Hard or Soft Sampler.

[dannymix]

Im going to get a sampler in the next week, which is best! a Hard sampler like Akai s3000xl or soft sampler like Halion.

 

[VOXVENDOR]

In my opinion, Stick with the Akai.....


The Akai will load E-mu sounds also (if im not mistaken)

 

[MISTERQCUE]

In addition the Akai offers var sampling rates at sampling times!

 

[dannymix]

Can I put a normal IDE HD on a AKAI sampler as well as a normal CD ROM?

Does the Akai samplers have onboard Stereo Effects if not are they exspensive.

 

[Atwork]

I'm pretty sure the effects board has to be bought separately - unless you buy secondhand - and costs about £200. That's definitely the case with the S2000 and I think the S3000XL is the same.

 

[Scriabin]

Go soft... they're much more powerful and able to load many more samples many times faster than their counterparts. And unlike hardware, they're easily updated so you dont have a piece of hardware collecting dust in 5 years. I use halion alot and for the price it is simply amazing. You also might want to check out Kontact which has just started shipping. It's supposed to blow the competition away. Halion load Akai, emu and many other formats also and you get the added bonus of keeping all your work in the same daw environment.

 

[dannymix]

Yea but what kind of latency on my sound card do I need to enable say Halion to work effectivly and how much CPU power is required?

 

[tdukex]

This is the route I'd take:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/CA8823BCBE311E0B86256987008340DE

 

[elevate]

Can I put a normal IDE HD on a AKAI sampler as well as a normal CD ROM?

I used to use an Akai S-5000 and you had to use SCSI drives. What sucks is that there's a 1GB limit - you can put in an 8GB drive, but it'll only see 1GB, so you're paying for drive space you're not using. You can use a CD drive, but it also has to be SCSI. Another thing that sucked about the Akai was that it needed EDO SIMM memory, which is kinda expensive as nobody really needs it anymore.

The only reason I went with the Akai is because it was for live use. For studio purposes, I don't see any reason to justify its cost.

 

[dannymix]

So what about the Emu Range like the ESI2000? anyone use this sampler?

 

[VOXVENDOR]

RE: ESI 2000

I love mine... Though only had it for 2-3 weeks now...

User friendly... And sounds great....

16 parts multi-timbral (great for large sequences)

I bought mine on Ebay... 128 mb, with outboard cdrom scsi and zip drive.... 9 E-mu disks

I paid $450 for the whole lot......

I see them always on Ebay around 300-450 dollars....


128 MB is like 25 minutes of sample time.... That means alot of banks can be loaded in at once....

 

[dannymix]

RE ESI2000

What about effects how much is it for a effect board and CD ROM?