SCSI questions - hardware sampler

N

normington

New member
Hi,
I'm new to the sampling game, and I've decided to get myself a hardware sampler to have a mess about with. I'm being offered an E-mu ESI 32 at a good price, so I think I'll probably go for that. My questions are about storing samples.

I'm presuming that the 1.44MB provided by the floppy drive in the sampler isn't going to be great nowadays - am I correct in thinking that? If so, how much space am I going to need to do some modest experimental sampling?

I think the SCSI connection on the sampler can be used to my advantage. To utilise this, I figure I'm going to have to do one of the following options:
  1. Get an SCSI hard drive for the sampler to use. But then how do I get stuff onto the hard drive - I can't connect SCSI to the PC, I'd have to get another adapter. Costs here mount up etc.
  2. Get an SCSI Zip drive, which is what the previous owner has been doing. However, I then have the problem of interfacing between Zip and the PC. Again, the costs mount up.
  3. Get an SCSI optical drive, and connect that up to the sampler. This way I guess I can write CDs using my normal PC optical drive, and then throw the disc into the sampler's SCSI optical drive?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of each storage medium, what is the cheapest way, what is the most efficient?

Thanks,
 
Good sampler to start on, not nearly as elegant and deep as the software ones but sounds good, good features and if you can get good with that thing, you will easily master more advanced samplers. It is sometimes good to be limited since it forces you to work efficiently.. Anyway

normington said:
Hi,
I'm presuming that the 1.44MB provided by the floppy drive in the sampler isn't going to be great nowadays - am I correct in thinking that? If so, how much space am I going to need to do some modest experimental sampling?
Click to expand...
Storage is irrelevant to how much sampling you can do since the sampler reads the samples from memory, not the storage for normal use. First thing you want to do is to max out the memory (32 megs IIRC for that thing). For the storage issue, there are a ton of options. Any SCSI storage device should work so you can add a hard drive, ZIP drive, or JAZ drive as well as some new compact flash SCSI drives. The best place to find out what works well (or at all) would be forums dedicated to the EMU samplers and there should be a bunch since those are still popular as far as hardware samplers go and despite the hardware sampler market has pretty much went the way of the dinosaur, plenty of people still use them. Yahoo groups would be a good place to start

I think the SCSI connection on the sampler can be used to my advantage. To utilise this, I figure I'm going to have to do one of the following options:
  1. Get an SCSI hard drive for the sampler to use. But then how do I get stuff onto the hard drive - I can't connect SCSI to the PC, I'd have to get another adapter. Costs here mount up etc.
  2. Get an SCSI Zip drive, which is what the previous owner has been doing. However, I then have the problem of interfacing between Zip and the PC. Again, the costs mount up.
  3. Get an SCSI optical drive, and connect that up to the sampler. This way I guess I can write CDs using my normal PC optical drive, and then throw the disc into the sampler's SCSI optical drive?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of each storage medium, what is the cheapest way, what is the most efficient?

Thanks,
Click to expand...

Here is my rig, I run a Yamaha A3000.

Sampler (which is a SCSI device) -> Internal SCSI Drive -> External SCSI CDROM -> PC via PCI SCSI Card

I can talk to the sampler directly via software like Recycle or anything that supports SDMI sampler transfer over SCSI (which is the standard) and the sampler has all the hardware devices available as storage options plus I can also access the drives from the PC albeit via special software since yamaha does not use standard, PC readable partitions. If I had to set it up again, I would have replaced the hard drive with something silent like a CF Card since SCSI drives are pretty loud and although it is not bad, it is still noisy.

The bottom line is that it is possible to edit samples on the PC and just dump them to the sampler memory, build the program, and then save it to the storage.

A PCI SCSI Card for your computer will be DIRT cheap (I assume you're on a PC), mine cost $7. There were millions of them made and all drivers should be built into windows. Cables will be much more expensive..

