StudioRecorder said:
"You are all over the place with this one friend... "
Why!?! I think I'm pretty clear about what I want.
My fault I missed a couple of posts that cleared some things up.
Alright... Some basics if you don't already know em.
When you buy a sampler you will most likely want to have a lot of internal memory. 64 mbs is a nice amount but will go very fast. In some cases that will be only four or five quailty instuments sets you can have loaded at one time Fine if you only plan to sequence a few instruments at one time but I suggest a sampler that can handle 128 mb or better. This way you can have your whole set of sounds for a sequnce all loaded at one time plus memory is pretty cheap...
Next is the storage. The norm with rack samplers is SCSI. A big plus but not a must is a SCSI hard drive (about 100 for the first gig. then 35-50 bucks per gig.
I think), a necessity is a SCSI zip drive (cheapest storage for 25 on ebay... round 70 new), then there's a SCSI cd-rom (reads sample cd-roms...). Then depending on the sampler a SCSI pc card and some software that can edit wave files and send them to your sampler through SCSI. Or maybe even help create you're sample disks. That'sa nice chuck of money you're looking at but all of it will make life much easier with the sampler.
Some samplers use IDE internal drives which are cheaper and easier to come by... Dont' recall seeing any other types of storage besides the old floppy drive regularly used with samplers.
Next thing is sounds. If you want to save time you gotta spend some money here. Sample disks run from $5 - $250 (floppies to cd-roms)... I even saw a whole hard drive with noting but a whole Orchestra's instrument and sounds sampled into it ($$$$). Most pro disks i've seen cost around $99 but you can find disks going for $10 bucks on ebay. Don't know about the quality. Probably crappy or a bunch of drum machine samples and single shots. If you go pro you can expect lots of detail... Stuff like guitar scrubs or a Piano sampled with a version of the notes being played hard and a version where they are softer, then a softer one... Then a sustained version with a soft, softe version. Much detail. Sometimes to much in my opinion. It eats up memory.
If you want to save money then you are looking at a lot of time looking for your samples and programming them. You got choices though... You can search the net all day looking for the perfect sample(s) or you can just go and sample the instruments yourself. If you do techno/hiphop then you just grab whatever sound source you have available at the time and hook that up (not really that simple)... If you are wanting the best possible sound then you need to do multisampling (too much to talk). Once you get all you're notes then you gotta set em up and program em how you want them to play (software is important here)... Then ya gotta assign the efx and do some midi crap... Then you can save em and finally use em to make music.
That's how I see it... If it helps.
I use a ASR-X pro, a Peavy SP, and a MPC200xl... None top knotch as far as samplers. I realized I didn't have the patience so I bought some other crap with that money.
"How much experience do you have with samplers and sampling? "
It's not something you want to jump into if you really just wanna make music. Quick and easy sounds... That's why workstation synths are so popular.
As far as programming goes... A sampler is basically a synth that lets you load up whatever sound source you want and process it how you want it.
Synth Basics
http://hem.passagen.se/tkolb/art/synth/intro_e.htm
I'm may not be the best person to help you with this... I might be wrong about some things... Just trying to help though.
And I'm not reading this post so it may all be crap... Ignore me if you have to. I haven't slept in a couple days.
