UVI Falcon - v4 = 2026 released - rumors, ads, praise, kindergarden, auto-sampling and off-topic inside!

[IvyBirds]

No piece of software (inexpensive or expensive) comes close to what the Autosampler plugin in Logic and Mainstage can do. So to present these other "solutions" as a case for "this isn't a big deal and no one should be asking for it" is disingenuous at best.

It would take even the most accomplished sound editor who is intimately familiar with the best tools for crossfade looping samples (e.g., the $500 Wavelab Pro) hours and hours to crossfade loop the samples in an Autosampler-generated EXS instrument that can be created in the time it takes to simply automatically record the samples. Again, NOTHING else even comes in terms of the quality of the results, which are almost always better than what even someone like myself, who had been manually looping samples for 20 years before the release of Redmatica's Autosampler, can do.

Man, how I wish I had Autosampler during those 20 years from 1985 to 2005. These other tools you mention are toys by comparison and absolutely do not do the hardest part of the process. If something similar were added to Falcon, it would arguably be Falcon's best feature.

Welll Sample Robot and Gig Performer most certainly do. Gig Performer Autosamples whatever you want and turns them into presets for Decent Sampler.

Those tools are awesome if your goal is 1:1 samples playback of existing presets and patches from other instruments, but the reality is, if that's your goal it's rather silly to load those in to Falcon, HALion, Kontact or other such tools as that is a lot of CPU and RAM hit for no real benefits

I use Gig Performer and it's Autosampler all the time to make Decent Sampler presets, and use Sample Robot all the time to make presets that load into my Montage M for gigging purposes from other plugins

The major advantage however to making samples in an automatic or semi automatic directly inside a plugin like Falcon is not 1:1 playback but it's taking those samples and doing other things with them using its excellent sample and synthesis engine. I can do that with HALion7, and I wish I could do that in Falcon, simple as that

[Stirner]

Right click the search icon (magnyfing glass) in the tag browser, there is an option to do that

Thank you, this works! (A super hidden option. I would expect it somewhere in the main menu or in the global preferences. Maybe you could consider making the UI more responsive - clickable elements change layout on hover or something like that?)

[Liero]

There's a lot of lazy flippancy in this thread and I don't want to add to that.

I think the post about REAPER being able to do the automatic multisampling was referring to the fact that you could create a project template with chromatically set up midi notes, record whatever output from wherever you send those MIDI notes and use regions and a few automated actions to actually trim at zerocrossings, create loops and render out every note as a separate file. I have a set up like this and even though it does take a moment to create, once it's done I can multisample any instrument with a few clicks while I go make a coffee. The cool thing about doing it in the DAW is that I can create with automation lanes, say, an EQ with a highpass where the highpass cutoff rises with the midi notes so each sample has a hipass just below the note fundamental, things like that. Anyway, glad that Halion and other tools can autosample well too.

Awesome so you have a stack of separate WAV files then what? You will notice it's not in Falcon's priority preset format which was my point

But thanks for the lazy flippancy in explaining that a DAW can make WAV files that you then need to further process and import. I never would have guessed that was the case

How awesome it is to have 264 WAV files and load each one individually into Falcon just to make a patch

It's amazing that as owners of a $300 piece of software we can't honestly talk about it's shortcomings of a major missing feature

[machinesworking]

It's amazing that as owners of a $300 piece of software we can't honestly talk about it's shortcomings of a major missing feature

If UVI came out with a best in class autosampling feature for Falcon I would be happy of course, but if UVI came out with another OK to decent autosampler like I have in at least 4 other applications, I would be unimpressed and annoyed that resources went into something I already have access to x4.

I think that's the main thing, this sort of feature isn't that useful if it's just OK, sort of like how everyone started chasing stem separation and honestly none of the built in to DAWs or RX etc. versions are any better than the free one you can download on Github, actually they're less complex with fewer choices.

It's a bigger conversation but it's why I don't like it when for instance DAWs add in things like mastering limiters, they're never going to be as good as Fabfilter, DMG etc. Give me functions that need to be part of the DAW in order to really work well. The way that a sampler imports samples in, maybe AI could help there for instance?