Now for the gotcha's: Depending on what OS you are running, this all will vary considerably as far as the complexity of getting everything up and running. XP32 will be very easy and everything should be supported and work. XP64 will be the same provided there is a driver for whatever scsi card you use. With Vista on, Microsoft dropped support for a protocol called ASPI which is used HEAVILY by older scsi devices. Thankfully there is workaround (FrogASPI) which emulates the old layer but there still may be a lot of tweaking since unlike XP, Vista REQUIRES that generic scsi devices (like samplers) have a driver called out explicitly (xp does not) so it may take some tweaking to find one that works. For me, I just forced it to use a generic CDROM driver for the sampler and it worked fine.
 
If I have, say 32MB RAM, am I right to assume that anything stored in the RAM will disappear when I turn the sampler off, so it's useless unless I have at least 32MB storage present?

I'm running XP32, so drivers shouldn't be a problem (famous last words...). However, my main PC is a desktop with only 2 PCI slots, both of which I use. It wasn't a great buy, I regret that a little bit, but it's what I've got until I upgrade, which won't be for a while yet.
So, I could get an internal hard drive and hook the sampler up to a different computer over SCSI, which means I have to go to a different room whenever I want to move samples on and off the sampler. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, I'm not sure how often that'll be happening, but even so, I think I'd rather use some method of transfer that's a little more compatible with other places, as not many computers have an SCSI port.
Or, I could get an external SCSI optical drive, and carry that with the sampler. This would, I think, be a little more convenient for me, but are there any snags to this approach? A quick ebay search suggests that they might work out roughly the same price, so that's not really an issue.

Any thoughts?

Also, can you give me an idea of how quickly sampling memory goes? If I only ever want to use pretty short samples, mostly less than a second, maximum 2 seconds, how much will I be able to get into 32MB? How about a smaller memory, like 8MB, just out of interest? I know the results will vary based on bit rate and whatever else, but just to give me an idea?

Thanks
 
normington said:
If I have, say 32MB RAM, am I right to assume that anything stored in the RAM will disappear when I turn the sampler off, so it's useless unless I have at least 32MB storage present?
Click to expand...
Yes. Mind you a 32meg program is HUGE considering this is a 16bit sampler. I could fit a sampler program of 4 drum machines on one floppy and running a floppy should not even be in the running. Internal drive would probably be the cheapest solution. I got my 4.3gig scsi drive for $20

I'm running XP32, so drivers shouldn't be a problem (famous last words...). However, my main PC is a desktop with only 2 PCI slots, both of which I use. It wasn't a great buy, I regret that a little bit, but it's what I've got until I upgrade, which won't be for a while yet.
So, I could get an internal hard drive and hook the sampler up to a different computer over SCSI, which means I have to go to a different room whenever I want to move samples on and off the sampler. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, I'm not sure how often that'll be happening, but even so, I think I'd rather use some method of transfer that's a little more compatible with other places, as not many computers have an SCSI port.
Or, I could get an external SCSI optical drive, and carry that with the sampler. This would, I think, be a little more convenient for me, but are there any snags to this approach? A quick ebay search suggests that they might work out roughly the same price, so that's not really an issue.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
I would go with an optical drive and keep it nearby, at worst you can chop and edit samples, burn to disk and then upload to the sampler and save on its drive. Having it hooked up directly only really gives you the advantage of being able to talk to the sampler directly, with the cd, there would just be an extra step in getting the samples in. Having a CD also allows you to load pre made sample discs which is also nice. Dont know about the EMU, but my Yamaha can read Akai formatted discs so I have access to 2 decades worth of sample discs. There is also a chance that one of those scsi1 to usb devices may work with that sampler but you would have to look that up and I know it does not work with mine.

Also, can you give me an idea of how quickly sampling memory goes? If I only ever want to use pretty short samples, mostly less than a second, maximum 2 seconds, how much will I be able to get into 32MB? How about a smaller memory, like 8MB, just out of interest? I know the results will vary based on bit rate and whatever else, but just to give me an idea?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Generally, PCM rules apply so 10 megs a minute at 44.1 kHz for stereo. You can get more by dropping the sample rate but again, I would not worry about it, most programs I use off of Akai discs are only a couple of megs. It is not like you will be doing epic 30 velocity layer mega programs like you see on the computers
 
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