hardware vs. software samplers

i was looking at a Roland SP-555 today, and it has some cool features, but i'm wondering how many of those can't be found in the bundled samplers in Ableton or Reason. that v-beam thing is cool, but seems like it only does a couple of theremin sounding effects over and over. i'm old school when it comes to having gear in front of me, as opposed to clicking a mouse, but $700 for a new product that i'm thinking has already been bested by daw applications is kinda iffy.

aye but can you put a price on getting away from a computer?

$700 is way too much for the 555 but i'm a tight bastard

KORG ESX for the win.

in this day and age, i frankly don't know why someone would want to use a hardware sampler. they're digital after all, so why bother?

unless you like the specific sound of an individual box (the akai s series springs instantly to mind).

each to their own i guess.

yeah, no real point to getting a hardware sampler unless it's an AKAI S2000 - you can pick them up now for about £150.

V-beam is garbage.  I have the Fantom X8, and I will tell you that the addition of the V-beam is not much better than garbage.  The Fantom is garbage, for that matter, although I hadn't thought of connecting the effects to the sampler using the V-beam . . . I might have to try that.

lol everything roland has made after the JP8000 is completely shit. don't get me wrong - i love older roland gear, but all their newer stuff is basically the same DSP chip in various different boxes and they all sound the same - cheap, thin and boring.

Well I bought it back when I was 19 or 20, and now it has become one of those expensive things that sit in the corner holding up dust and when I look at it I think "God, that was such a waste." Just talking about it makes me want to sell it.

I have asn ESXwhich I love ... but software samplers don't really have time/space constraints

I've been thinking really seriously about ditching software, and selling off a lot of midi controllers for an MPC.

I started on an Ensoniq ESQ-1, and then moved to soft samplers. I have a SP-303, but it is too limited.

I think the appeal for me is that software has too many options. it's distracting. i find myself spending hours toying with fx and filters and synths, etc... and never producing a finished song.

i need to simplify my creative process. turntable, MPC, computer.

  OneToThirtySix said:

Well I bought it back when I was 19 or 20, and now it has become one of those expensive things that sit in the corner holding up dust and when I look at it I think "God, that was such a waste." Just talking about it makes me want to sell it.

yeah, sell the fucker and get some old analogue thing.

  blicero said:

i find myself spending hours toying with fx and filters and synths, etc... and never producing a finished song.

  BCM said:

yeah, sell the fucker and get some old analogue thing.

The money would actually go towards Christmas presents and trucking school, which would be how I would get the old analogue thing.  Probably a moog of sorts.

The thing about hardware samplers is their sample rate may not be so great, but of course I don't have any numbers.

If you play live shows, then a hardware sampler that can go as high as 96KHz would be quite nice, but software samplers can go even higher (and of course it all depends on the sample rate of your samples, lol), so in the end I think it'd be more worth it to get something for free than something that may only benefit you in a live environment.

  Rubin Farr said:

i was looking at a Roland SP-555 today, and it has some cool features, but i'm wondering how many of those can't be found in the bundled samplers in Ableton or Reason. that v-beam thing is cool, but seems like it only does a couple of theremin sounding effects over and over. i'm old school when it comes to having gear in front of me, as opposed to clicking a mouse, but $700 for a new product that i'm thinking has already been bested by daw applications is kinda iffy.

there's gear that samples, but also does a lot more. check out something like the mpc1000... which samples, but also sequences midi, gives you some drum pads etc. i can justify that... but not a sampler that's just... a sampler, and nothing else.

  blicero said:

i find myself spending hours toying with fx and filters and synths, etc... and never producing a finished song.

i am so with you on this

If you make a plan for a track and can tell what types of frequencies is needed you can avoid that problem, but of course, I think some people don't like my tracks because I don't use enough effects, lol.

  Tamas said:

If you make a plan for a track and can tell what types of frequencies is needed you can avoid that problem, but of course, I think some people don't like my tracks because I don't use enough effects, lol.

were you replying to my post??? does not compute

seriously, it's not a PROBLEM problem -- it's heaven for me playing around with all my gizmos, i only start to feel bad about not really doing that many tracks when i talk to other people.

  hahathhat said:

  Tamas said:

If you make a plan for a track and can tell what types of frequencies is needed you can avoid that problem, but of course, I think some people don't like my tracks because I don't use enough effects, lol.

 

were you replying to my post??? does not compute

 

 

seriously, it's not a PROBLEM problem -- it's heaven for me playing around with all my gizmos, i only start to feel bad about not really doing that many tracks when i talk to other people.

