By Andywanders
On 20th August 2003 Version: free Read all reviews by Andywanders
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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GUI
Sound
Features
Docs
Presets
Support
VFM
Stability | I just downloaded this, and all the available sounds from the site, and on my dialup it took AGES..! There's a lot of big files here and it takes up more than 70MB on my hard drive, so if you don't need another piano, don't get one.
Sampletank has been around for ** years now, and I've always been curious about it. So far, I'm very impressed with this beast, it's very easy to set up and browse through sounds. After downloading and installing it you need to register it, but that's fairly painless and straightforward, though I'm not sure why it's necessary.
As for the sounds, well they're generally very good. The bass guitar is particularly outstanding, and very natural sounding. Also the acoustic guitar is very nice, and has a good range - lots of multisamples me-thinks. Get the vocals, they're excellent, oohs and ahhs. And "LA Pad", a very nice rich, milky sounding pad. The congas and bongos are worth downloading too, I find a lot of keyboards/samplers are quite weak in this area, but Sampletank's perc. is very nice. But don't bother with the drums, they're below average and most PC soundcards will have better drums than this.
I didn't think much of the piano, it's a bit too thin for me, but that means it will probably sit well in a busy mix. However, I'm sticking with my Kurzweil for piano sounds. Also the electric guitar is weak, sounds like a cheap, Strat copy, plugged straight in to a mixer channel. Anyone who plays guitar (I do) would hate this sound.
I don't know why synth sounds are included. While they're okay, there are much better sounding free softsynths out there. And I'm very surprised that there's no brass or woodwind sounds, these generally work well with samplers (there is an oboe, but it doesn't sound like one).
The FX are very good too - well chosen and very musical. You can modify the sounds a little using pre-set parameters and different FX settings, but it's not a full blown rompler in this respect - no real filters, envelopes or LFO's.
Choice of sounds is limited to what's available on the Sampletank site, and that's a bummer. These days, there's loads of really good soundfonts out there and I for one, prefer working with them. They're easy to edit, and cover just about every area. If Soundfonts could be imported into Sampletank.... Well..!
I can't see myself using this very much, probably the bass will get an airing from time to time, and maybe the vocals, but don't let that put you off. If you have a fast connection, get it. It just might be what you're looking for, and it's FREE... (Apart from the download time) |
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