Sampletank 2 opinions please

[funkynuts]

Actually the more i read this post, the more I see the title being wrong. it should be called "SampleTank 2 Soundlibraries: Your Opinion". maybe I'm the dumb one here, but the idea of basing a sampler on its library, well its kinna weak. Ive said that before when analogue synths made a comeback in the mid 90's, because all these kids went and bought em for the presets. my boy had a JP-8000, and once he had used all the presets, he put it up for sale. What about all the knob twiddling? Nah, he said, too much complication. Same thing for a sampler. You wanna impress me? Give me a sampler that can do things other samplers cant. Dont give me an Akai clone, or an E-mu wanna-be. give me better liquid engines, more effects, ORIGINAL effects, and abilities that no one has thought of. You guys can go on and pay your $100+ for "cool" sample libraries, Ill just get my sounds the old fashioned way. ciao

Do you work for Ik Multimedia or sonic reality?

Or are you actually the big headed, self obsessed,arrogant prick yout posts make you appear?


Regards
Funk

[JaseisMusic]

maybe I'm the dumb one here

[johnnytluxury]

Lol, and I thought this thread was called "SampleTank2, your opinions please"... Maybe I shouldnt have, I apologize, well apologize for calling out your oversights and errors... Lol, kids, gotta love em. Yeah Im the perfect guy to work for IK Multimedia, a brotha with a bad haircut working for some Italian geek squad making virtual instruments. Actually Im your basic everyday wanna be music maker, kinna just like you, I guess. But refrain from being silly in the forums, those with smarts might be out to get ya... Kids... Now douse me with fire, and let your baby ass flaming begin..I'm so sad.

[smart]

[Squids]

I do think though The reason why the motif does rock is that it is THE KEYBOARD! for playing live. Hands Down. You won't get any disgreements from me on that.

- juanito

Hafta agree there. I started with a MOTIF 7, and its keyboard action absolutely spoiled me.

Me too with the Motif 8. Then SR was asked to do programming on the Motif rack and the Motif ES. It was fun because I like a lot of the Yamaha sounds and fx. Each company has different flavors to offer in that area. I also like my Triton although more for its processing and synthesis than built-in sounds (I import my own and it's stellar!). I agree the action of the Yamaha keyboards is superb.

I did some of the programming on the ST2 sounds. One of the things I did was take a lot of the legacy ST1 sounds that are in it and give them some new life and a different perspective programming-wise. I agree that there is a range of really great sounds, sounds that fit the bill and maybe some that are not as universally liked. Of course, all workstation instruments have that sort of thing about them really. I've never played one that where I loved every sound. Have you?

Sonik Synth 2 is more along the lines of the Motif really though, particularly with synth sounds and combis. SampleTank 2 is more like a large meat & potatoes sample library with a great easy to use musical engine and interface. It's not really a "sampler" but it's not a closed sound module either. I like to think of it as a sort of swiss army knife tool that comes in handy for writing and producing music. There are tons of cool tricks you can do with it (a lot of which I have gone over in a video clip on www.sampletank.com if you've never seen it- check it out!). Whether you want to layer and synch loops to your host tempo or mess around with Stretch or even just simply mangle the sound with all of the lovely tube distortion fx!!!!

I have to say, as biased as I am with how my company works with IK, I use a lot of sample-based products and ST2 has its place for me musically. It's fast and it's musician friendly. It doesn't do everything I always want or need to do. Sometimes I'll pull up a particular sampler that does a certain thing such as a weird filter type or a particular complex modulation set up etc. I'm a tweaker so that's how I am! (I am also a gear junky). But, to me ST2 and a large library of sounds (okay, yes SR sounds would be my opinion... and bias ) is the ultimate go to piece first to get your tunes going. There are a lot of reasons really.

[Squids]

Actually the more i read this post, the more I see the title being wrong. it should be called "SampleTank 2 Soundlibraries: Your Opinion". maybe I'm the dumb one here, but the idea of basing a sampler on its library, well its kinna weak. Ive said that before when analogue synths made a comeback in the mid 90's, because all these kids went and bought em for the presets. my boy had a JP-8000, and once he had used all the presets, he put it up for sale. What about all the knob twiddling? Nah, he said, too much complication. Same thing for a sampler. You wanna impress me? Give me a sampler that can do things other samplers cant. Dont give me an Akai clone, or an E-mu wanna-be. give me better liquid engines, more effects, ORIGINAL effects, and abilities that no one has thought of. You guys can go on and pay your $100+ for "cool" sample libraries, Ill just get my sounds the old fashioned way. ciao

Do you work for Ik Multimedia or sonic reality?

Or are you actually the big headed, self obsessed,arrogant prick yout posts make you appear?


Regards
Funk

Hmm. FWIW, no one from SR (or IK for that matter) is allowed to post on here without disclosing who they are. If they did they'd be fired.

So, Johnnytluxury does not work for either company. But, I haven't yet read his post. I am curious now to see why he'd be called an arrogant prick though.

edit: Okay, I just read it. Well, he's entitled to his opinion. I disagree with a few points. I think that ST2 is in between a sampler and a rompler really. It's BOTH things depending on how you look at it. It's the preset machine because of its included sound set and its the sample tool for the guy who wants to import his own sounds. I personally like to do both!

[Squids]

I originally bought SampleTank because I thought T-Racks was fantastic, and figured I'd give their other products a shot.

I'm not dissappointed, it has a very good all-around library. I like the accoustic guitars a lot. Here's a warning, though: If you want "synth" sounds, don't get SampleTank (those sounds are really poor).


