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440 Forums _ Samplers _ Greatest Sampler Of All Time

Posted by: lastsound Sun 22 May 2005, 20:47

Hi all, am new to this board, and thought Id start the ball rolling with this question:

which sampler (soft or hardware) gets the coveted `all-time best` award...

it can be personal taste, or general `everyone knows it has to be this one`...

Posted by: lastsound Sun 22 May 2005, 20:48

I'll start the ball rolling...for me personally, it has to be my trusty mpc 2000xl

Posted by: lepetitmartien Sun 22 May 2005, 23:05

Mhmm Emu Ultra family here. But I think there's not one best sampler, but several with different uses. All the crusty 8/12 bits one have an edge too. I just can't stand the Akai way of working/thinking/sounding.

Posted by: lastsound Sun 22 May 2005, 23:40

QUOTE (lepetitmartien @ May 22 2005, 22:05)
Mhmm Emu Ultra family here. But I think there's not one best sampler, but several with different uses. All the crusty 8/12 bits one have an edge too. I just can't stand the Akai way of working/thinking/sounding.

really, thats interesting, out of curiosity, which genre do you produce?

and what exactly is it about the mpcs you dont like?

i come from a rap angle, so i guess my bias towards the mpcs is natural..interesting tho...

Posted by: lepetitmartien Mon 23 May 2005, 02:46

I'm still trying to understand how people can make such un-ergonomic way to do things (note, i'm a graphic designer and part of my jobs are on ergonomics). I hate the automatic sample mapping of the MPCs for one. And Akai samplers i've met just sound crap to my ears. I have no interest whatsoever in the internal MPC sequencer (and it's not the subject).

Now I've found with a friend a way to make a S2000 sound good: direct the outs into a brick-wall analogue opto compressor, it can do marvels to a dispirited drum sample dulled to death once in the Akai.

The inability to correctly and reliably set up a MPC with a sequencer is a pain in the ass too.

For the style I'm more into electronica/acousmatic.
Note: I've still to meet S5000/6000 and Z4/8 samplers.

If only emu could port its cards on mac (SIGH)… cool.gif

Posted by: editbrain Mon 23 May 2005, 22:20

mpc2000 or 1000 and an asr-10

Posted by: johntennant Mon 23 May 2005, 23:32

S3000xl. From leads to bass to drums, it does everything exceptionally well. I use two of these in my live show and on a club system, it blows the pants off of the vinyl.

Next up would be my mpc 2000xl. I use this guy for all my drums in my live show. But if I had to pick one, I'd go for the s3000xl because of the way it sounds.

-J

Posted by: lastsound Tue 24 May 2005, 00:03

QUOTE (lepetitmartien @ May 23 2005, 01:46)
I'm still trying to understand how people can make such un-ergonomic way to do things (note, i'm a graphic designer and part of my jobs are on ergonomics). I hate the automatic sample mapping of the MPCs for one. And Akai samplers i've met just sound crap to my ears. I have no interest whatsoever in the internal MPC sequencer (and it's not the subject).

Now I've found with a friend a way to make a S2000 sound good: direct the outs into a brick-wall analogue opto compressor, it can do marvels to a dispirited drum sample dulled to death once in the Akai.

The inability to correctly and reliably set up a MPC with a sequencer is a pain in the ass too.

For the style I'm more into electronica/acousmatic.
Note: I've still to meet S5000/6000 and Z4/8 samplers.

If only emu could port its cards on mac (SIGH)… cool.gif


LOL, you should work for roland on the side *open mouth pose*

yeah, i guess the mpc layout is a little weak, but as a might have mentioned, coming from a hiphop/sample angle, i must say it was something i was took for granted as a cute failing in the whole `mpc as god` thing that goes on in the rap community...

interesting though lepetitmartien

Posted by: cornutt Tue 24 May 2005, 19:09

I don't know that I have ever encountered any hardware box that I would consider the "ultimate sampler". In the early days, I had occasion to play with the original Emulator and the Ensoniq Mirage, and those definitely weren't it. I wound up eventually buying a Roland S-750, which is a tremendously flexible synth. But, as lastsound hinted it, it's definitely not the last word in terms of user interfaces, and it had some support problems.

The good:
1. Good 16-bit sound, with options for reduced sample rates when needed/wanted.
2. Good filtering and control over amplitude
3. Reponds to poly aftertouch
4. Some really neat graphical editing capabilities, very state-of-the-art at the time (such as the ability to draw an arbitrary waveform with the mouse and loop it).
5. Very flexible sample looping
6. Multi-sampling, cross-fading, and velocity switching was all very advanced for its day.

