Samplers... exs24... Are samplers only for Hip Hop/Techno?

pisces7378

New member
Hey guys,

Although I live in Europe and are bombarded with Techno/pop/hip-hop everyday all day, I have managed to keep a sampler out of my home studio. Well I have a friend that knows a little about them, and he has finally broken me down and sparked my interest. I have e-Magic Logic Audio Platinum and so I am seriously considering going down and buying e-Magic's exs24 software sampler on monday. But I will absolutely not do it unless I have a few questions answered before I do it. Hopefully you guys will help me out a bit before I spend even more money than I already have.

1) Does a sampler have all the same perameters of Midi? What I mean is... once I pop the CD in the CD-Rom of my computer and load in the samples... and I press a key on my keyboard, if I hit the key harder will the sound be louder than if I hit the key softer?

2) I have 128 MB of RAM on my Pent III 933 Mhz PC running Logic Audio Platinum... will 128 MB be able to handle what I will be needing from my sampler? Here is a short discription of what I am trying to do and how I have been doing it so far.

First off, I have a Roland JV 1010 Midi Sound Module thatI controll through a midi keyboard controller. I run it all in through USB with a Midisport 2x2 from midiman. Now for drum tracks what I do is... I create 5 or so midi tracks for the drums. Track one is just high hat, track 2 kick drum, 3 is snare, 4 is toms, 5 cymbal crashes and other percussion sounds etc.... Now I have recently decided to dig a bit deeper than just rock n roll drums. I have been laying down some more beat oriented, bumpin´beats, but keeping them really really open and "unbusy", first with a more hip-hop/techno drum kit... then recording the midi tracks into .wav files and then changing the drum sounds into a more traditional rock drum set and working out a cool beat that complaiments and fits on top of (or along side of, depending on how you see things) and then recording that as a .wav file. This really gives the tracks a cool, past meets future, or Paris meets New York edge.

Now my problem is that my Roland JV 1010 has some alright drum sounds, but to be perfectly honest... you can hear that this sound module costs only around $450-.$475. It does a hell of a lot, but it doesn't really do anything PERFECTLY. I would love to find something that can do everything that I am doing, but with some new, cool, and exciting sounds. Plus I would like to be able to find a cool pre-done drum part and loop it through a few measures so that I might not always have to bang out drum parts for hours and quantisize this and that until I have spent a whole day on one 4 measure drum track.

I realize that this is a heafty post. So if you are still reading then I'd like to buy you a beer. So...
1) Can you quantisize using a sampler?
2) Where can you find samples (sounds and finished drum tracks)?
3) Do these samples sit on your hard drive and eat it up, or are they triggered from somewhere else. This would have to be a damn good system to trigger a "high hat track", a kick drum track, a snare drum track, a tom track, cymbal crash track, and any extra sounds. That seems to be quite a lot of work for a CPU and RAM. What is the story on that?

Sorry for the length of this post, but I assure you that your answer will be MUCH appreciated. By the way, I already posted this same question on the Computer Recording and Soundcards forum and only one guy answered me with about a 3 line answer.

Thanks guys.....

Mike
 
it does all of the above and more.. it's also velocity sensitive.. but what do you mean with quantisize? Quantisizing have to do with midi, logic can quanitisize on its own..
you'll also get filters, which can be staged with midi controllers and shit like that..
128 isn't alot of ram, but it'll most likely do fine.
I would advice you though, to get a real hardware sampler. They are much more powerfull and won't eat up your harddisc and processor. E-MU makes the best ones, then comes yamaha, akai and roland.
You can get samples on the net, and there are tons of cd's with cool percussion sounds on the market, but they are quite expensive. For beat making, a sampler is essential these days..
 
pisces7378 said:
....
1) Does a sampler have all the same perameters of Midi? What I mean is... once I pop the CD in the CD-Rom of my computer and load in the samples... and I press a key on my keyboard, if I hit the key harder will the sound be louder than if I hit the key softer?

2) I have 128 MB of RAM on my Pent III 933 Mhz PC running Logic Audio Platinum... will 128 MB be able to handle what I will be needing from my sampler? Here is a short discription of what I am trying to do and how I have been doing it so far.
....
1) Can you quantisize using a sampler?
2) Where can you find samples (sounds and finished drum tracks)?
3) Do these samples sit on your hard drive and eat it up, or are they triggered from somewhere else. This would have to be a damn good system to trigger a "high hat track", a kick drum track, a snare drum track, a tom track, cymbal crash track, and any extra sounds. That seems to be quite a lot of work for a CPU and RAM. What is the story on that?
Mike
1) Yes.
2)128 is enough, but I would take it up to 256 or 512.
....
1) Yes.
2) Internet or your local music/electronics/recording store.
3) The samples would be in your external sampler, until you track into your computer.

:D
 
Hard vs. Soft

I know that hardware is usually the better way to go than software when it comes to samplers. But I am on a $300 budget and not a $3,000 budget. Plus I would only be using it to generate a fat little back beat or two on a coupl of songs and not muc more. I am not looking to move into total sampledom. just tweek with it and use it where I havebeen lacking in the past.

Now SPINSTERWUN, you wrote... 3) The samples would be in your external sampler, until you track into your computer.

I assume that you are refering to an external hardware sampler.

What about a software sampler. Then where are the samples stored?

Thanks guys...

Mike
 
on your hard disc of course.. :D where else ? (no pun intended)
hehe.. and on your sample cd's
 
I realize that this is a heafty post. So if you are still reading then I'd like to buy you a beer.
i'm soon on my way man:D

u can purchase a used akai or emu at 300EUR at ebay and i suggest it for all your drum instruments except for loops. On loops the EXS-24 is easier to use cause u can drag n drop your sounds quickly.I think u have to have 256MB ram at least to work without studder if you use large loops.
I personally use an EXS24 on (sparely used) loops, my (very) old Akai S3200 on drums and persussions (because the filters are that honest:cool:) and my Kurzweil K2000 rack for all parts that need to be heavily denaturalized and estranged...
 
Software vs. Hardware

But everyone around me tells me that Software is the thing now.

What is the advantage of a hardware sampler? And remember that I would only be using a sampler on a minumal basis.

Mike
 
if u only wanna mess around with drum loops you can use software samplers. If you need to use filters (say lfo-modulated), than no software can beat an old akai monster a emu or a kurzweil. Imagine that the difference between a software synth and a access virus or a Juno 106 are also the filter algorithms (or the analog circuit in case of the Juno)
I think nowadays it's theoretically possible to use these algorithms also on a pc or mac, but companies like the munich based quantec (superbssst reverbs), tc or spl dont produce plugins, because they would be cracked and illegaly distributed within a few hours.

theviennesefiltertweaker
 
true.. and since hardware samplers are dedicated for what they do, they can do it without demanding extra power.. on a pc, you'd have to get a really tough machine to even get a remote resemblense to a real sampler. and you wouldn't get 64 cool and heavy filters and dead on timing..
 
i 4 myself use steinberg recycle for splitting the loops. Recycle can handle the most hw samplers direct via midi or scsi - dump, so the only thing to do is
1.) load your origin into recycle
2.) split and isolate the single parts
3.) load the parts from recycle to your sampler
4.) mess around with midi on your sequencer

voila:cool:
 
yea.. and most samplers (hardware) out there allready got that nice feature build in... some call it cut'n groove, some call it slice and arrange.. shit like that.. it's all the same and a quite powerfull tool...
 
Back
Top