-Ido

Get Sonik Synth 2 though. It has more synth sounds than you can shake a stick (and a bucket ) at.

SampleTank 2 only covers a little bit of synths because we knew we'd have Sonik Synth 2 going the full throttle on that territory, including the kind of synth sounds you REALLY get in JV modules and stuff like that. SS2 is a more direct comparison to those synth modules than ST2XL itself really.

[TeeLangSun]

The electric basses in ST2 are pretty outstanding. I will usually use ST2 for 95% of Bass tracks when it comes to songwriting.

ST2 Drum patches are also pretty sick when you run them through some convolution reverb.

The key to using ST2 sucessfully I believe is not to use the on board efx. Turn all that off and use insert efx. You'll get a lot more milelage.

One last note. Having Spent some time with my friends Yamaha Motif ES 8, I can faithfully say that even with The Motif's Massive soundset (192mb), Sampletank 2 still puts bullet holes into it's heavy weight chassis.

- juanito

I haven't heard anything in the form of software that gets close to the quality of the sounds in a Motif, Triton, or a Fantom. In comparison to something like ST2, I'd easily go for the Plugsound stuff because the patches are simply better and more useable. But even that is not in a league with the keyboard workstations. They simply sound sooo much more real and have better "playability". The FX in the Motifs, Tritons, etc are studio quality as opposed to what you get in ST2. That makes a world of difference right there. Everything in a workstation is of the highest quality as opposed to going through a ton of fillers to find a single jewel here and there in the software romplers. So, consistency is another key advantage of the workstations. All quality, and no fillers.

[johnnytluxury]

Ahh, and I wanted to refrain from writing in this thread as I kept getting flamed, but I do thank you, Squids for being unbiased, and actually reading what I did write about ST2. My opinons remain just that. I did say that you could use ST2 as a ROMpler, but by using it soley as that, you are severly limiting yourself. Once again, it is called SampleTank for a reason. As long as you can record a waveform, or a sound in your computer, you can sample with it, and that is where it excels. I dont see anyone calling an Akai Z8 a ROMpler, being that Akai probably has the largest sound library of anyone. Nonetheless, I really enjoy the product, and find it very useful in my projects. I do get very frustrated by those that claim its limitations based on its soundset. But at the same time, I noticed almost every post in this thread stated something about ST2's libraries. Its soundset is not limited because there arent as many libraries out there as Akai, or SoundFonts, or Brand X. No, its only limitations are the users who chose not to use creativity as a guide. I was getting down to a little ditty I wrote using sounds I recorded on DAT (Yes, DAT!)at my local Wal-mart the other day, its amazing what you can make crashing shopping carts sound like with a lil imagination. And let me be a man and apologize for being a bit rude to the fellas in this thread, as that wasnt my intention. Peace, and happy beats.

[Arglebargle]

I am very interested in purchasing Sampletank 2. I've read both good and bad reviews, and I don't know which to believe!

Judging from the free sounds on the Sampletank website, the sound quality of the samples is perfectly fine for my purposes. Sure, I'd love to get a Motif... believe me, I've played it, and it kicks ass! Problem is, I don't have two grand to plunk down on a keyboard. It seems as if Sampletank offers is a cheap, intuitive way to write music, and really, that's my main goal! It comes with lots of sounds and a bunch of great-sounding effects. I'm sure there are more than a few crappy patches, but what I think is crappy might be useful to someone else.

To me, the sound demos for Sampletank 2 sound no worse than the demos for, say, the Triton. But that's just my opinion. I have a bunch of ST2 free sounds, and I find most of them quite playable. In fact, I'm using a few in a tune I'm working on right now.

In the end, sound quality is pretty subjective. Maybe some people crave extraordinarily realistic sounds that ST2 can't provide, but for a hobbyist like myself, ST2 seems like an optimal product.

*shrugs*

Just my (rambling) thoughts.

[Rellik]

Just to chime in here:

SampleTank 2 XL would definitely be my choice if you want a good bread and butter soundset. It won't get you very far in orchestral (although it's not altogether too shabby in that department - just doesn't have a big enough selection of high quality orchestra sounds, though there are some scattered about the folder), so that's something of a disappointment, and it doesn't do all that well on the synth sounds, but hey, VSTi's would be more fun anyway .

The only thing I can really say against it, and this is pretty substantial, is that it's buggy and it's REALLY slow. If it was up to par speedwise I would use it all the time, and if it didn't have any bugs I would be able to automate it and it would never crash. And maybe I could even use the MouseWheel... that would be more than extremely helpful...

The worst part is that IK seems pretty complacent, as far as I know, about the current state of ST2. Sure, I guess it's useable, and I do use it whenever I need a sound from it that I can't do passably with SF2, but it sure is definitely not exactly a pleasure to use. Not sure what the official stance over at IK on this is, and I don't mean to be combatative or argumentative, but hey, ST2XL was expensive, and I think it would be really cool if some of these problems would go away so I could call it up without having to wait 30 seconds as it loads and then having to deal with the CPU usage being all bloated up after a few instruments are loaded.

[TVD]

I would love to have Sonik Synth.

From playing around with SSFree, this thing might be better having around than a Korg Triton.

[bugs]

ST does not stream from disk.

[fmo]

I think mapping of multisamples with velocity switches does not work in ST2.I know the Naming-Convention (User Manual) It works only with one Sample and 4 velocities.It does not work with 8 Samples and 4 Velocities (32Samples).I m not interested in converting Prehistoric Akais . I want my own multisamples - with velocity !
Who knows this Problem?

...fmo