hi,

i'm looking to buy a sampler but i'm a bit confused in what brand and type best fits my needs, so if you can give me some tips, a big thanks!!

- music style goes towards air, ie a mixture of midi, analogue and acoustic instruments
- i want to record both the analogue synths and accoustic instruments (flute, guitar) and be able to make good loops out of them (typically loops up to 20sec lenght) Issues i face today are that the loops are not perfectly in sync with the strict midi BPM tempo and get out of cue after some loops (because the timestretching not 100% perfect match)
- read wav samples (way too much wavs free on net to neglect and not take advantage of)
- good drum sound / programming (hence the wav files of drummachines)
-effects included which can be tweeked on the spot (if needed using extra controlles s.a. kenton
- spread samples over a keyboard range. both to simulate synths via samples and to pitch up or down a sequence sample (eg bassline) important here is that a sample remains the same length over different keys (so not have the baseline 2 sec longer in a low C then a high C)

these are most of my requirements.

what would you advice me???

thank you

My personal preference are the hardware samplers of old. For me, as someone who loves soft lush filters, the software just doesn't cut it. The E-mu E4 series of samplers has the best sounding digital filters you'll ever here, and they allow you to do all the things that you have described. You can get them for a dime on e-bay now (last time I checked you could get an E-6400 for about $400). Put an RFX card in it and you've got a wicked 32 channel mixer. I've hooked up a controller to mine, and I get all connected to knobs in front of me; vol and pans for 16 audio sampler channels, on each channel I get 4 sends to any of the 12 RFX busses. I also have knobs that control, filter cut, res, envelopes, lfo's etc etc. It's totally wicked. The effects are awesome and you'll save processing power in your computer for stuff that needs less tweaking.

Ganja makes some good points.

If you got the computer hardware for it - you could check out some of the software based samplers
thats out there.
Check out Motu:s Mach Five sampler (as an example) to see if it seems to fit the bill.
I reads a variety of common formats have been given good reviews in magazines.

(there are a bunch of others of course)

Cheers: Dixiechicken

Ooops - I'm sorry - it should be "Genja" of course.

Cheers: Dixiechicken!

That's ok, I like Ganja too