Yeahhh nooo don't take it the wrong way, I was replying to blicero, while I think obviously hardware can do it in this case (depending on the capabilities of the sample rate of course), but the software option shouldn't be ruled out especially if you're not playing live shows...

I think the biggest factor for the software debate is just that. Because stability will always be a problem, no matter the speed of the system (in fact, some newer hardware synths run on software which can potentially crash as well), software would be a bad choice for a live setting, but otherwise, for making music, software is a good route.

  Tamas said:

  hahathhat said:

  Tamas said:

If you make a plan for a track and can tell what types of frequencies is needed you can avoid that problem, but of course, I think some people don't like my tracks because I don't use enough effects, lol.

 

were you replying to my post??? does not compute

 

 

seriously, it's not a PROBLEM problem -- it's heaven for me playing around with all my gizmos, i only start to feel bad about not really doing that many tracks when i talk to other people.

 

Yeahhh nooo don't take it the wrong way, I was replying to blicero, while I think obviously hardware can do it in this case (depending on the capabilities of the sample rate of course), but the software option shouldn't be ruled out especially if you're not playing live shows...

 

I think the biggest factor for the software debate is just that. Because stability will always be a problem, no matter the speed of the system (in fact, some newer hardware synths run on software which can potentially crash as well), software would be a bad choice for a live setting, but otherwise, for making music, software is a good route.

does that have anything to do with my post at all???

Yes lol I was answering your first question, and then I decided to elaborate on what I said.

i have/used to use an emu e4xt sampler, and love the hell out of it. it sounds incredible and the filters cannot be matched. it's just such a pain in the ass to use compared to kontakt or some other softsampler where you can organize sounds so quickly to get down to actually making music.

i've also thought of just getting an mpc and doing everything with that trying to simplify, but i guess i should probably just stick to software and try to get really good with it.

I have an old fully expanded Emu ESI-32 that I haven't used in years. The screen went weird, and I can't be bothered to fix it. I think it's currently worth forty-seven cents or so.

  Tamas said:

The thing about hardware samplers is their sample rate may not be so great, but of course I don't have any numbers.

 

If you play live shows, then a hardware sampler that can go as high as 96KHz would be quite nice, but software samplers can go even higher (and of course it all depends on the sample rate of your samples, lol), so in the end I think it'd be more worth it to get something for free than something that may only benefit you in a live environment.

audio fidelity is for fags.

and richard devine.

i actually know the guy that invented the D-Beam (it's D-Beam, not V-Beam) and Roland fucking ripped him off and didn't give him the credit or the money that he deserved for it.

for a while, he was selling an independent midi controler that he called the Eyeris, which was basically just a stand alone D-Beam that had midi out. i used to have one and used it to control devices in Reason. it was pretty cool.

he's got a new product out that's doing really well. I hope he's making a killing because he's really fucking smart and deserves it. here's his cite:

http://synesthesiacorp.com/

  blicero said:

  Tamas said:

The thing about hardware samplers is their sample rate may not be so great, but of course I don't have any numbers.

 

If you play live shows, then a hardware sampler that can go as high as 96KHz would be quite nice, but software samplers can go even higher (and of course it all depends on the sample rate of your samples, lol), so in the end I think it'd be more worth it to get something for free than something that may only benefit you in a live environment.

 

audio fidelity is for fags.

 

and richard devine.

Lol well if you're using any digital hardware/software, good luck having it sound decent at 44kHz. But I guess if you're just doing it for fun and don't want to release anything on a label then it's ok.

  Tamas said:

Lol well if you're using any digital hardware/software, good luck having it sound decent at 44kHz. But I guess if you're just doing it for fun and don't want to release anything on a label then it's ok.

What is this shitcockery? Probably 99.95% of all sampled material that has ever appeared on a published release was sampled at 44k or below. Christ, look at all of the solid gold hits churned out of grungy-ass SP1200s and MPC60s. I don't doubt there are instances where having a much higher sample rate could conceivably sounds better than "CD quality", but you're deluding yourself if you think sampling at >96kHz is gonna be some kind of magic bullet, and the record will clearly show that it is far from a pre-requisite. Unless you're sampling dolphins for the soundtrack to an IMAX documentary, that extra bandwidth is not going to mean jack shit.

Hardware samplers are instruments unto themselves, and like any instrument they can take a little coaxing to yield the best results. I think that generally Akai's digital filters sound like shit, but listening to some old Amon Tobin is all the proof you need that one man's trash is another man's sonic treasure. Even my dear old S900 can put out pretty clean sounding drums, and that's at 12-bit, 32kHz sampling.