A hard sampler user wants to GO soft !

[93143]

>>The emulator X is a great sampler, if you have a 8Ghz pc. It eats cpu cycles like nothing else i have ever used, about 34 voices on my amd 3ghz, and thats with no filters on the voices.<<

I use Emulator X, and I haven't seen extreme trouble with CPU use. It does use a fair bit of power, but I've had it up past 100 voices, with filtering, on a P4 3GHz. Were you running with very low ASIO latency? Disk streaming as well as features such as crossfade and chorus could impact performance as well.

Overall I like it. It's very good for modulating/filtering, and the pitch shifting is excellent. On the other hand, currently it's difficult to use for breakbeats (so I'm told...).

Note: Currently there's trouble with MIDI jitter using Emulator X; it increases with ASIO latency. A fix is supposed to be ready by the middle of this month.

[alvakorn]

Seems Cowby is interested beat slicing in particular.

I would recommend Kontakt or Intakt.
Does beat slicing. The Kontakt NKI format seems to be dominating the landscape now. Kontakt 1.53 is quite solid and functional. Sometimes I prefer Intakt when I feel like using a simpler interface

Shortcircuit: haven't used it but it seems to have a good reputation - new kid on the block tho... Does it do beat slicing itself? I see that it does read rex files.

Halion: Good sampler, no beat slicing. I used to use it, but kind of gave up on it when Kontakt matured.

Mach Five and emulator X: Don't know, but they generally aren't as well regarded as Kontakt and Halion.

Sampletank: More of a Rompler. Not good for chopping up beats

[alvakorn]

double post

[zvon]

Maybe you've already received more advice than you want.

But I would like to put a good word for Vsampler 3. It's not that expensive, it can load a lot of formats and has a nice features. It does beat slicing but I have not really tried it yet as I do my beat slicing in Dicer.

The main drawback of Vsampler is that it's lacking a thorough manual. But I found it fairly easy to use.

[useruseruser]

Beat slicing? Yes: Intakt.

I love especially this tool for slicing some loops, exporting the resulting MIDI file with the mapping and tweaking (re-arranging and exchanging) the note positions and samples manually as needed.

This works fantastic.

Also love the tweaking of filter and effect parameters "per slice" with Intact. Makes completely new drum maps out of any loop on the fly ...

[Just Float]

Sorry if I'm annoying but why is loop slicing such a big deal? I assume loops are little audio files of a drum beat? Don't people make their own beats? So why such a need to slice them up if you could just program them differently?

[alvakorn]

Slicing is a way of taking a sampled loop and gaining more control over the tempo and feel of the beat. With 'old skool' beat sampling, you can pretty much only change the tempo of the beat by pitching it up or down, which also changes the tuning of the beat. With beat slicing, each individual hit in the beat is cut into its own sample and triggered independantly. Now you can:
-change the tempo without changing the pitch
-change the pitch without changing the tempo
-quantize the beat or change the feel (from swing to straight, etc.)
-omit or add to any part of the beat, etc.

and much more

[cowby]

All,

Thanks for spending time to discuss this topic. Last night (my time), I've tried the demo of Vsampler. Love it as it is very simple to use, pretty self-contained package including filters, effects, slicing etc .... But other big names that we've mentioned come with a pretty huge lib. so the user can make music at no time. Kontact 2.0 is a bit over-budget. Intackt .... I've tried the other night and also have positive comment on it.

Tonight, I will try Shortcircuit.

Thanks!

Cowby

[lawapa]

You could try the SFZ. It's a soundfont player with a kickass audio engine. It's free and has a new editor the SFZed once you drop a dime for a sample converter the whole world of sampling is at your fingertips. So just about any sample format is yours. This opens the door for free sets and allows you to pick and chose. And manageing your collection on a computer is a piece of cake. The free SFZ is at rgcaudio on this site.

[osofaux]

Also, if you're into mangling and manipulation of sounds, check out shortcircuit. Download the free (but polyphony and instance limited) version at http://www.vemberaudio.com

I second this recommendation. I have Kontakt, but I find myself going to shortcircuit first when I want to mangle sounds. I am still only on the demo, but as soon as I can get the cash together, I will get the full version. I would check it out if I were you.

Looks as if there may be a group buy for shortcircuit in the works :

http://forum.vemberaudio.com/viewtopic.php?t=102

[Bassballjg]

All,

Thanks for spending time to discuss this topic. Last night (my time), I've tried the demo of Vsampler. Love it as it is very simple to use, pretty self-contained package including filters, effects, slicing etc .... But other big names that we've mentioned come with a pretty huge lib. so the user can make music at no time. Kontact 2.0 is a bit over-budget. Intackt .... I've tried the other night and also have positive comment on it.

Tonight, I will try Shortcircuit.

Thanks!

Cowby

Remember that VSampler will play sf2, so there's lots of content available. It also imports Akai, Giga, Halion and Emu, so you can buy libraries as you go. I recommend Sonic Reality, which is of course best known for its affiliation with ST2 but its multi-format Sonik Capsules are excellent and inexpensive. They will also be relaunching sometime their Sonic Station library which has a lot in common with Sonic Synth 1 content wise, literaly and as a measure of quality. Also, their Modern Songwriter Akai disc is brilliant for its diversity, it is one of my own mainstays.

I think that the editing software Awave will translate from Yamaha A series to a number of formats including sf2 so you can use the Yamaha library in VSampler. It is $130, less than the difference between VSampler and Kontakt and a bargain if thought of as the price for the 9 cd Yamaha library.

[Bassballjg]

By the way:

http://www.dangerousbear.com/freeware.html

[thynctank]

Definitely keep an eye on ShortCircuit. While it's limited in a few ways, its ease of use has it miles ahead of the competition. I played with the demo for all of an hour before I was convinced this was the softsampler for me.

I'm coming from programming on an Akai S5000, and this is very similar in terms of mod routing (though the mod matrix scheme is much easier to manage than the menus of the s5k or the dropdown boxes and knobs of akSys IMO)

Excellent software, can't say enough good things about it.

-tank.

[TotcProductions]

Kontakt dude.....that's all there is to it. The interface takes a while to get used to...but once you figure out how to use it through and through....it's great!.

Halion is pretty quick and easy IMO...and it's got that waldorf filter section.....but i switched coz it just doesn't have as much feature wise as kontakt.

peace!

[AudioWhore]

The emulator X is a great sampler, if you have a 8Ghz pc. It eats cpu cycles like nothing else i have ever used, about 34 voices on my amd 3ghz, and thats with no filters on the voices. I wasn't impressed at all.

Interesting read. Thats enough info for me to know its not worth getting. Cheers They probably didn't code it with SSE2 instructions in mind.. Maybe too slack 'dem coders.. But I want those EMU filters Maybe I have to buy a cheep Emulator sampler!