u-he sampler anybody?

[DuX]

It just occurred to me that it would be fantastic if u-he released a simple but great sounding sampler based on ACE or even DIVA engine. Lately, I'm finding VA synth sounds more and more boring, no matter how good they sound. Wouldn't it be great if you could load samples as oscillators? and add a little sample editor to it just so you could edit loop points, put start and end of the sample at proper zero crossings and trim them, and reverse them? There's no sampler on the market that sound as good as my ASR-10 sounded. Kontakt and all these commercial, so called samplers, are just huge sample bank players. I wish there was a sampler that is more creative, like ShortCircuit. I love ShortCircuit but there are some bugs in it that are just too annoying, and they won't be squashed any time soon, ever actually. Also, its sound cannot really compare to what u-he synth filters sound like.

I think people have forgotten how fun samplers with VA and PD [like Casio FZ-1] synthesis can be fun. I think the world is definitely in need of a nice, creative, VSTi sampler with great sound, and in my humble opinion nobody could do it better than Urs/u-he. Whenever I play one of u-he's gems, I always imagine how it would sound with samples instead of old boring sine, triangle, saw, pulse, and noise... I know that you can actually make every possible sound using just sine waves and additive synthesis, which I find absolutely interesting, but a recreation of a good old creative sampler like Casio FZ-1 [especially],Yamaha A3000/4000, ASR-10, or Roland S-760 would definitely sound absolutely fantastic if Urs made it. Even more so, because nobody has made a VA modular sampler so far, as far as I know? VAZ Modular has a sampler of a kind built in, but it lacks editing of samples. But so far, I'm getting by by using that feature to get away a bit from the classic VA sound. It sounds really good, but U-he one could be better, I'm sure of it.

Why didn't I mention Akai samplers? I did have one S-950, but I never found it so creative as ASR-10 or FZ-1. Akais were Kontakt and UVI of the time. Boring sample players. IMHO, of course. Also forget about E-Mu Emulator-X VSTi as it is not supported any more, and it's buggy and bloated piece of code anyway. IMHO. E-mu got scre*** by Creative, and creative got scre*** by someone else, and we got scre*** by everybody.

I actually got the idea looking at the ACE GUI. The middle of the screen shows the sound's amplitude, but it's also a nice place to put a little sample editor in.

Anyway, it's just my early birthday wish. I simply your synths Mr. Urs! You should maybe give it a thought, at least. I know you're all busy with Zebra and "Berlin modular" now, but if you ever find yourself thinking "what shall we do next", I kindly ask you to consider this idea of mine. I definitely do wonder what others think of this idea?

Cheers!

[Josmoker]

I agree. A cross between Shortcircuit and u-he's creations would be the shit!

[toitoi]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 99#4610599

[audiojunkie]

I would love to see something that sounds great and is very easy to use. Something that can autoloop using a combination of audio blending/blurring and crossfading to automatically create great sounding seamless loops, and then DIRAC timestretching/pitchshifting algorithms to allow it to be very easy to sample across an octave or two with little change in sound quality.

In theory, it could autosample based on a preselected note range, import and do the work for you, resulting in very small patches, with extremely easy patch creation. Couple that with a high quality sound engine like Diva has, along with a good patch management library, and keep everything dead simple---it would be a GIANT winner in my book.

--Sean

[DuX]

I wasn't aware that it's been discussed before, even though I'm quite regularly here. So what Urs said actually is that they don't have enough resources to do it. They're too preoccupied with what they have made already. Shaaaame.

Great ideas for the sampling oscillators, Sean. You know that Alchemy has a kind of really cool sampling oscillators that partially work as you just described? Alchemy is a fantastic synth, even a sampler a little. But I would like to see more of a classic sampler, possibly with some additional features like that, yeah. Creative, not a sample bank player. Lots of filters and shit, yay! and sounding like ACE or DIVA yeehaa!

[Urs]

I wasn't aware that it's been discussed before, even though I'm quite regularly here. So what Urs said actually is that they don't have enough resources to do it. They're too preoccupied with what they have made already. Shaaaame.

Yeah... otoh we went from 0 employees to 4 in just a year. We'll eventually get around limited resources, but we won't get around sampling.

[DuX]

It is better to have a few great products than 10 shitty ones like some companies do... "Kough" , I absolutely agree, especially with limited resources.

Shame, though. It would be a fantastic creative sampler. As I said, if you ever run out of creative ideas, remember this thread.

I'm already happy that I've put a "bug in your mind" [I hope ], so to speak. Actually, I more like reminded you of what some other people said before. It's not really weird that such ideas come up, really. There are no great sounding creative samplers on the market. I have each and every one of them except Emulator X and I hate using Kontakt as it just doesn't feel right, and it's huge and bloated, a perfect sample bank player, though! The one I like the most is ShortCircuit, but there are some serious problems with it, and it doesn't sound that good to my "analog" ears. Your synths just sound like a synth should sound IMO, so I thought "these guys could make a sampler that would sound properly, too". Sometimes when I close my eyes and play with sounds, I can almost forget that these sounds come out of the computer, computed in real time! More so, your synths are just easier to mix with... that says something about them, too. Incredible work, Urs. Thank you for that , to you and your co-workers.

