Is DS-404 a good sampler by today's standard?

[Caleb]

The best bits of DS404 and SR202 have been combined and extended massively over the last year to become our Tachyon sampling engine. There will be natural successors to DS404 and SR202 with serious enhancements released pretty soon - watch out for those Winter NAMM 2005 press releases!

Again you toy with our emotions Dave.

Caleb

[mr.me]

Yep, the GUI is very unintuitive. That said, it a very good sampler that I like to use with multi-samples, plus you can download many free patches for it at the Computer Music website.

I couldn't find the link, any hints?

[TVD]

For a freebie (well, at least, almost free, considering the cost of one CM mag) it's very good, but it somewhat fails badly when being compared to others.
The UI really isn't up to nowadays standards (mapping stuff is a pain) and personally I just hate the fact it's using a proprietary file format to save patches and samples in (others, such as EXS, Kontakt and HALion use folder-ed samples and instrument definitions, so re-using your patches with other samplers is WAY easier).

What about Vsampler 2.75?

[Sascha Franck]

What about Vsampler 2.75?

From a functional (and maybe also technical) point of view it seems to be a good one (the only softsampler treating SF2 "natively" for instance), but back when I tried it, it was a bit inefficient (voice count etc.) compared to HALion and the EXS, plus I didn't like the GUI at all (but that's defenitely a matter of getting used to it).
I also found it to be a drawback that it's Win-only.
Not much of a problem for most of my own stuff, but as a) samplers are my most used instruments and b) I'm transferring stuff back and fourth between platforms this is an important point for me.

[Crossinger]

You just need to save your patch anyways when moving things to get the sample content with you as well. And as the only proper place to save patches to would be song folders it simply doesn't make any difference whether I just save an instrument definition file along with some sample folder or a single proprietary patch.

1. Seems to be a misunderstanding. From your original posting I deduced that the sample pool is *elsewhere* on your HD and for each new project you re-collect the files together into a new instrument patch for the sampler. E.g.:

Bass Drum: d:\audio\coolstuff\drums\bd\kick1.wav
Snare: f:\misc\samplelib\drumkits\909\sd2.wav

and so on...

Now - and only with the instrument file - moving tracks to another PC is a p.i.t.a.

I have learned to love Tracktion's archive file format which exports each snippet of audio into one single file, no matter where it comes from. Seems to be standard now with samplers, too.

Oh yes, of course there's allways dumb people only saving the instrument file without the samples... but those should perhaps stay away from digital audio anyways.

Last time I was dealing with sampling plugins, this kind of saving patches was the only one. I always had to collect the matching wav files manually. To be honest: that was years ago!

So when I discovered DS-404 it looked pretty much like what I was missing before.

Ok, I'll shut up now...

[Klemperer]

I cannot tell much about standards as I don't own Halion or Kontakt etc so the following is a bit beside the point.
What I like is, or rather was, that the own DS404-format was necessary to play some really good sounds from Scot Solida and TEG, the electronic garden. (Comes with CM-mag sometimes, new sounds). If someone liked those sounds and banks it isn't important though to use DS404 because of THAT, as Reason- Kontakt- and Halion-formats are shipped with the DS404s since quite a time.

DS404 can't seem to load 24bit-files, which may annoy some people. Not me with my still crappy soundcard and so on, he he.

I see the DS404 always connected with the sounds I get for it, and they are aplenty. And with Awave studio (well not cheap) or the ever growing VSTI-dumper you can always convert those files to sf2 or wav or other formats.

[Sascha Franck]

1. Seems to be a misunderstanding. From your original posting I deduced that the sample pool is *elsewhere* on your HD and for each new project you re-collect the files together into a new instrument patch for the sampler. E.g.:

Bass Drum: d:\audio\coolstuff\drums\bd\kick1.wav
Snare: f:\misc\samplelib\drumkits\909\sd2.wav

Yes, that's pretty much my organisation (apart from that I'm keeping all samples on a dedicated partition).
OK, now let's just agree that while keeping things on a single machine there's gonna be no problems at all.

But then, let's start to move things to another computer (no matter whether it's PC or Mac, no matter wether it's my own or not, no matter whether it's using the same sequencer and plugins).

I will gladly stick to your drum example.
To prepare a flawless transition I will most likely:
- "Consolidate" all audio tracks, either by individually bouncing all of them to full length tracks, by bouncing parts and indexing them with bar numbers or by exporting an OMF file.
- "Burn in" certain effects that the target computer may not have installed (example: a sliced loop running through Intakt).
- Save all sample based plugin patches.

Scenario #1: Target computer won't have DS404 installed. How to get my drumsamples into, say, DR-008 then (which might be installed)? Impossible, unless the target computer has some conversion utility installed.
Scenario #2: I'd like to load the occasional sample out of my DS404 patch into something else. Again impossible, unless I either "bounce the sample out" or have a conversion utility installed again.

