DS-404

There are a load of samplers out there at the moment. When you need dense, crazy sample twisting, no doubt you'd go to Kontakt or VSampler, but for basic sampling duties like your granny use to do with her Emu, DS404 is pretty tough to beat. You're not going to find built in effects, realtime time-stretching or even disk-streaming here, but you WILL find a solid workhorse with a comprehensive set of killer filters. If you have the CM101, Electron, or any other of the excellent Muon offerings, you already know how good that sounds. Well, this time there are a ton of 'em, from the usual low-pass 12 and 24 dB variety to some somewhat esoteric types I've not seen elsewhere. You get a whopping 640 megs of great sounds (some of which are mine!), and all for the cost of a magazine. A few of the sounds had some trouble spots, but CM have already offered downloadable, fixed versions. You get a four page tutorial in the magazine, and an excellent electronic manual, so you ought not to have any trouble getting around. If I have any complaints, it's that I initially found myself trying uselessly to adjust the parameters by scrolling the text values, instead of using the "function keys". I soon got accustomed to the way the interface was set up, and now I find that I can fly across it when programming sounds. In fact, I have more expensive samplers at my disposal, but I find myself coming back to the DS404 for my daily sampling duties. The keymapping is brilliantly implemented, and there are enough synthesis functions to change a sound beyound all recognition. It's multitimbral, and thus you can create some pretty thick layers. Muon's support is always top-notch, but you'll likely not need it. The DS404 is as stable as stonework.

I think the magazine is selling out rapidly, so if you want the sounds included in the extra disk, you'd better get on it. I'm sure, though, that more are to come, and I the sampler itself will be available on future issues.Read Review