The bad:
1. Too many menus that do almost the same thing, or do the same thing but in ways just different enough to get you confused.
2. Very complex file system, and although it was good for saving disk space, it wasn't designed to be expandable when bigger disk drives came along.
3. Memory expansion was an afterthought. It required installation of an expensive board, and apparently only a few were produced since only pros were generally able to get them.
4. Certain effects (such as the offline filtering) had so many problems with intermediate-result overflows that they were pretty much unusable.

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 25 May 2005, 01:10

QUOTE (lastsound @ May 24 2005, 01:03)
interesting though lepetitmartien

Your Akai sounds Dull? Make it sound Big! laugh.gif

Posted by: vaal Wed 25 May 2005, 03:55

Ensoniq ASR-10 with http://nav.440network.com/out.php?mmsc=forums&url=http://www.waveboy.com software. Hands down!

Posted by: jmax Wed 25 May 2005, 15:26

I have to vote for the Casio FZ-1. Although it was only 33 mhz, it was 16 bit. The real killer was the nine step ADSR and filter envelopes and that you could use Avalon on the ST to edit the samples.

It also had pretty flexible tuning options as well. I once created a tuning that spread one whole step over the 66 keys.

Posted by: johntennant Wed 25 May 2005, 16:07

now THAT sounds neat. How much memory does it have?

-J

Posted by: lovemusic Fri 8 Jul 2005, 13:56

I saw this topic talking about Samplers, and I have a Big Problem with my old S-50 Roland. I can't start opening the keyboard cause the DRIVER don't read the disquets. This means that my Sampler absoulutley does'nt work.
Would somebody here like to HELP ME and sayng what shal I do, or where to buy another S-50 DRIVER, or even if there are other tecnical possibility to make my S-50 runing???

I would apreciate VERY MUCH any kind information about this.
Hope that someone here in the forum could help me.

Posted by: lovemusic Tue 12 Jul 2005, 14:07

I've been notice that no one is answering me. Does anyone ear about a S-50?

Posted by: Jsegura Tue 12 Jul 2005, 15:56

Mellotron.

Posted by: johntennant Tue 12 Jul 2005, 16:53

Too bad it doesn't have USB support. angry.gif

-J

Posted by: Jsegura Tue 12 Jul 2005, 17:41

Very heavy but very good. biggrin.gif

Posted by: lovemusic Thu 14 Jul 2005, 03:09

Tanks friends for your cooperation! smile.gif

S-50 indeed is very heavy, and with a very short memory sampling, but it's like the Rolls Royce of the 80's Sampler's. In that days, the guys that had a sampler like that, they were always on Top!
It was my first lsampler, my first love, and I did enjoyed so much, doing crazy and incredible things and loops with it, Radio Jingles, Mixs, Music, etc

Now I'm so sad cause Drive dont work!
I'll pay 200 Euros for a new one!

Who wants to help me???

Posted by: Mesrine Sun 30 Oct 2005, 15:30

If your looking for a great warm and clear sound go Emu, i've been using my E4 for ten years and never felt the need for a change...exept when i really needed that filtered bass 90's sound(Blackmoon, Lord Finesse), then you need a S950.
If you want those low fi 12bit drum sounds(Public enemy, cypress hill) then you need a SP12 (or sp1200 if you got budget)...nothing else will do.
If you're into trance and need those agressive filters then you might want to go Akai (anything from S1100 to S6000..exept S2000, that's the worst sampler ever).
If you're into jiggy hip hop (timberland, 36Mafia...), you might want to go with a MPC 3000 (MPC2000 sucks)...it's kinda nice for creativity but anything you do with a MPC you can do with any Emu or Akai.
One thing you need to know:
MACH FIVE can do just about everything all the mentioned above do for 300€

Posted by: lepetitmartien Mon 31 Oct 2005, 05:57

A good trick to make a crappy sounding S2000 sound better on drums is to sort the outs into an analogue opto compressor, the more wall thinking the better. It can make wonders… I use a Publison CL20-C but I'm sure more current ones can do. wink.gif

Posted by: jeroleen Wed 30 Nov 2005, 04:44

I do not want to be insulting but I find it remarkable that anyone would insist on quantifiable differences between hardware sampers in such subtle increments yet finds that a software sampler can "emulate" any one of them. It seems to me that the variables such as the sample, the routing, the gain staging, the filtering, eq, effects etc. make significant differences in these instruments. On the other hand maybe thee is something to it.