Either way, things aren't comfortable. When using another sampler instead, I would just save the instrument definition along with the samples and just have access to them in whatever other sampler.

Now - and only with the instrument file - moving tracks to another PC is a p.i.t.a.

No. All samplers offer an option to ONLY save the instrument definition or BOTH instrument definition AND samples into one convenient location (your song folder that is). Kontakt and DR-008 even offer a proprietary format in addition too - so you can just do it in whatever way you want.

I have learned to love Tracktion's archive file format which exports each snippet of audio into one single file, no matter where it comes from. Seems to be standard now with samplers, too.

Again no - standard for samplers is instrument definition plus a "consolidated" sample folder.
As said above, NI's things and DR-008 offer a one-single-file solution in addition.
And no matter how you put it, that's the most convenient solution as it just offers all options.

[Crossinger]

Sascha,

Thank you for your thoughtful and comprehensive explanations. Seems like I'll have to re-think my current organisation. Plus: It's time to have a closer look to the current top notch product palette of sampler-plugins... I'll have to update my (lack of) knowledge.

Thanks again!

Regards,

J.

[SampleScience]

Yep, the GUI is very unintuitive. That said, it a very good sampler that I like to use with multi-samples, plus you can download many free patches for it at the Computer Music website.

I couldn't find the link, any hints?

ftp://ftp.futurenet.co.uk/Pub/computermusic/ds404/

Edit:

The link doesn't work CM seems to have removed the patches.

[Muon Software Ltd]

try this:-

ftp://ftp.futurenet.co.uk/pub/computermusic/ds404/

note the slight change of case.

Cheers
Dave

[SampleScience]

Thanks!

[AudioWhore]

I dont care if it was the most usable sampler in the world, it uses more cpu than all the others.. nuff said

[Muon Software Ltd]

it uses more cpu than all the others

Compared to exactly which other free multi-timbral fully-feaured samplers?

If of course you're comparing a free plugin like DS404 to something like HALion or Kontakt on the other hand, well, there is a tendancy in this market to get what you pay for...

[Amberience]

I don't care if its free, its crap compared to every other sampler I've tried, and I've tried a LOT.

I've settled with the sampler inside of EnergyXT however, because its very light on the CPU, its GUI is very friendly towards the user, and it has features that rival all the other samplers - velocity zones, groups, four very useable filters, modulation sources GALORE too!!

Now... put XT up against DS404.

DS404 costs £5.50 for the magazine.
XT costs £20 approximately.

DS404 is a shoddily made sampler that hogs the CPU, has a clunky interface that is difficult to work with, and to use any of its patches you need a convertor.

With XT you get not only a kickass sampler, but you get a whole host of modular tools: envelopes, midi parts, audio parts, sequencers, and chord/arppegiator tools. XT loads as a VSTi in your host of choice as well as functioning standalone, so you don't need a conversion tool to use its patches, just load it up as a VSTi (granted you can do this with DS404 too)

Even for the price XT is worth it alone just for the sampler.

[Muon Software Ltd]

DS404 is a shoddily made sampler

Specific criticism, with strong grounds, is healthy and I'm all for it - we all need it. It's also OK to say that you don't like something, or it doesn't do what you want it to do, or even that something is full of bugs when it clearly is.

But for a user to describe a piece of software as "shoddily made" is just plain daft. You have no clue how it was made. You can't see the "moving parts" in there.

So is DS404 buggy and therefore shoddy? apart from an issue with a host that was coded long after DS404 was finished, DS404's service history here shows that it could not realistically be described as "buggy". When you take into account the fact that 25,000 copies of DS404 are shipped every month even if only 1% of those copies actually get installed, that's still a whole shitload of potential bug reports if the software truly were buggy. I can count the number of actual bug bona-fide reports on one hand since the last version. So the overwhelming indisputable evidence is that DS404 is not buggy and therefore not a "shoddy" piece of software.

I'm glad you like Energy XT's sampler - it's a fine, commercial product. However, the price you pay for CM is the price of the magazine - it would be that price if DS404 was on the CD or not. So you got a £5.50 magazine and a free sampler plugin. How on earth is it rational to compare a one-off free plugin against a continuously developed and improved commercial product?

DS404 was designed with tutorials in mind - if your needs ever expand beyond what it offers you are supposed to go and find another sampler that works for you and does what you need. It is an introduction, a taster, nothing more. Complaining that it isn't all singing and all dancing is like complaining to the waiter in a restaurant that your starter didn't fill you up!

Honestly, I do really despair with the kind of ridiculous, baseless criticism that developers are supposed to stomach on this website. Where does it end? no wonder developers come into this business, fired up with enthusiasm, end up as broken, cynical shells of their former selves. The hours are long, the financial rewards are scant and there's always an asshole to deal with around the next corner

Good day, KVR