Cheers!

[padillac]

+10000000000000

I want filterscape in a sampler!

I have plenty of samples, no need for u-he to provide any kind of a library. Just give us an amazing u-he sampler!

[audiojunkie]

I wasn't aware that it's been discussed before, even though I'm quite regularly here. So what Urs said actually is that they don't have enough resources to do it. They're too preoccupied with what they have made already. Shaaaame.

Great ideas for the sampling oscillators, Sean. You know that Alchemy has a kind of really cool sampling oscillators that partially work as you just described? Alchemy is a fantastic synth, even a sampler a little. But I would like to see more of a classic sampler, possibly with some additional features like that, yeah. Creative, not a sample bank player. Lots of filters and shit, yay! and sounding like ACE or DIVA yeehaa!

I wasn't aware that Alchemy did that. I knew they were heavily based in SFZ and figured (like many SFZ products) everything had to be coded by hand or with Chickensys' Constructor/Translator. I'll have to look at it again and see how the Camel guys are doing it.

BTW, the audio blending/blurring idea supposedly has been in Imageline's Edison audio editor for several versions. I had several conversations with Gol about it. I was lamenting the demise of the wonderful Zero-X seamless looper, and Gol felt that Edison was able to do an even better job with creating seamless loops using his audio blurring/blending technology. I never have gotten around to playing with it and seeing how well it does in this area, but it would be interesting to see how well it actually does.

--Sean

Edit: Wouldn't it be cool to have something that uses the VST instrument / Hardware instrument sampling like Extreme Sample Converter (and several other programs) does, that sets up and creates the general sample mapping automatically (based on user input parameters), and then uses an automated combination of the blurring/blending/crossfade looping technology to create perfect, seamless loops, and then uses the Dirac timestretching/pitchshifting algorhythms (or some similar technology) to automatically create extremely compact, realistic, high-quality instruments that can then be tweaked, layered and mangled like Alchemy is able to do? Some REALLY SIMPLE, REALLY POWERFUL, REALLY GREAT SOUNDING stuff could be created VERY EASILY. Now, the only problem is that each of these different technological parts belong to differing entities. The technology is there, but no one has all of it.

--Sean

[jbuonacc]

the Casio FZ didn't use PD synthesis, just subtractive and additive.

[DuX]

I remembered there was something special about FZ-1 but I forgot what, so I assumed PD synthesis since Casio was renowned for PD synths at the time . Yeah, it was capable of additive synthesis, great sampler, errr synth, errr sampler? I'm actually, in my desperation, considering going back to roots and just finding myself an A3000, FZ-1, S-760, an E-Mu? and having fun with these again. [sad face because I would rather have a good VSTi for that] What freaking Kontakt... yuk. It is a bit complicated to go hardware route, even just partially, because one has to have an interface with lots of inputs and good AD but I'm getting there. I was never thinking I would need lots of I/O since I like computers and working ITB. I always thought of piling hardware just as PITA...

p.s. I was so happy when I saw this TX16Wx sampler came out, but it's too buggy. It kept crashing on me every now and then, and I can't save programs in EXT1 for some reason. Shame, TX16Wx is nice, but crashes kill creativity.

[Phase47]

I had a Casio VZ-10m back in the day. I liked the concept of Casio's Phase Distortion, but I couldn't get nearly the noise out of it that I wrung out of say, a TX81z, which by the by, I happen to know that Urs does have over there in their hideaway.

I had an FZ sampler too, and I think the synthesis was sine-based additive, yeah?

[Bronto Scorpio]

I had a Casio VZ-10m back in the day.

Fantastic synth but very hard to program! Exotic synthesis + many parameters + many sub menus on a "tiny" screen = very bad idea!

TX81z

I'd love to have the additional waveforms of the TX81z as optional waveforms for the FMOs in Zebra

Cheers
Dennis

[Bronto Scorpio]

I want filterscape in a sampler!

Slightly OT but one of the reasons why I love FilterscapeVA is because it can sound as the sounds come from a sampler.
Just use the EQ and modulate the frequencies of the bands by the keytracking
The keytracking modulation has to be set to +60 iirc.

A sound played on C2 will then almost sound like the same sound on C3 transposed one octave in a sampler

Some very cool stuff is possible with that technique!

Cheers
Dennis

[Phase47]

I had a Casio VZ-10m back in the day.

Fantastic synth but very hard to program! Exotic synthesis + many parameters + many sub menus on a "tiny" screen = very bad idea!

TX81z

I'd love to have the additional waveforms of the TX81z as optional waveforms for the FMOs in Zebra

Cheers
Dennis

Actually the screen on the 10m was luxurious, relatively speaking. Thing was built like a tank, too, though I could never get enough umph out of it either way. The TX81z though... smaller screen and could program that w/ my eyes closed. Loved that little guy.