To me samplers are quite felxible and the differences are usually more functional than anything else.

Still, the original question had to do wit h the greatest sampler of all time. The answer to me has to be the original Emulator not necessarily for its sound but rather for its impace on the whole field of sampling.

Prior to the Emulator samplers were prohibitively expensive, in the tens of thousands of dollar range. Without the advent of the Emulator, t he Akais, Rolandss, Yamahas would never have existed. Also, if it were not for the failure of the American manurfacturers of samplers the history would provbably look different.

The Emulator is the greatest based on its ability for its time, the time it did come out, the manner in which it was sold, updated etc. and tha manner in which it influenced the art of sampling which in turn defined what a sampler does.

Just my opinion.

Posted by: peabreu Fri 10 Feb 2006, 00:50

The S3000XL is very good for percussion I agree it has a special "punch", but my all time favourite is my beloved Emax 1, analog filters and processing with 8/12 bit samples...precious!!!
Note that I never used the BEST sampler ever... the Emu EIII keyboard, the one with the analog filters...it seems it sounds even better than the emax.
Last, I loved my long gone Ensoniq EPS16 plus..great sound, FX and sequencer.
To finalise, if you want the most powerful but somehow not very straightforward sampler get an Kurzweil K2500 with KDFX or and K2600/2661. They sound very rich, are unbelievably powerful but are somewhat complicated as samplers IMO.

Posted by: NicholasFaith Fri 6 Oct 2006, 22:59

I really can't pick one over the other, they all sound different and are used for different things.
I have and use An Emax se., An Emax II, An EIIIX and E4X Turbo, an Akai S-1100 and a Kurzweil K25000rs. First sampler I used was a fairlight II CMI. It was a beast and I really had nothing to jugde it against. from their I got my own sampler, a SCI prophet 2000, the Emax a SP202 or SU10 (they both were used as scratch pads and were sold off not long after I got them.) Followed with ther kurzweil and everything else.
I use the Emu's and the Kurzweil for things with more of a synthesis based need (filters, lots of modulation routings) The Emu's are Best Suited for bass and low midrange, or anything that makes use of it's filters.
I know the Akai's catch a lot of flack but I find them usefull for things I don't want to change much and play back fairly close to the source material. The Effects can also be used to warp sounds into washes of ambience (think FSOL) playing back drums/loops back and running them through a tube EQ and compressing them makes for a good match. I find the Kurzweil is the real workhorse, it's truly a great synthesizer with the added sampling, you can take a sample and process it through the algorithms and use many types of synthesis to make a sound far more complex then a sample alone could ever yeild.
I'n short., we live in an age of software, in which our favorite and least faorite pieces of sampling hardware has bottomed out in price, so buy a few things and find uses for them all their own.
In closing, I also use a kontakt/Reaktor/trio of macs set up and I always find myself going back to the hardware, sitting on the floor twisting dials, we live in fairly good times.
I have a question for everyone here too, starting off I always sampled from the machines interfaces and as time went by ended up using a few sample editors and then midi-dumps, then scsi dumps.but, Lately even though terribly more time consuming I'm finding myself sampling through the samplers A/D converters and interface more and more. has anyone had a similar situations?

Posted by: Fader8 Tue 10 Oct 2006, 23:00

Well, the Mirage definitely gets my vote! OK, maybe not.

The funny thing about softsamplers is that they're not really samplers at all. I mean, I have EXS and Kontakt2 and they have no facility for actually sampling something. They are convenient at times though. Hardware, on the other hand, can have those wonderful quirks that you get to know and exploit. Even though my K2500RS w/KDFX is aging and I've worn a lot of paint off it, I wouldn't give it up for anything.

A couple of years ago, I sprang for a Kyma system, which is really a hybrid of software/hardware and in some ways could be considered the "ultimate sampler". Watch out, the learning curve makes the Kurz look simple.

But hey, the Mirage, True Grit.

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 11 Oct 2006, 02:25

Trouble is, Mirage floppies can't be replaced…sad.gif sad.gif sad.gif

No floppy, no Mirage… unsure.gif

Posted by: gloriaonley Sat 10 Nov 2012, 05:48

That was a GREAT cup of coffee and I haven't been able to determine who the manufacturer would have been. I bought it right after Christmas 2011. Thanks.


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