[IvyBirds]

It's amazing that as owners of a $300 piece of software we can't honestly talk about it's shortcomings of a major missing feature

If UVI came out with a best in class autosampling feature for Falcon I would be happy of course, but if UVI came out with another OK to decent autosampler like I have in at least 4 other applications, I would be unimpressed and annoyed that resources went into something I already have access to x4.

I think that's the main thing, this sort of feature isn't that useful if it's just OK, sort of like how everyone started chasing stem separation and honestly none of the built in to DAWs or RX etc. versions are any better than the free one you can download on Github, actually they're less complex with fewer choices.

It's a bigger conversation but it's why I don't like it when for instance DAWs add in things like mastering limiters, they're never going to be as good as Fabfilter, DMG etc. Give me functions that need to be part of the DAW in order to really work well. The way that a sampler imports samples in, maybe AI could help there for instance?

Not trying to be flippant but what four Autosamplers do you have that perfectly create Falcon formatted presets?

That's the advantage when you put a tool like that into a synth like Falcon, unless the developers really screwed up the implementation of it, when it's finished recording the samples it should create a fully functional patch already in the proper format that can then be tweaked and edited

Falcon had some filter models that I really like, it has some effects that I really like, and has some other tricks that I really like

I can think of multiple things I would like to sample and use those samples inside of it and have done exactly that in the past using a variety of sampling tools. It gets very tedious doing that however so I don't bother

Using one of those tools to create another format like Kontact supposedly works but I have not been impressed when loading homemade Kontact presets made with various Autosamplers either, it's hit or miss and you have to tediously go in and edit

[Hyperbole]

Well your screen name is accurate at least!
Sorry, just joking there.

Hey, if the shoe fits, wear it!

But to your point, if Autosampler is the best to you, then why would you want a very likely inferior version in Falcon? I'm not against Falcon getting auto sampling, but it likely won't be as good as the one in Mainstage, it will only spit out uvi files, and it won't know what to do with REX files. I mean one can hope that they go overboard and it's miles above the rest, but you mentioned Redmatica, you've been in the game long enough to know that's unlikely. I was just pointing out that there are numerous solutions to sampling, you really do not need to have it inside the sampler now that it's all on computers.

My point seems to have gotten lost between all my hyperbolic statements.

I was just trying to say that an autosampling utility that includes the crossfade looping functionality of Redmatica's Keymap software (which was rolled into Rematica's Autosampler v2,) is rare, if not non-existent. So it's a bigger deal than I believe you were portraying it to be.

Regardless, my recommendation is for the sampling industry to coalesce around the EXS as the one "universal" sampler format. Basically, replace low-rent SoundFont 2 and SFZ files with a robust, "modern" (dating back to the 90s) sampler instrument format. And have professional sound designers do their sampling and sound design in Logic's Sampler (EXS). Afterwards, they can load the Autosampler-generated EXS instruments into any other software sampler with excellent results/fidelity to the original EXS instrument – not just key splits and loop points (obviously) but envelop times, LFO rates, filter settings, and even velocity settings and modulation routings. Yes, other software samplers might still feature other filter types and a host of other synthesis capabilities not found in the Logic Sampler/EXS. But the Logic Sampler/EXS would provide a far more robust, "foundational" set of synthesis parameters compared to SoundFonts and SFZ files, which never became a universal sampler instrument standard because the formats are too basic/limited.

In other words (and to your point,) don't have every software sampler developer reinvent the wheel by developing their own Autosampler functionality. In fact, following "my" approach of using Logic Sampler/EXS as the format from and to which all sample instruments are translated, software sampler developers might not even need/want to build their own keymap editor. So, sound designers would use Logic/EXS for sound development and the special features of these other sampler platforms (scripting, etc.) to differentiate the libraries.

Would a lot of sound designers chafe at having to use a Mac and buy Logic? Of course. But they would just need to get over it. The best tool should rightly win in this case. And that is Autosampler. Besides, a base model M4 Mac Mini and Logic is only $800. That's a very wise investment in one's sound design career.

