Am I wrong to be underwhelmed by the sampler upgrades?

[brownerthanu]

I've played with the new sampler features for a few hours, and I must say I don't hear a lot there that excites me. Most of it adds noisy-ish overtones to samples. Am I missing something?

[crossmod]

The main upgrade is slicing, it was a total pain before which required multiple sampler insurances. The other stuff I can take or leave but slicing is really important for a good sampler to have.

[Dionysos]

Can one be wrong about being underwhelmed? It all depends on what you want out of it.

To me (and many others I think), this update fixed a pretty glaring gap in Bitwig's sampling workflow – easily tweakable slicing – while throwing in a good number of extra tools and features, some of which are unique to this sampler, and they're all in line with Bitwig's apparent philosophy of tweakabilty and experimentation. If none of these are relevant to what you want out of a sampler, I guess it's understandable that you'd be underwhelmed.

[JsinOwl]

I don't really use samples, so the update is underwhelming for me, but I recognize a lot of people do and they seem to be genuinely pleased, which makes me genuinely pleased. A point of view to hopefully put a positive spin on your underwhelmedness.

[sunthief01]

I've personally found Falcon a pain as a sampler especially when wanting to do granular sampling. And Falcon does not have a spectral sampling mode. I've been weighing the various Steinberg spectral sampling products for years (I was really impressed when I demoed Halton on Windows from a sampling perspective.)

If the new modes can get me in that ballpark (and run natively on Linux rather than via a bridge) then I'll be a happy camper. I've only had about 1 hour to experiment with the new sampler so I'll have to spend more time to know for sure.

[pdxindy]

I don't really use samples, so the update is underwhelming for me, but I recognize a lot of people do and they seem to be genuinely pleased, which makes me genuinely pleased. A point of view to hopefully put a positive spin on your underwhelmedness.

Same here... my use of samples is fairly minimal. I've rarely ever done slicing so it's not important to me, but lots of users have asked for slicing in Sampler so am glad they now have it. I'm happy to have the tool available even if I only use it infrequently.

I quite like the results with the new Spectral Mode. The sound quality is pleasing and it's capable enough to be useable in various cases. For example, today I took a plucked string sample and slowed it down to about half speed and it fit what I was looking for and it sounded really good.

The old Cycles mode tended to be hit or miss and so I didn't use it much. The percentage of acceptable results was too low. The improvements means I can reliably get satisfying results. Today I used a long pad sample with varying timbre and it was easy to get a diverse range of plucked sounds which sounded great with some start position randomization.

The Fragments mode I can get some lovely results. I particularly like it with the dynamic pitch option. I do wish I had a bit more control of the grain window.

I especially like that the cpu use is low enough that I can freely use Voice Stacking.

I wish that the regular sampler had an option to use Segments as the Amp Env, but I can use the Grid sampler for that.

Even though I don't do that much with samples, I'm pleased with the update cause the new Sampler is flexible enough that I don't need any other sample based synth plugins.

[gExpectations]

i cant believe they finally added slicing. ive been using bitwig since 2. i just took a break of a year or so, seems im coming back at the right time. i assume they didnt add chopping? (slice at playhead with running playhead). adding a slice at playhead keyboard shortcut is probably the only thing im missing from bitwig at this point.

[The Mantra]

I get what you're saying about the noisy overtones but I think that's just user error. I got some of that initially but after messing around with it I made a beat that I really like.

It's always a good sign when something turns from a beta testing experiment to a legitimate song. I recommend that you wait until Sonic Academy comes out with its series of tutorials on the new Bitwig sampler before making a final judgment.

Is there another sampler out there that you're actually impressed with?

[brownerthanu]

Is there another sampler out there that you're actually impressed with?

After playing more with this, I am starting to see the appeal. There are some pretty cool tonal tweaks that you can do with the spectral approach.

The repitch color and distortion sound really good.

I'm coming around.