year samplers like Gigastudio 4 are really going ahead in terms of features and designs. STS will still be a Dog that can hunt, since it is a real software sampler.

If you look at the ESC, or Translator sample conversion choices, you'll see that they all support Creamware Pulsar, as they call it. 24 bit too !!

In My Case, Less Gets Done With More.

[YiannisK]

I use STS 5000 alot and I also have GVI, GS3, Kontakt2 and 3, and also EmuX2.

Yes GVI, GS3, Kontakt2 and 3 have huge sample librarys that use alot of samples and sound very realistic.

Emu on the other hand uses alot of samples from there past (small size)
and sound very realistic aswell.

Now the STS series has the fastest tracking from all of the above due to the fact that all the others have greater latency no matter how fast your computeris.

I use Drum samples in STS to triger from my El. Drums and you can play with ease without having lalency issues.

Also use STS with my AXon 100mkII and Godin Multiac and I can play with ease because the latency is so small.

Bottom line, You have to did deep into the STS series to really get out of it what you want, and I always here a differece in sound from STS series.( alot thicker sounding even using the some samples converted from other formats)

I do think though that it would be great if STS series would be looked at for some type of update there are always room for improvement ( Idividual out for stereo samples could be alot easier) .

My 2 Canadian cents

[erminardi]

The AKAI S-3000 sampler is the best way to obtain the most punchiest sampled drum ever!!!
And STS series + some dev like Softclip etc. are the only "software" way to emulate (or surpass) this machine.
All others native soft sampler sounds weak compared to AKAI or STS stuff.
And often the limit of a few memory available is the best way to create something original.
I really hate all those GB sample library...
Only omologation and static "creativity"

I miss the Gigastudio libary only for realistic orchestra works, but for others usage I prefer the AKAI/STS

[edit] the akai s-3000 converters are awesome [/edit]

[darkrezin]

The AKAI S-3000 sampler is the best way to obtain the most punchiest sampled drum ever!!!

Well it's a capable and nice sounding sampler, but the best? People who have used Kurzweil K2500/2600, Emu SP-1200 and Emax, Akai MPC-60 and MPC-3000, SCI Prophet 2000 etc might not agree

[YiannisK]

Akai S-5000 6000 or Z4 Z8
You can connect to a computer via usb to control and load unload samples.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jul02/a ... akaiz8.asp

Emu has legendary Samplers aswell

[hifiboom]

did you know that akai also build some good hifi audio-cd players.

personally I think every units d/a converters make a certain part of its sound.

I have had sound cards that sounded like "plastic", similar to that cheap 50$ mp3 players, some had a "heavy sound with a somewhat harder bass(no eq boost, must be some sort of distortion)" and others sound thin.

It always makes me angry when I read reviews about soundcards that measure the to-noise ratio of D/A and if its good they say its a pro card.

its like:
this one has -130db and this one -125dB, so the first one must be much better.
I mean the headroom is important too but much important is if it sounds good or like crap.
A bit of noise can even improve things.

the akai converters sound is round and full and they have decent bottom end punch and clean sound.

although I don`t use mine at the moment due the simplicity of software.

But the S5000 and S6000 have some usb connect card so you can even play files from harddisc.

I think they can also work as multichannel interfaces.

[dawman]

A local rapper I work w/ recording sometimes has a very big sounding drum kit from using 8 Oberheim DPX-1's.

They can be had on ebay for about 40-50 USD apiece, and play Emulator / Akai / Roland / Sequential / Ensoniq FDD's and converts them to 12bit.

He bought a 16U SKB Shockrack, and stuffed 8 of these in it. It looks impressive and cost him about 500 USD.

It also can play large stacks of synth layers, strings, zapps, subs, and anything you want.

I use to use 4 of them and was constantly loading discs while playing. Gigastudio was a serious relief when it came. But these ancient hardware samplers have really " hot " outputs.

With his MPC-3000 and Minimoog he gets some really deep sounds.

I have heard drum boxes re-done inside of DAW's and trust me, they do not have the punch that these old racks have.

[lagoausente]

BTW,

Gigastudio sized libraries are editable.

You can delete several layers and use 4 or 5 instead of 16 w/ 16 release sample layers.

It is way overbloated, and most modern controllers can't send the right velocities anyway.

For example, in a Scope project window call up your MIDI Monitor and play very light w/ increasing amounts. On most controllers you will notice from 0 to 127 means very little. Your lightest touch might play 40, then if you hit 60 or 70 that's your medium striking force, and 127 is always easy to hit. Just delete several of the layers you won't hear anyway.

I can actually get my Yamaha QY700 sequencer to trigger the velocity layers after editing a track and inserting crescendos, or different striking velocities. But w/ 3 layers saved from a Gigastudio library, the same sequencing editing will yield the same sounding results !!

These developers are simply making instruments that are full of wasted space.

Wavelore is a new developer for Gigastudio, and he actually uses every little performance trick the application offers developers. Sure he has dozens of variations on a theme, but they do sound different and are very playable.

