KVR Audio

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:01 am

I just noticed that the Collosus rompler is 32GB.

Is that really necessary? I'm sure the sampling is pristine but in what situation would it be useful to have a GM sound module that size unless you were working in film?

I think romplers are going to get completely out of hand eventually. Perhaps Collosus is a one off but if romplers keep expanding it'll be necessary to have 4x400GB SATA drives just to house several romplers along with any accumulated samples already in our collection. Not to mention storing the growing size of song files as bit rate is increased.

I know there is no one forcing us to buy them but I'm trying to understand why they need to grow so large. Any ideas?

I'd like to know how much storage people here devote to romplers/samples/sound files and what they use to store and archive all this data?

I have 2x200GB SATA drives. Approx 60GB for soundfiles, 50GB for romplers and 80GB samples. This is a rough estimate because over the years I've bought a lot of sample disks and I also have the sample banks that came with the various samplers I've owned. There's a lot of freeware sf2 stuff stored on disk. And samplebanks I've made from hardware synth patches I've created. A lot of this isn't installed.

I usually archive song files on DVD.

Mr. Slater's Parrot · Post by **Mr. Slater's Parrot** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:10 am

According to the spec.s, it covers 160 instruments, many with multiple articulations.

I'll know more when it arrives here (later this week, I hope).

I've got four 250Gb firewire drives dedicated to sample libraries and loops. They aren't full -- yet.

original flipper · Post by **original flipper** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am

HI

I imagine that people up-date their hard-drives in line with the market place I.E. if 32 gig libraries become prominent then 2-400 gig drives become the standard storage size - I agree it's becoming insane, but then it's a feature set driven market.

It won't be long before we see higher capacity DVD's - which will lead to even crazier sized libraries - whatever happened to 1 meg AKAI sample floppies!

Flipper.

tkmattson · Post by **tkmattson** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am

For $1380? Yeah, I'll rush right out for that. Not.

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am

I've got to the point where I've lost track of the samples and rompler patches I own. I've reached saturation point. Maybe Collosus would suit someone who was starting from scratch and wanted loads of instruments in one package. I'm viewing it from a jaded position I suppose.

Mr Slaters Parrot, how do you keep track of all the stuff you have with 1000GB of storage?

Peter Pan · Post by **Peter Pan** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:14 am

I haven't tried it, I'm sure it's good, but I've recently been checking out a couple of rompler demos, and I've come to the conclusion that the size of the libraries have very little, perhaps even nothing to do with the level of quality you'll experience with these instruments.

With just the demos of Sonic synth and Ultrafocus there's many times more samplematerial in mb's than the measly 32mb in the original triton soundbank I have, still that soundbank knocks the shit out of what I'm hearing with these instruments imo.

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:23 am

Peter Pan wrote:I haven't tried it, I'm sure it's good, but I've recently been checking out a couple of rompler demos, and I've come to the conclusion that the size of the libraries have very little, perhaps even nothing to do with the level of quality you'll experience with these instruments.

With just the demos of Sonic synth and Ultrafocus there's many times more samplematerial in mb's than the measly 32mb in the original triton soundbank I have, still that soundbank knocks the shit out of what I'm hearing with these instruments imo.

I think this sums it up. How can synths like Triton manage to sound so good with much smaller sample banks? If Korg, Roland, Yamaha can produce hardware synths that sound so good then why doesn't the same apply to romplers?

I realise hardware plays a part but the quality of soundcards nowdays must at least be as good as ten year old Korg/Roland etc. sample based synths which still sound excellent to my ears.

original flipper · Post by **original flipper** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:26 am

HI

Anyone that has ever had an S&S synth (like myself!) has to wonder what all the 'size' is being used for - my SY85 had like 8 meg of memory with 128 performance pre-sets and 256 voice pre-sets; many of which sounded VERY nice, responded well to velocity and certainly within the performance banks sounded very full, fat and dense.