[Hyperbole]

No piece of software (inexpensive or expensive) comes close to what the Autosampler plugin in Logic and Mainstage can do. So to present these other "solutions" as a case for "this isn't a big deal and no one should be asking for it" is disingenuous at best.

It would take even the most accomplished sound editor who is intimately familiar with the best tools for crossfade looping samples (e.g., the $500 Wavelab Pro) hours and hours to crossfade loop the samples in an Autosampler-generated EXS instrument that can be created in the time it takes to simply automatically record the samples. Again, NOTHING else even comes in terms of the quality of the results, which are almost always better than what even someone like myself, who had been manually looping samples for 20 years before the release of Redmatica's Autosampler, can do.

Man, how I wish I had Autosampler during those 20 years from 1985 to 2005. These other tools you mention are toys by comparison and absolutely do not do the hardest part of the process. If something similar were added to Falcon, it would arguably be Falcon's best feature.

Well Sample Robot and Gig Performer most certainly do. Gig Performer Autosamples whatever you want and turns them into presets for Decent Sampler.

There is no comparison between the (poor) quality of crossfade looping in Sample Robot and what Autosampler produces when using its "Penrose Machine" crossfade algorithm. That algorithm can loop the "unloopable" by smoothing out the loop in a very musical way, retaining the motion in the sound while creating seamless loops.

Does Gig Sampler even crossfade sample loops? My understanding is that Deskew Technologies has made a simple utility, The Decent Sampler XML Generator, which can take a folder of samples and turn it into a basic Decent Sampler instrument:

https://gigperformer.com/the-decent-sam ... e-download

Big whoop. And Decent Sampler is a "nothing burger" of a sampler format, from what I can tell. I like the way it is described on the developer page:

Creating samples for Decent Sampler is easy. All you need are some WAV or AIFF files and a text editor.

Great. That text editor "interface" really appeals to my creative side.

Please educate me if I am not "finding the beef" in all this. In all snark-free, seriousness, I would honestly like to know.

[machinesworking]

Not trying to be flippant but what four Autosamplers do you have that perfectly create Falcon formatted presets?

That's the advantage when you put a tool like that into a synth like Falcon, unless the developers really screwed up the implementation of it, when it's finished recording the samples it should create a fully functional patch already in the proper format that can then be tweaked and edited

Translator Pro, it's what all the file format conversions in samplers use. Falcon used to be able to read .exs files, it's not working currently, that's likely because their license to do so is expired and/or the code is old.

Using one of those tools to create another format like Kontact supposedly works but I have not been impressed when loading homemade Kontact presets made with various Autosamplers either, it's hit or miss and you have to tediously go in and edit

Kontakt files are also broken in Falcon it seems, maybe not on Windows if you're lucky?

Yeah, the fact that Falcon went from MachFive3 with it's built in multi format support to not really supporting any other format, at least on Apple Silicon Macs here, gives your grievance more credit for sure! Personally I regularly use the MPC, Falcon, Lives Sampler, and Kontakt, so buying translator Pro 7 made perfect sense.

Truth is though, pretty much any auto sampler, and any conversion might need some tweaking. Still better than nothing, but I would also like Falcon to work with basic unprotected Kontakt files and EXS again.

Personally it makes me glad I bought Translator Pro, people dog that program all the time, but I just don't get it? It's complex, multiple ways to tweak the conversion, and it's fast enough to tweak setting and attempt a few times to get it right if it's not working for you.

[machinesworking]

It should be mentioned that Moss makes a great free sample format converter, but unfortunately .uvi isn't a format that he currently coded into it. Maybe a gofundme to buy him Falcon?

https://www.mossgrabers.de/Software/Con ... hMoss.html

[Hyperbole]

It should be mentioned that Moss makes a great free sample format converter, but unfortunately .uvi isn't a format that he currently coded into it. Maybe a gofundme to buy him Falcon?

https://www.mossgrabers.de/Software/Con ... hMoss.html

I told "Moss" in the ConvertWithMoss thread that he should focus 90% of his attention on the following four software samplers:

EXS (Logic Sampler)
Falcon
HALion
Kontakt

It's fine if he wants to convert sample data and keymaps between lesser-used / less important sampler formats, although I honestly wouldn't bother because, really, who cares? But the one thing he needs to get right is converting the synthesis parameters between the four formats listed above, while using the EXS as the format to which synthesis parameters are "mapped" internally and the format from which synthesis parameters are converted to the destination format.

