KVR Audio

beni_72 · Post by **beni_72** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 3:20 am

Hey guys,

Need some advice on what samplers I should be looking at around the $300 price mark?
Any suggestions on some goodies?
I'm waning to produce sample based house and techno tracks.

Any help will be much appreciated!

Thanks

beni_72 · Post by **beni_72** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 8:37 am

Anyone??

Halma · Post by **Halma** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 8:58 am

Hardware? Software? With or without sounds? Do you wanna mangle them or are you just looking for a simple *.wav/*.aiff playback machine?

Regards
Sebastian

Bathrobe · Post by **Bathrobe** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:15 am

Roland S-750
Akai S-1100 , S-3000 , S-3200. Newer ones like S-3200XL, S-5000, S-6000 are not made in Japan anymore but in China and are not as colorful as the older ones.
Emu E4XT

Prepare to spend some extra money for maintenance like new display foil, scsi cf-card reader or old scsi harddrive to store samples.

Halma · Post by **Halma** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:25 am

Call me oldschool but nothing beats an Ensoniq MIRAGE or ASR-10. Though the latter one will cost a little bit more than 300$ but that one will be the only sampler you ever gonna need. MPC60 is cool too but out of your pricerange.

Most of my friends either have old MPC60 or the ASR-10 (mostly the rack version) and they still rock. I have a DSS-1 but don´t use it for sampling right now (broken floppy, welcome to the oldschool

)

If you just wanna make sample & loop based stuff why not choose Ableton Live?

Regards
Sebastian

Bathrobe · Post by **Bathrobe** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:05 pm

While i agree that Ableton Live would be easier for sampling these days, a lit 15 inch screen draws much more attention that a small lcd and that attention is redirected from the ears to the eyes.
Of course you can turn off the screen once the samples are setup but then you are missing just the little visual feedback from the screen.

An Octatrack is perfect in that regard but has only 4 outputs.
I like my samplers to have 8 direct outputs so each sound has it´s own channel on the mixing desk.

The floppy on my DSS-1 still works but i never use discs anyway. Each session i sample something else into it.
If i were to save samples frequently i´d go for Straylight´s Mod that uses a USB stick for archiving.
http://www.straylightengineering.com/category/dss-1/

Halma · Post by **Halma** » Wed Feb 26, 2014 8:13 pm

Yeah but that dss-1 kit is "unfortunately" way out of my pricerange right now plus I would need a dedicated engineer for that which will cost me even more money. That one was on my list for a very long time.

But as soon as I have saved some money (lol, I try that for more than a year now) I wanna buy the Lotharek SD card reader thingy.

I don´t wanna hijack this thread but would you be so kind and explain me how to sample without a floppy? (you can PM me for that if you like). And are you using the "analog" method using the lvl in connectors OR do use the "via midi" method I have read numerous times but still don´t get it. Dangit, I have seen a video where he drove the input that hot...very sweet oldschool overdrive sound especially on x0x kicks.

Btw have you tried the DSS-1 KissBox?

Regards
Sebastian

zaqzaq · Post by **zaqzaq** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:49 am

The Roland SP series is a good bet for hardware (standalone) "phrase-playback" samplers, it's also in your price range.

Like Halma already said, 'sampler' is unfortunally a polysemic word, and so you have to explain well what it is that you are searching for. If it's something to repeat some sounds (like .wav files), then check the Roland SPs

Sampler advice