Why do I have to use soft samplers ?

[Ahmed]

HI, \
I use now mostly VSTis effects and softsynths, and I hear alot about professionals who uses famous soft samplers with much RAM (1 Gegs or 2)computers. Is there for me a good reason to start to work with those samplers, or are vsts just enough for porfessional level work?

A.

[declassified]

What type of music do you make? I mean, just roughly speaking. Some genres are more sampler-dependent (breakbeat- and other sampling-based music) than others (house for example). That doesn't mean that you can't use a sampler in other music styles.
But you will be rather hard pushed trying to create a breakbeat with a subtractive synth.

(If there is, please show it to me. Would be very cool)

[stefancrs]

You don't need samplers at all to do professional work. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want to make great sounding orchestral stuff, well, then you'd probably need something else than synths and effects

[Ahmed]

MY music now is far from House and Dance styles, and geard twards electronic orchestral music which are heard on TV promotions, programs workthroughs.

P.S. What is breakbeat music?

[TechnoWeeniePas]

Its up to you. If you can create the music you want to create without a sampler you dont need one. If however you find that there are sounds you just cant find or create with VSTs then get a sampler and some sample CDs that include those sounds. I find that you can make just about anything with a good synths short of "realistic sounds" If you want "natural" reproductions of horns, strings, orchestras, etc than you can come close with synths but can usualy get closer with a good sample set and sampler. However alot of the time a synths representation will fit better in the mix with the rest of your synthasized layers. But its really all up to personal oppinion...some people swear by samplers, some never use them. I think you can create any style of music without but that they can help with any style as well.

[Ahmed]

To be more specific about my music style, it depends sometimes on Pianos and orchestral strings with other synth pads!

my music page; http://www.soundclick.com/artlover

[TechnoWeeniePas]

To be more specific about my music style, it depends sometimes on Pianos and orchestral strings with other synth pads!

my music page; http://www.soundclick.com/artlover

I would say try alot of the free VSTs and Rompler VSTs and see what you think. Even if you dont use them right away they may come in usefull down the line or be a good source of insperation. Then if you cant find a sound that fits your needs go out and pay the $ for a sampler. Also make sure to check things like sound font players and such out...if your not going to be doing your own sampling than getting just a sample playback VST would suit you quite well I imagine.

[Ahmed]

If however you find that there are sounds you just cant find or create with VSTs then get a sampler and some sample CDs that include those sounds.

Thanks for the good information ! What I really needed badly recently is the real sound of some rich orchestral strings that is not acheived by VSts of any kind!

A.

[TechnoWeeniePas]

Thanks for the good information ! What I really needed badly recently is the real sound of some rich orchestral strings that is not acheived by VSts of any kind!

A.

As garret put it in another thread:

Okay folks, here you go. The much heralded SJ Orchestral Strings... hosting courtesy of Kriminal.

http://kriminal.presetbank.com/sjo.rar
http://www.groovecell.com/music/SF/sjo.rar

This is a free soundfont, which used to be available at www.thesoundsite.net. That site is long gone... so get your copy now while the gettin is good. The download is 39MB, and it decompresses to 70MB.

Then all you need is SFZ http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/769.html and you have yourself a nice orchestral strings setup

Im sure there are other free sound fonts out there that will suit your needs as well. Oh and you may want to think about SFZ+ if you find that you are using SFZ alot but that its not quite feature rich enough...its got alot of nice features and isnt that expensive.

[Improv]

If however you find that there are sounds you just cant find or create with VSTs then get a sampler and some sample CDs that include those sounds.

Thanks for the good information ! What I really needed badly recently is the real sound of some rich orchestral strings that is not acheived by VSts of any kind!

A.

Here's two sample sets to check out for some pro string sample sets:

Kirk Hunter:

http://www.kirkhunterstudios.com/samplelibraries.html

Garritan Strings:

http://www.garritan.com/GOS-features.html

[griels]

If however you find that there are sounds you just cant find or create with VSTs then get a sampler and some sample CDs that include those sounds.

Thanks for the good information ! What I really needed badly recently is the real sound of some rich orchestral strings that is not acheived by VSts of any kind!

A.

I'd agree you can never totally replicate the sound of a real orchestra with multisamples, but there are certainly some orchestral libraries that come close to fooling the casual listener, at least with regard to section material. For this reason you might be interested in the QLSO Gold group buy going on at the moment.

Solo material is usually going to be more exposed and less uniform, and thus harder to emulate with samples. However the VSL libraries do relatively well with this... Check out their Solo Strings for example. Probably better to get a real instrumentalist in for this stuff if you can though.

Regarding your question, it really depends what you call a sampler. Very few software samplers actually sample, for instance... But they do usually have advanced features like disk streaming, which is very useful for producing the more convincing orchestral impressions that can be had from a computer. QLSO ships with a limited version of Kompakt, which is in turn a cut down version of a software sample-editor and player called Kontakt. So you wouldn't need a full blown sampler VSTi to use that for example.

[Ahmed]

Thanks, folks!
So does that also mean I could also buy or download some samples in Giga or Halion formats then convert them into SF2 format and won't lose any quality of their original format?

A.

[jeffn1]

GPO is another alternative for orchestral work. You can pick it up for a little over $200.00

jeffn1

[griels]

Thanks, folks!
So does that also mean I could also buy or download some samples in Giga or Halion formats then convert them into SF2 format and won't lose any quality of their original format?

A.

You won't lose raw sound quality unless the source format you are converting is in >16bits format (this would apply to some Halion and Gigastudio 3 multisamples, but not Gigastudio 2). On the other hand, you will lose a lot of the keyswitching and release samples of the original patches by converting to sf2. However, you could try using SynthFont VSTi to play Giga files, or use Extreme Sample Converter to convert Halion or Giga files to .sfz format, and play them in sfz.

[fishbowl.tucson.az]

I'd agree you can never totally replicate the sound of a real orchestra with multisamples, but there are certainly some orchestral libraries that come close to fooling the casual listener, at least with regard to section material.

I'd even say they do more than just "come close", considering how much of radio/tv soundtrack material is done with synths.