So to convert a Falcon instrument to a Kontakt instrument, for instance, convert it first "internally" to the EXS and then from the EXS format to Kontakt, but not directly from Falcon to Kontakt. Doing the latter would involve going down a rabbit hole of nearly unlimited parameters and settings to map onto each other. In this way, Moss would always try to improve the conversion accuracy to and from the EXS, because that is where all sample libraries "start" (since Autosampler will be the tool used to create the looped samples and their keymaps).

Unfortunately, the problem with all free utilities of this sort is that the developers of such tools tend to be unmoved by business considerations and will instead work on whatever interests them. That's obviously fine. It's their software, and we should be grateful that it does at least some of the things the important segments of the market require, albeit not particularly well or with any kind of polish or finesse (especially in terms of the UI).

Regardless, it's a shame that Moss seems to be falling in the same trap as Chicken Systems, which seemed intent on supporting every sampler format known to man (most of which were dumb and pointless).

Again, focus on getting everything to and from the EXS, with Falcon 3, HALion 7, and Kontakt 8 the most important source and destination formats (from/to the EXS).

Moss is clearly a smart, talented guy. But he doesn't seem to get it because he hasn't created a commercial product and has no intention of turning it into one. It is what it is.

[Morty-C-137]

It should be mentioned that Moss makes a great free sample format converter, but unfortunately .uvi isn't a format that he currently coded into it. Maybe a gofundme to buy him Falcon?

https://www.mossgrabers.de/Software/Con ... hMoss.html

Hey, cool! Now I can actually get some of my fav Logic autosampled sampler instruments and convert them to SFZ an get them into Serum 2

[IvyBirds]

Regardless, my recommendation is for the sampling industry to coalesce around the EXS as the one "universal" sampler format. Basically, replace low-rent SoundFont 2 and SFZ files with a robust, "modern" (dating back to the 90s) sampler instrument format. And have professional sound designers do their sampling and sound design in Logic's Sampler (EXS).

A universal sampler format would be awesome, having that at the mercy of Apple based on their track record of breaking software and closed wall garden proprietary nonsense is a terrible idea and will never happen

Please educate me if I am not "finding the beef" in all this. In all snark-free, seriousness, I would honestly like to know.

Sample Robot allows me to take a patch I created in either a hardware synth or a software instrument and sample that into a formatted patch that can be played back live inside of my Montage at the gig on a stage at that point I am not really looking to do any further synthesis on it just have playback. I can use it (and did) to take the Chrystal Rhoades patch from my JD9900 and put that inside of my Montage and then play it live on stage and it sounds and behaves exactly like my JD990 was connected via MIDI and playing that patch. It also allows me to move that off my CPU and just have my Montage play it back in a song I am working on in my DAW

Gig Performer is doing the same thing only converting it into Decent Sampler presets. Again by doing that you are not really looking to do any further tweaking or Synthesis, the idea being here is this patch that I made using one or more plugins, that patch is using a ton of CPU and/or RAM so I can sample it and then play it back in a very CPU friendly lightweight way for live performance. There is no beef to find and that is the point.

What you are talking about is using a propriety Autosampler to make patches into Logic's sampler for further processing which is what I am looking to do inside of Falcon. How much of that "Beef" however is nit a function of the Autosampler and how much of that "beef" is the function of Logic Sampler's engine?

Translator Pro, it's what all the file format conversions in samplers use. Falcon used to be able to read .exs files, it's not working currently, that's likely because their license to do so is expired and/or the code is old.