I would rather get a much more compact sized library that perhaps lacks the extra 20 velocity layers (per note!) but are nevertheless well programmed - I always say that in the context of a layered composition the degree to which a 'good' sound and a 'very good' sound are audible to an audience or indeed yourself is so negligable as to be un-noticable - or perhaps my ears contain an overabundance of wax?

Flipper.

cyanogen · Post by **cyanogen** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:28 am

Colossus appears to be more of a boxed set of existing products (i.e. QL '56 Strat, Hardcore Bass, Ra, Stormdrum, EWQL Symphonic, etc.) Only part of it is be general MIDI, if I understand correctly.

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:32 am

Mr. Slater's Parrot wrote:According to the spec.s, it covers 160 instruments, many with multiple articulations.

I'll know more when it arrives here (later this week, I hope).

I've got four 250Gb firewire drives dedicated to sample libraries and loops. They aren't full -- yet.

If it follows the GM spec then isn't it just like a 32GB version of a Soundblaster or a Roland desktop box? I can't see the purpose of having many articulations of 'Choir Aahs', 'Orchestra Hit', 'Bird Tweet' or 'Lead 5 Charang' for example.

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:37 am

It certainly wan't like this in my day when we were lucky to get a 2MB GM sf2 bank, pay £199 and be grateful for it. Spoilt rotten kids of today are.

Mr. Slater's Parrot · Post by **Mr. Slater's Parrot** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:39 am

munchkin wrote:Mr Slaters Parrot, how do you keep track of all the stuff you have with 1000GB of storage?

I've got one drive that has loop libraries -- mainly acoustic drums and percussion.

Then there are two drives that have Kontakt- and Kompakt-based libraries. These are organized by instrument -- piano, guitars, bass, brass, strings, etc.

Then, there is one drive for other sample libraries like Atmosphere, Trilogy, etc.

Keeping track of it all is a bit of a pain. But, I find it really helpful to have great-sounding instruments with multiple articulations.

toine6 · Post by **toine6** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:39 am

I think it's wwwwaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy overkill. I guess it doesn't hurt anything by having them, and there are those that they will beneifit, but for the most part they're unnessary.

I read an interview with Moby, and for one of his song's these audiophile engineer types (or somewhere along those lines) thought he must have used some amazing sampling or a real expensive grand piano or something on one of his songs, he said something to the effect of "nope, just a cheap general midi piano patch off of a 1980's sound module I own".

Do we really need ever piano note sampled and held for 2 minutes in 32/192 or whatever? It just seems anal as all hell, and only a very limited amount of people are going to utilize the extra that goes into these 50 Gig romplers with 200 instruments. They're not horrible, just not necessary for the average Joe music maker.

Mr. Slater's Parrot · Post by **Mr. Slater's Parrot** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:43 am

Do we really need ever piano note sampled and held for 2 minutes in 32/192 or whatever? It just seems anal as all hell, and only a very limited amount of people are going to utilize the extra that goes into these 50 Gig romplers with 200 instruments. They're not horrible, just not necessary for the average Joe music maker.

OTOH, some of the libraries sound *really* fantastic. And disk drives keep getting bigger and cheaper -- at a pace that's just incredible. So, why not take advantage of the great technology that's available? Besides, it's so much fun!

munchkin · Post by **munchkin** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:53 am

Mr. Slater's Parrot wrote:
Do we really need ever piano note sampled and held for 2 minutes in 32/192 or whatever? It just seems anal as all hell, and only a very limited amount of people are going to utilize the extra that goes into these 50 Gig romplers with 200 instruments. They're not horrible, just not necessary for the average Joe music maker.
OTOH, some of the libraries sound *really* fantastic. And disk drives keep getting bigger and cheaper -- at a pace that's just incredible. So, why not take advantage of the great technology that's available? Besides, it's so much fun!

There's no harm in it if it's what some musicians need but my concern is that rompler devs will create bigger and bigger romplers in order to compete. It's not happening yet but...

Storage may have grown but the speed of data transfer hasn't really improved accordingly. Installing huge soundsets takes ages and back-up is not really feasible with such large amounts of data. I suppose it would be easier to reinstall the original than a back up anyway.

Have Romplers Gone Mad?