How long is a piece of string?niktu wrote:I would luv to hear some other perspectives on RRs and the every-note-sampled approach for keyboard/synth instruments.
It all depends on the instrument. If someone was to commission me to sample a monster string quartet that'll be featured in isolation in movie soundtracks (and charging a wodge of money for it), I'd do it chromatically and in great detail. On the other hand, if it's just a string pad that's likely to be buried in a pop song mix, I might do every minor third. For some of the hardware manufacturers I worked with, done stuff less than that.
And for some noises, I might do one sample covering the entire keyboard range.... or maybe every 5th, maybe smoothing the transitions between the samples with a hint of positional crossfade.
It all depends on what it is and the application it will be used in. And the price it will be sold at - something for £300 requires more detail, perhaps, than something for a fiver!
It is kind of amusing that some of the revered samples people want today were a few kilobytes in length, 8- or 12-bit with a 32kHz sample rate (if that) and spanned the entire keyboard range. The aforementioned M1 had 2Mb (or was it 4Mb?) of ROM yet people still love those sounds.
And I am always tickled when people sample things like the old LinnDrum at 96kHz, 24-bit, with round robin and multiple velocity zones - the thing had a dodgy 10kHz bandwidth, 8-bit, simply re-triggered the same sample and had a dynamic range of 2 ... on or off! The whole lot was crammed into about 100kb of ROM on separate chips ... and then you see a 96/24, 4Gb library of it released! Makes me giggle
Cheers,
Stephen