I have Translator Pro, I have had it for quite some time actually

Sadly I don't think UVI wants Falcon to be able to read other formats anymore, I think they just want you to buy their libraries or rent them with Sonic Pass and call it a day

[Hyperbole]

Translator Pro, it's what all the file format conversions in samplers use. Falcon used to be able to read .exs files, it's not working currently, that's likely because their license to do so is expired and/or the code is old.

Actually, the Mach Five "universal sampler" just came bundled with a special version of CDXtract:

http://www.soundlib.com/cdxtract/

The whole "universal sampler" thing was just a gimmick. There was nothing in Mach Five that did the conversions.

Regardless, CDXtract was the bomb back in the day when converting hardware sample libraries to various software sampler formats. In my experience, it worked SO much more reliably than Translator. Sadly, CDXtract doesn't even work on Intel Macs now, let alone Apple Silicon Macs.

Incidentally, Spectrasonics also licensed CDXtract to convert their older Akai and Roland loop libraries to Stylus RMX format (for customers who owned the hardware sampler libraries).

Kontakt, up until version 5, relied on Translator.

I'm not sure what HALion is using. Perhaps they rolled their own EXS and Kontakt import functionality? Or maybe HALion is using Translator under the hood. Whatever they are doing, the EXS conversion works pretty well in my experience. However, I haven't tried loading any deeply-sampled Kontakt instruments with loads of round robin samples, tons of individual groups, etc. That might not work so well.

[machinesworking]

Sadly I don't think UVI wants Falcon to be able to read other formats anymore, I think they just want you to buy their libraries or rent them with Sonic Pass and call it a day

It's the only downside to UVI taking the license back from MOTU, (who then had to discontinue Mach Five 3), that UVI dropped the translation code in M53 leaving at first only nks and exs translations, but I just tried opening an exs patch in Falcon, no go.

I have Translator Pro, I have had it for quite some time actually

There's an autosampler in 7. I'm in general pretty happy with it, it converted old NI Kompact files to MPC etc. I have need to convert from exs, mpc, nki, to Abletons Sampler, and it fills the void for autosampling to uvi.

[Hyperbole]

A universal sampler format would be awesome, having that at the mercy of Apple based on their track record of breaking software and closed wall garden proprietary nonsense is a terrible idea and will never happen.

Yes, given Apple's well-documented history of dropping support for various technologies and applications with absolutely no regard for their customers, it *might* be risky to make a long-term bet on Logic Samper / EXS. But I can't see Apple stopping support for Logic (and Logic Sampler), at least not in my lifetime. Or at least not until AIs make creating music "the old-fashioned way," with humans using DAWs and plugins, irrelevant. Sadly, that's probably not too far off.

But back to your point: Apple could have made SoundDiver (even if it was Mac-only) the one "universal sound editor/librarian" that worked with nearly all hardware synth but they dropped it and screwed over long-time customers such as myself. I am still seething with barely contained rage over that. Joking aside, that really did put a major kink in my workflow as I relied on SoundDiver to manage the patch libraries for over 20 hardware synths.

What you are talking about is using a propriety Autosampler to make patches into Logic's sampler for further processing which is what I am looking to do inside of Falcon.

Actually, I am loading EXS instruments into HALion, my main sampler. Even if I still used Logic, I would probably use HALion over Logic Sampler because HALion features lots of other synthesis types as well as built-in FX. I suppose I'm lucky that HALion does a good job of reading EXS instruments (at least for now).

I don't know what to tell you regarding Falcon. I suppose keep lobbying UVI to include support for loading EXS instruments? Until then, you could always use ConvertWithMoss to convert EXS instruments into SoundFont 2 or SFZ instruments and then load those into Falcon, which I believe still supports. Correct me if I am wrong, though.

Or just bail on Falcon as I have done and use HALion. I honestly like HALion better, anyway. But I understand how someone could prefer Falcon.

Sadly I don't think UVI wants Falcon to be able to read other formats anymore, I think they just want you to buy their libraries or rent them with Sonic Pass and call it a day

This seems to be what's going on. Or maybe Falcon was relying on CDXtract code that simply stopped working in the latest versions of Falcon. Or maybe they had switched to Translator and no longer have a license from Chicken Systems.