The sound of samplers - important or not?

[BONES]

I've done some '90s style drum and bass, having an "old skool sample" sound was integral.

Which is why bitcrushers exist.

[_leras]

I don't think it matters that much any more.

So many options to make a more unique 'crunchy' sound. So many lofi tools, tape emulations, transient tools, saturations, distortions, bit crushers, limiter.

You can preprocess samples or apply to recorded tracks. Can make your own loops to process and us further.

Even if that won't work and you want to recreate and exact older crunch, samplers like kontakt and Tal have emulations of different sampler playback built in.

I'm not a nostalgia chaser though... So maybe some sample geeks might disagree...

[pdxindy]

So many options to make a more unique 'crunchy' sound. So many lofi tools, tape emulations, transient tools, saturations, distortions, bit crushers, limiter.

I have a Waldorf Quantum. It has high resolution modern wavetables and lots of tools to 'grunge' things up. It never sounds like the Waldorf M though... I've spent hours trying to duplicate the M on the Quantum but it never has the particular character of the M wavetables and how they are calculated. I have not found that particular quality of the M in any of the software wavetable synths I have either.

[sin night]

I do care for the results and/but I'd use whatever it's avaible.

The sound of a sampler (as a colour) is somewhat important to me, but I'm not willing to spend a lot of money to buy anything vintage and then possibly have to perform maintenance/upgrades (for example: power supply recap, floppy drive emulators) and then having to deal with a less than comfortable workflow... I may still buy one if I happen to find a deal of a lifetime (it will never happen!), but it would be mostly to satisfy my nerd side, rather than to make any actual music.

I own a MPC-500 (I bought it second hand years ago) and I rarely use it; setting things up in a hardware sampler doesn't really work for me (I hate doing that!!!), I'd rather use a pc with screen, keyboard and mouse. That's the reason why I haven't bought a SP-404 yet (which, at least, I can buy brand new with warranty and doesn't need any maintenance/upgrade work anytime soon).

When it comes to samples, I favour the workflow to the sound. I use TAL Sampler or a bitcrusher and call it a day, even if it won't sound the same as a vintage sampler. There are some hardware sampler's features that I'd like to have access to, for example the EMU Z-Plane filters, but I'm not going to mess up my workflow or spend a lot of money in order to access those features, they are no what makes or breaks any of my tracks...


I feel there's a point where I need to draw a line, in order to try to be productive... I'm already (too much) into analog synths; getting also into hardware samplers would make things even worse

[_leras]

So many options to make a more unique 'crunchy' sound. So many lofi tools, tape emulations, transient tools, saturations, distortions, bit crushers, limiter.

I have a Waldorf Quantum. It has high resolution modern wavetables and lots of tools to 'grunge' things up. It never sounds like the Waldorf M though... I've spent hours trying to duplicate the M on the Quantum but it never has the particular character of the M wavetables and how they are calculated. I have not found that particular quality of the M in any of the software wavetable synths I have either.

Isn't that a bit different though, more on the creation side.

Samplers sound is the limited bit rate of the sample, a bit, but also the converters on the output.

You can actually convert the samples to a lower bitrat instead of just bit crushing, but personally I wouldn't see the need.

Elysia's Phil's Cascade has some good options to maybe get a similar effect.

[Etienne1973]

@_leras: Doesn't additionally some different sample transpose (interpolation) techniques exist? Does they sound different? I don't mean wavetable cycle to cycle timbre morph. I mean pitch transpose sampler's root key pitch to other pitches methods.

[pdxindy]

Isn't that a bit different though, more on the creation side.

I was making the point that how samples or wavetables are calculated can give results not obtainable by messing with a high resolution sample or wavetable after the fact.

