KVR Audio

Lunatique · Post by **Lunatique** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:03 am

I think today's developers are far lazier when it comes to good programming. There's absolutely no reason why they can't have much smaller libraries and still retain great sound quality. If you take a look at stuff like Synful or Edirol HQ Orchestra--they are tiny in size by comparison, yet they can sound just as good if you know to use them right. If library developers actually bothered with clever programming, they could probably cut library sized by 50~70% and still retain the sound quality. I see no point is the ridiculous, obsessive sampling they do on every note, velocity, sustain..etc. Just how many people can REALLY hear that difference? That Moby example is great because I've heard and read so many other examples like it, where clever use of sounds from inexpensive and modest origins fooled "experts" into thinking they are far more than they are. So much for experts and audiophiles. It's all about diminishing returns when you spend thousands of dollars. You absolutely do not get thousand times better quality.

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:03 am

As the owner of a laptop with a 40GB drive, yes I think mega-romplers are crazy.

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:15 am

foosnark wrote:As the owner of a laptop with a 40GB drive, yes I think mega-romplers are crazy.

What if you want to play live with a laptop? That means carting around extra firewire drives. Not sure how a laptop would handle a couple of plugged drives on top of midi interface etc.

Maybe it would mean compromising with smaller romplers when playing live somewhat defeating the purpose of buying huge sample sets.

Baxter · Post by **Baxter** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:27 am

I also suspect that another factor involved in their ever greater size is that it makes them much less likely to be stolen and distributed freely over the internet.

Baxter

fac · Post by **fac** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 2:47 am

I used to own a Korg X5D with 8 Mb of sample ROM. I still own a Wavestation SR with 4 Mb, and an Emu Proteus 2/XR with 8 Mb. I also have two samplers: an Akai S2800 w/10 Mb, and an Emu ESI-2000 w/72 Mb. I've never used that much memory.

I have used some big soundfonts such as nskit and splendid piano, but 32 Gb just seems a total exaggeration. I think I'll keep my old romplers and samplers.

antardhyan · Post by **antardhyan** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:07 am

They should start distributing it as another harddisk not in DVDs or CDs. 32gb??..whoa...it's 2 gb more than my current HD, man. I believe in future they'll sell a small HD with USB or firewire or something similar. You just plug it in and you're done. just like another drive. Just like the add-on cards of keyboards. That would make sense.

Mr. Slater's Parrot · Post by **Mr. Slater's Parrot** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:09 am

Storage may have grown but the speed of data transfer hasn't really improved accordingly. Installing huge soundsets takes ages and back-up is not really feasible with such large amounts of data. I suppose it would be easier to reinstall the original than a back up anyway.

Yes, I definitely agree with the above. It does take forever to install the stuff. And, I haven't yet decided whether to buy backup drives for everything.

AndrewSimon · Post by **AndrewSimon** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 3:17 am

Well I am not young but it seems like just yesterday that I was all excited about my new hard drive that reached the unheard of 1Gig of storage.
In about .... oh just a few years you wont be able to buy any hard drive that will be in Gigabytes.
The minimum will be in Terabytes.

So storage is not a problem but is bigger better?
Well not always but some of these mega romplers are just amazing.
(BFD comes to mind)

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 11:50 am

Baxter wrote:I also suspect that another factor involved in their ever greater size is that it makes them much less likely to be stolen and distributed freely over the internet.

Baxter

Yes, I think this is probably a motivating factor.

isdjan · Post by **isdjan** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:00 pm

generally, as the wavestation was mentioned above, i always appreciate when there's a proper bunch of tiny single-cycles included.

installers could basically offer a custom install with sample sets to choose from...

Guckli · Post by **Guckli** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:36 pm

Baxter wrote:I also suspect that another factor involved in their ever greater size is that it makes them much less likely to be stolen and distributed freely over the internet.

Doesn't work at all: http://www.google.com/search?q=BFD+XFL+torrent

antardhyan wrote:They should start distributing it as another harddisk not in DVDs or CDs. 32gb??..whoa...it's 2 gb more than my current HD, man. I believe in future they'll sell a small HD with USB or firewire or something similar. You just plug it in and you're done. just like another drive. Just like the add-on cards of keyboards. That would make sense.

Yes, and that would also make it a lot easier to copyprotect the content, encrypted partition with half the key in firmware, the other as user serial, watermarking the output etc. Actually a piece of "hardware" that streams to your "software". Will probably come to that sooner or later (not that that will work either in the long run of course).

Stupid American Pig · Post by **Stupid American Pig** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:24 pm

One thing I have noticed though is that size does not = quality. I have heard several Humungo sample sets that sounded bad, and wasted several gigs doing it...

Poni · Post by **Poni** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:29 pm

I wonder if a 1gig piano sample sounds 20x as good as a well made 50meg piano sample and when does the law of diminishing returns come into play when it comes to the size of multi sample instruments? There has to be a better way. I also don't understand why anyone would want to crowd thier harddrive with synth samples considering all the great synth VSTI's out there.

torhan · Post by **torhan** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:42 pm

Poni wrote: I also don't understand why anyone would want to crowd thier harddrive with synth samples considering all the great synth VSTI's out there.

It's all in one place

basic channel · Post by **basic channel** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:45 pm

munchkin wrote:I just noticed that the Collosus rompler is 32GB. Is that really necessary? I'm sure the sampling is pristine but in what situation would it be useful to have a GM sound module that size unless you were working in film?

I think romplers are going to get completely out of hand eventually. Perhaps Collosus is a one off but if romplers keep expanding it'll be necessary to have 4x400GB SATA drives just to house several romplers along with any accumulated samples already in our collection. Not to mention storing the growing size of song files as bit rate is increased.

I know there is no one forcing us to buy them but I'm trying to understand why they need to grow so large. Any ideas?

I'd like to know how much storage people here devote to romplers/samples/sound files and what they use to store and archive all this data?

I have 2x200GB SATA drives. Approx 60GB for soundfiles, 50GB for romplers and 80GB samples. This is a rough estimate because over the years I've bought a lot of sample disks and I also have the sample banks that came with the various samplers I've owned. There's a lot of freeware sf2 stuff stored on disk. And samplebanks I've made from hardware synth patches I've created. A lot of this isn't installed.

I usually archive song files on DVD.

I agree.

Although I've got some romplers in the GB territory (Atmosphere, StylusRMX), and love them, there is defintely a law of diminishing returns.

I also use a Yamaha sw1000 with 4 plg cards in a Kenton plugstation as an integral part of my DAW.

Although old, the sw1000 still kicks it if used properly in a mix. The drumkits are especially useful.

And the PF piano card is brilliant - I use it all the time...based on a 32MB sample wavetable I think ?

No way does it sound 100th as good as, say, a gigabyte piano - especially out of the classical context.

BC

Have Romplers Gone Mad?