sampler

hey dudes

i have some money to spend and i am thinking of getting some sort of sampler. i have been contemplating some sort of roland (sp 555) or an electribe. i want to get some opinions on these samplers, to get suggestions on which of these would be better, or if i should get something else altogether. i am trying to keep the computer out of the process so i am not considering software stuff. whatever i choose for this is going to be my central device for the music i am going to be making, so hopefully i will be able to find one that is capable of many things.

MPC-1000 & JJOS

yeah, get an Akai MPC

really? could you explain a bit why those are better?

also does anyone have any experience with the electribe emx 1? i would like to hear about that

NI Maschine

allright thanks for the suggestions guys. could i get some opinions on why you think the sampler mentioned are good? or why they are better than the others listed?

MPCs are pretty much unanimously thought of as about the most intuitive and versatile samplers you can buy. the basic design has been around for years and is very easy to use and quickly put down ideas. they are a modern classic, offer loads of wicked features and ways to manipulate and arrange your samples, and are used by "professionals".

Maschine = MPC + VSTi

Like an MPC that has all of the power/memory of your computer... plus it can be loaded as a VSTi (multiple instances) within any host (e.g. Ableton).

cool. right now i like the look of the mpc 1000. as i said the computer thing isn't really what i am interested in. i don't find it to give me that creative energy when i am making music with it, which is why i am looking for something that does not use the computer. of course when i am finished making my music i will put it on the computer to give it those finishing touches and add stuff that i wouldn't be able to, but it is not the central focus for me.

what are the effects like on the mpc? i have heard that the roland has good ones, also, how would the mpc 1000 fare when used in a live setting?

MPC's are wicked for live playing! there's some good videos on YouTube of people jamming with them live... the built in effects are pretty good by all accounts - nothing amazing, just standard built in FX, but usable and fun... i really wouldn't bother with the Roland SP555....not if you can afford an MPC anyway...

cool i have researched a bit and i like it a lot. i wish the buttons would light up though. oh well maybe i will put stickers on them :)

(wouldn't let me edit the other post so i had to make a new one, sorry for double posts)

i am also wondering about drum machines. i don't know much at all about them, i would like to acquire one that is capable of doing sweet idm beats? that sounds silly i know and people don't like things to be described in that way but that is how i am going to describe it. i want to be able to make sweet idm beats with my drum machine and sampler. i have seen the xr 20 i think it is called? by roland i believe. it has these nice buttons that light up. but i heard it wasn't very good. what would you recommend? i would like to see ones that are good and have some research into them. i want to be able to import my own drum sounds into there and edit the heck out of them and make them sound sweet and i want the pitch to go up and down like crazy and i want to be able to have a bunch of things happening at once with different effects on all of them. is there such a device that can do these things? also it would be a bonus if the buttons lit up :)

you can't really get a drum machine that will do what you want "out of the box", unless you can perhaps find a circuit bent old 80's one with a load of random glitches bent into it. most of that IDM beats sound is done with effects and post production tweaks. so you could get any drum machine and sample each individual hit, import that into your sampler and fuck it up with effects and pitch shifts etc from your sampler....

ah so you can do that kind of stuff in the sampler? like lets say i want to make a song with a crazy wisp-style beat going all crazy all the way through with all that sweet editing and such, would i be able to do that with a drum machine and an mpc 1000 or do you think that kind of work would have to be done in the computer? my goal is to be able to do stuff live without the computer but if i have to cheat and just resample something that i made on comp i dont really mind =p

sorry if my questions are sounding really newb and annoying, i want to get started with this stuff and i don't really have any other resources to find out about these things other than this forum. hope you understand

Wisp style micro editing is probably only achievable using a computer I'm afraid.... You can certainly add effects and pitch changes etc using an Akai MPC for example, but to get the kind of detail and intricacy of Wisp with a hardware sampler alone would be very hard. You can still do loads with just hardware though! Still be able to twist and fuck your beats up a plenty....

allright cool. i am wondering if with an MPC 1000 would i be able to make a drum track in the computer, a few minutes long, for the drums of the song, and then put it into the MPC, and press a button to have it play and then do other stuff over top of it? that would work out nicely if it is possible.

edit - also how much stuff can you do while other stuff is happening. like how many different things can you have playing on top of eachother?

edit 2 - you said that drum machines can't really do complex idmish beats, but what about the song "taking control" by aphex twin ? is that not done with a drum machine? =p

yeah, that's pretty much exactly what you would do with an MPC - make a drum track, sample it, loop it and whack stuff on top of it. no worries there.... you can layer up lots of sounds etc with an MPC as it has a 64 track sequencer.

as for "taking control" indeed yes, the main beat was created on a drum machine (funnily enough), but that beat was then sampled and imported into a computer where the the after effects were added (reverses etc). the track has many more elements than just the beat though....pads, voice samples, bass etc

  On 7/20/2009 at 12:26 PM, BCM said:

Wisp style micro editing is probably only achievable using a computer I'm afraid.... You can certainly add effects and pitch changes etc using an Akai MPC for example, but to get the kind of detail and intricacy of Wisp with a hardware sampler alone would be very hard. You can still do loads with just hardware though! Still be able to twist and fuck your beats up a plenty....

  On 7/14/2009 at 3:01 PM, blicero said:

Maschine = MPC + VSTi

 

Like an MPC that has all of the power/memory of your computer... plus it can be loaded as a VSTi (multiple instances) within any host (e.g. Ableton).

Did you get one blicero? If so how are you liking it? I've had mine since launch day and love it... it's nearly perfect.

FZ-1, so much fun.:) Such a lo-fi filtering sound. Cheap as well.

i have an electribe es 1 ... rather limited rhythm sampler considering all the tweaking you can do in software, BUT it's a hell of lot more fun to pound pads and wrench knobs irl

i'd love to find something that could hold and play more stereo samples, control individual sample decay and fx... know any ye of such a rhythm box?