[mztk]

I own a MPC-500 (I bought it second hand years ago) and I rarely use it

if you still have it,
it's worth pimping it up a bit: put a green LCD in to jolly it up (blue is a bit depressing these days) - easy cheap job - and get a CF>SD adapter so you can use SD cards (full-size), and put some little 3M stickers under the stiff-response pads. (the black background for the legending was a really bad choice IMO. i'd love to have grey/beige classic Akai skin for it, for visibility.)
bump it up to full 128mb RAM with standard laptop memory: get the 256mb, because it only reads one side (do research for brands that work; some don't - forget which atm) - about 10eu.

clear all pre-load, and onboard 5mb flash ram.

ignore the sequencer for a while (confuses things), and use it as a wav-loader. organise your file structure on the memory card/flash drive so that everything resides in a 'Programs' subdirectory, in folders per program. use MPC Maid freeware java thing (excellent) to drag'n'drop samples to pads, or import a folder of files, and set all pads to preferred settings.

benefits: it can load multiple programs at once, unlike a lot of samplers (notably the later so-called sampler by akai, the mpx-16, which only has 1 bank of pads; the mpc500 does 4; mpx16 also v.inconsistent loading direct from SD, and can corrupt the card too easily, losing everything.)
has 3 filter modes - mostly variable via on-trig velocity, no midiCC, but it's ok - and sounds good.
no idea what the sampling is like yet, because i've only loaded stuff prepared on PC.

then it's a bit like having a desktop s-series that deals with wav (albeit with only stereo out).
hated it at first, and now it's a keeper.

[sin night]

I still have the MPC500.

My MPC500 already had the memory expansion when I bought it second hand (with an original 128 MB bank).
I already have a 8GB CF card so, while a CF>SD adapter could be handy, it’s not a priority at the moment (but maybe I should buy one anyway just to make my MPC more future-proof… I’ll think about it).

Changing the LCD screen to a more sensible color and changing the pad response would be some nice upgrades, but I don’t plan to work on that machine anytime soon (I have some backlog when it comes to electronic diy).


By the way, I bought a SP-404 MK2 earlier this year. I’m not using it much either, but I hope to use it more as soon as I finish rearranging / fixing a few things in my setup.
Unfortunately it has a learning curve and I often prefer spending my time in other ways (I enjoy playing synths more), that’s still the issue between me and hardware samplers… but your post reminded me that I should force myself to spend some time with them.

[_leras]

Doesn't matter at all to me, if I want to process a sample, or the output channel a sample plays back to, then I'll process it to sound how I want it to sound.

Sure some things had a slightly unique, maybe crunchiness, to them, but it's nothing compares to how I might process things. I have everything from bit crushers, distortions, all manner of compressors and mulitband compressor, OTT type things and also dac emulators.

There's a new sound now and it's generally better. People can use what they like but I don't think it make as much difference and people make out.

[legendCNCD]

I liked the sound of GVP DSS8+ on my A4000

Bitcrusher and sampleredux cannot replicate Paula, though...

[zerocrossing]

Most hardware samplers are either too limited or a PITA to work with, so no thanks. TAL Sampler or Arturia's CMI and Emulator II are fine for my purposes, but I have no strong nostalgia for the old sampler sound.

[edit]Oops, forgot my Polyvera has simple sample playback, so I guess I do have that.

[Tj Shredder]

All actual hardware samplers sound as good as all software samplers. Of course sound is important. The old samplers usually sounded bad compared to today’s standards. If you want that sound for aesthetic reasons its easier to achieve that with way more control in software.
The main reason for using dedicated hardware is simply workflow, they could be faster if you are into (simple) live sampling. But you can enhance your workflow for yourself also with software, but it needs some special creativity and technical skills to do that…

[BertKoor]

I liked the sound of GVP DSS8+ on my A4000

Bitcrusher and sampleredux cannot replicate Paula, though...

There's the wonky tuning as well, which can be replicated

[pekbro]

Rossum’s Assimil8or is the best sampler I’ve ever encountered. I have an Isla S2400 too, which is also pretty nice. The HW sound to me is better, ymmv.