S/W sampler questions...

[drjohnny79]

I´m thinking of buying Cubase SL and a good s/w-sampler such as Halion, Gigastudio or Kontakt.

Can you turn off the audioengine in Cubase SL, saving cpu-power for s/w sampler? My computer is kind of slow (1300 Athlon T-bird, will upgrade my ram to 1-1,5gb RAM).

Which s/w sampler is best for my computer? I will use Win XP home and use the sampler for mostly realistic/orchestral/soundtracks...

How do the filters/effects compare with Halion, GS, Kontakt?

Should I choose Halion because you can somehow integrate it in Cubase SL?

Advice, opinions are welcome!

[C00kie]

Use SFZ with some soundfonts first. It's free and very eazy on the CPU.

After you've saved cash for a new & fast computer, then revert to thinking about buying expensive software samplers again. Just my 2 cents...

[asseca]

drjohnny79, before buying anything first look into:
energyXT, only 40 euro, works good on slow computers.
To test drive energyXT go to this page for easy downloading and installation...

as COOKie mentioned the SFZ smaple player is a good bet for a beginner, free of charge.

Another interesting product sample player/synth is the WusikEngine product line.

[drjohnny79]

Thanx for the tips. I dont consider myself a beginner.. I´ve used Gigastudio 160 before with my Win98, but now I want to stop using warez.

I´ve tried sfz with my win98 setup, had problems. Maybe it works better in XP? My soundcard is ST audio dsp24 value.

[asseca]

SFZ works fine here on win98 and winXP.

energyXT is definitely no beginner's host, it is more advanced than most users realize, also works fine on win98 and winXP.

Another very good, but complex sampler: VSampler