Have Romplers Gone Mad?

[Doogle]

What isdjan said. (dammit... he beat me to it!)
I haven't actually bought any romplers so I don't know first hand what it's like to use them. But pretty much every review I've read of them has a bit where it says something like 'as usual, you copy the data files off the DVD before running the installer'. The idea is that you're buying a library, and although it would interrupt workflow to have to install a soundset that you don't currently have on your drive, having the freedom to either have the entire thing on your drive, or just selected parts would make a lot more sense IMO.

[griels]

I read an interview with Moby, and for one of his song's these audiophile engineer types (or somewhere along those lines) thought he must have used some amazing sampling or a real expensive grand piano or something on one of his songs, he said something to the effect of "nope, just a cheap general midi piano patch off of a 1980's sound module I own".

If the sound in question was anything like the plinky Roland style pianos he used in Play, I'm not surprised... Sounds nothing like the real thing... Not that it's any the worse for it... How would that be possible anyway?



Just kidding. I love Porcelain for example and the crystal-like clarity of what sounds like a synthetic piano works in its favour. It's all dependent on context.

Then again, I have mistaken a real Steinway for a sampled one, so what do I know... I'm more of a Bosendorfer man

Anyone wanting to see what can be done with some clever programming ought to look at Mr Ray 73 though - sounds pretty much as good as Scarbee RSP73 to me, and at an infinitesimal fraciton of the size - not a sample in sight.

[isdjan]

What isdjan said. (dammit... he beat me to it!)
I haven't actually bought any romplers so I don't know first hand what it's like to use them. But pretty much every review I've read of them has a bit where it says something like 'as usual, you copy the data files off the DVD before running the installer'. The idea is that you're buying a library, and although it would interrupt workflow to have to install a soundset that you don't currently have on your drive, having the freedom to either have the entire thing on your drive, or just selected parts would make a lot more sense IMO.

well - look at almost every ms office installer. you can quickly do a complete install or decide in detail what you'd like to install or leave out. and in most cases, you can easily (de)install additional components without any hassle.

every large scaled rompler should offer something like that, so i can save precious hd space, and don't have to waste it for sounds i'd barely ever use - like all kind of hammonds, saxophones, or virtually any instruments if i got a better one around, e.g. skip the piano when i had steinberg grand and so on.

[jones-y]

I think this sums it up. How can synths like Triton manage to sound so good with much smaller sample banks? If Korg, Roland, Yamaha can produce hardware synths that sound so good then why doesn't the same apply to romplers?

I realise hardware plays a part but the quality of soundcards nowdays must at least be as good as ten year old Korg/Roland etc. sample based synths which still sound excellent to my ears.

The answer lies in the synthesis architecture, IMO. The multi-gb ROMplers put more emphasis on the soundset, whereas the HW based ROMplers (and the plugs that emulate them - e.g. Ravity) put much more emphasis on utilizing the synth architecture. I wondered about this for a long time as I asked myself how the hell my MOTIF Rack sounds better than Sampletank 2XL going through an RME card.

Think about it. A hardware synth will have four layers, each of which is actually its own little synth, with envelopes, filters, LFO, modulation routing, effects, etc. Combine them together, slap another global filter or two, some global LFO, and modulation routings, and an amplitude envelope, global effects. And serve all that up with 1.5ms latency, and there you have it.

And that's why I love Ravity, in all its 32MB of splendor!

[Doogle]

well - look at almost every ms office installer. you can quickly do a complete install or decide in detail what you'd like to install or leave out. and in most cases, you can easily (de)install additional components without any hassle.

The thing is with romplers as well, is that a good installer app would allow you to manage the library (installed bits vs. not currently installed bits) but also could give you a way of auditioning instruments.

Imagine if the installer was part of the actual VST, and allowed you to use instruments that aren't installed, as long as you had the DVD in the drive. And then, click a button and it copies the instrument (maybe with a selected number of velocity layers and maybe even a selectable gap between different pitches (every semitone, every half octave, every octave etc.).

I'm sure this is possible to implement. Has anyone done anything like this already?

[egbert]

As Eric Persing from Spectrasonics - who has done the programming on some notable Romplers - explained at one point on this forum (I think) all those compact romplers have tiny samples - just the attack and a very small sample for the sustain section of most instrument sounds.

Without FX and animation with filter envelopes they sound as boring as bat shit. What makes the Rompler sound good is that really skilled programmers program the life out of those samples - give them movement and run them through nice FX and perhaps layer them.

Big sample sets have the luxury of sampling the natural changes in timbre over time of the real sound - eg electric piano tines, real acoustic piano.

You can add FX but the basic sound is a lot more interesting than a single cycle going round for ever in a loop.

If the big sample set Rompler sounds worse it is because the samples chosen are inferior or the programming is crap. Its obvious, if quantity is substituted for quality you get crap.

With good samples and good programming you have the best possible. People who expect a $200 Rompler to sound better than 5k worth of large sample sets will likely be disappointed.

[jones-y]

As Eric Persing from Spectrasonics - who has done the programming on some notable Romplers - explained at one point on this forum (I think) all those compact romplers have tiny samples - just the attack and a very small sample for the sustain section of most instrument sounds.

Without FX and animation with filter envelopes they sound as boring as bat shit. What makes the Rompler sound good is that really skilled programmers program the life out of those samples - give them movement and run them through nice FX and perhaps layer them.

The newer hard ROMplers have a greater amount of sample RAM, which allows for better sampling techniques, at least that's what I would think. The MOTIF Rack, for example has 96MB or wave ROM (175MB uncompressed, according to them) and some of its raw samples sound very alive and characterful.

I think the determining factor is programming as you said, which IMO goes back to the sysnthesis architecture.

Big sample sets have the luxury of sampling the natural changes in timbre over time of the real sound - eg electric piano tines, real acoustic piano.

You can add FX but the basic sound is a lot more interesting than a single cycle going round for ever in a loop.

If the big sample set Rompler sounds worse it is because the samples chosen are inferior or the programming is crap. Its obvious, if quantity is substituted for quality you get crap.

The luxury of size is also their achilles heel, the way I see it. The developers rely too much on the sound of the raw samples.

With good samples and good programming you have the best possible.

I agree, but I don't think bigger is always better. For example, IMO the MOTIF blows away both the Alesis QS6 (the original one - 8MB I think) and Sampletank 2XL (4GB)

People who expect a $200 Rompler to sound better than 5k worth of large sample sets will likely be disappointed.

I don't expect for my MOTIFs violin to sound like VSL, I expect it to sound like a MOTIF violin, and in that respect, I am never disappointed, because that's the sound I wanted.

But OTOH, I recall a certain recent thread here comparing Apple GB Jam Pack 4 to EWQLSO...

[isdjan]

today's availability of both vast hd's and ram space has some weird side effects. i don't remember exactly where i read about it, but there's a orchestral sample lib without any loops (dunno whether partially or for the whole bunch).

"how long does this oboe play?"

"til the oboeist faints..."

okay - it forces you to make credible tracks