Unfortunately those libraries are not available to other formats anymore.

But all of the old Gigastudio / Akai stuff is 16bit, and sounds better when converted to 24bit through an editor or translator like ESC.

The hardware samplers are still useful, but I think that this year samplers like Gigastudio 4 are really going ahead in terms of features and designs. STS will still be a Dog that can hunt, since it is a real software sampler.

If you look at the ESC, or Translator sample conversion choices, you'll see that they all support Creamware Pulsar, as they call it. 24 bit too !!

In My Case, Less Gets Done With More.

What do you use to edit the libraries?
ESC doesn´t work well sometimes. The last time I tried it, to convert a piano Gig to STS it made a sts program with all the samples, included the key off, so when I pressed a key, sounded the main sample and release sample at the same time.
I used then Halion to delete the release folder.

Well, for what people are telling here, it seems that an update of STS would be a good thing. Most of you guys talk about the hardware samplers. Maybe a good choice of a gig, but for recoring.., why take that extra-space machine to do the same STS can do?
As Johannis tells, the STS latency feeling is really nice, and what´s better is that you can route the outputs directly to your sequencer, without any extra cables, and converters. Why worry about DA converters? Using STS can record without going out the digital domain..
And.., even GIV, gigastudio and all that "playback devices" seems to be most used, we can see that most guys think about "hardware" because latency issues.
So here, STS has the advantage of the hardware latency, but also the advantage of the integration with the sequencer that the sofware ones have.
So have the best of both worlds. And I think it would have "pay back".
I would like to pay for a update, or new versión with better editable capabilities, (drag and drop, delete layers...), option for importing from another formats,, etc.

[astroman]

... Why worry about DA converters? Using STS can record without going out the digital domain...

you don't want that with an MPC60 or any such 'limited' box - the converter and it's analog stage are an integral part of the sound generation, including all the trash there may be...
according to Jimmy even if you have the samples, the old boxes still sound better playing it live, than an arrangement in the sequencer.

cheers, Tom

[hifiboom]

mmhhh, I think all basic atoms for building a sampler device are inside the sdk..

So even a free device developer could build an new sampler device, that has a more inuitive GUI ( i think this is the main problem with sts series).

I have no interest in doing this myself, as I`m aready running out of available "life-time" and I got many good ideas for new devices already and don`t know when I will find the time realize these.

My interest regarding samplers would lie more into something new. Not a replacement of the STS series, but more soemthing like a sound mangler machine, with lets say 8slots, various distortion models, different filter stuff, and so on... where you can load various drum sounds inside as wav samples by easy dropping and the process them in realtime.
Something like a sample based synth drum machine.

Don`t know exactly its just an idea and I think its more on the end of my device-building-quenue.

I don`t think we need a ultra sampler, as the native world has good sample players already, and even these I nearly use never.

So some sort of synth/sample hybrid would be interesting.

That would get more interesting, if creamware would build some new atoms regarding high quality sample pitching and for example features to sync sample based oscillators and generation of wavetables from wav files, with various starting points... and so on.

I believe CW/SC cards have much more potential inside.
The classic synth stuff is almost perfect, but we could take this to a new level with some modern features.

[lagoausente]

Ok well said lagoausente

CW wanted to attract native users to the beautyful world of scope.....and it did not work, did it ?

Well, this issue can have diferent readings.
I think that the mainly reason for go for native it the DSP cost. The cost of a new 14 dsp card is quite high for a guy that wants to make music at home, and maybe the 6 dsp one is still expensive for the number of devices that can be loaded in.
The second reason, I think is that most native users are not concious of the limits of their system. For example, midi time accuracy. In the best case, with a fast an modern and well configured OS, when record a midi track, the accuracy of the events position is not very good. That makes the track sound a little tousled. I guess if maybe that´s one of the reason why Astroman tells that the hardware sounds better than the arranger on the sequencer.
Most guys don´t take care about technical readings, and so I think that if Creamware, now SC want to attract that guys would need to make some marketing based on issues like midi time accuracy problems, futhermore the latency.
The Native is good to playback, but not to play. Let´s think for example on guitar amp modelers, there is a lot of people that buy Line6 Pod because a PC is not suitable for a really latency free playing.
The same thing with hardware samplers.
Curiously, I think the less people that goes for hardware are for synths, what maybe are the most developed field in Scope.
In the other side, in the Native field, I guess what percent of the users are using wazered software. I guess if are a good pay back for that Native coders.
I think things would be much diferent if a 14 dsp card could be get at 600-800 euro. But that´s another issue, the hardware development cost, may be high, and that can be a difficulty.
In the other hand, I think that Creamware solvency problems, came too much early, or maybe improvements like Dynatube came too late.
At my opinion, a comercially succesfull way for the platform would must be a massive sales of much more cards at much less price, and with the total sofware included at that affordable price.
And, agree, the STS-6000 would be another little reason to buy the card. But today, there the platform has more soft, and so more reasons than before that would justify the inversion.