What makes a good sample?

[Xenon20]

Hi

This is probably a bit of a noob question, but what factors decide if a sample is good or bad?

You always hear stuff like "your whole drum loop shits or shines depending on the quality of your source samples", or "good quality samples are a must!".

So how do I go about deciding which of my samples are 'good' or 'bad'?
Obviously sample rate and bit depth of the file is important here but what other factors are there?

Thanks

Xenon

[kbaccki]

Actually, sample rate and bit depth are less of a factor than many other things. I have plenty of 16-bit 22kHz-32kHz samples that I still use all the time. What drives me nuts are things like:

* Shifting stereo image for stereo samples... ugh

* Overdriven recordings... i.e., you clipped the recording, and you still pressed the CD?

* Bad front and back trimming... too much silence, or worse: truncated tails

* Bad loop points

* Unclean recording session... can everybody put their freakin' phones on vibrate, please?

[Xenon20]

Thanks for your reply.

I think I get the jist - well recorded, chopped and functional samples.

Is it a concern if previous processing has been applied to the sample or is it just a question of if its pleasing to the ear? I heard that samples should be clean and unprocessed initially. How do I know if a sample has been processed or not? does it require a trained ear?

[zircon]

If it sounds right, it is right. That's all that matters. There are so many factors involved here that it's impossible to objectively say if a sample is good or bad, not to mention it depends heavily on the context. There are acoustic drum loops that would be horrible for electronic music but perfectly fine for country or rock music. And electronic drum samples that would be amazing for dubstep but not DNB, or DNB but not ambient. When I make music I spend the majority of my time simply auditioning sounds, tweaking, synthesizing and editing to get stuff to sound just right for the track I'm working on.

[kbaccki]

I agree... if it sounds good and fits the context, nothing else really matters. That being said, if you're really interested in ultimate usability, consider producing fully effected and dry versions. You could have a few pre-effected versions of loops w/ compression, chorus, phaser, whatever, that might float some boats... but you could also provide some totally dry versions of the same loops for those that are more likely to need that.

For that matter, consider multi-track loops... something I've seen w/ acoustic drum loops, but not necessarily elsewhere (other than "construction kits")... Take an electronic drum groove and export each element as it's own loop, so one logical loop consists of 5 or 6 or whatever individual WAV files. That way the end user can have total control over mixing the loop elements. Want a long verb tail on just the hand claps? No problem!

[pljones]

As zircon says: what you make of it is what makes it good or bad. You can be banging an empty paper bag with a fork and it can be the perfect sample. Or not.

[darsho]

So how do I go about deciding which of my samples are 'good' or 'bad'?
Obviously sample rate and bit depth of the file is important here but what other factors are there?

I have absolitely no clue what samplerate my drumsamples have and I do not care

Hope this helped