Best sampler, synth

[Philee]

Hi
Any opinions on best synth or sampler out there?
I am into a music such as Enigma, Yani, Hans Zimmer, and to name a few. ]
By the way what kind of synth, sampler did Lucas film use?

[Bokir]

Synth rig:
You must have a workstation (the one with sound and sequencer) not just a plain keyboard controller. It can be either Roland XP-80 or Korg Triton.
For that 'great' distinctive sound, you need another synth, like Roland JP-8000 and either one of Clavia NordLead, Access Virus, or Waldorf's.

Sampler:
Go get E-Mu. It can read all (Akai, Roland, etc.) library. Their orchestral library is already impressive though.

And about Lucas Film. They hired John Williams and a fully loaded symphony orchestra and paid them millions dollar of session.
That's the way big budget movies scores are made. Synth only used on Sound F/X though.

That's my option.

[Greg Malcangi]

<< Any opinions on best synth or sampler out there? >>

In the US most people tend to go for the E-Mu and I'm very happy with my ultra-4XT. However, here in the UK the tendancy is to go for AKAI. With the advent of the S6000 I think AKAI have taken the ball away from Emu for the time being. The remote screen is usefull as is the 16 outs and memory capacity of 256meg RAM. The native file format for AKAI is now ".wav" which again makes it very flexible.

Greg

[Philee]

Any comments about Kurzweil? It is unfortunately the most expensive sampler keyboards in the market. Also which sample CD-rom is must have for samplers in general?

[Doug Shugarts]

You might want to check out Gigasampler, too. There are some new sample libraries that have been recorded to take advantage of its capabilities, and they are awesome. Also, the orchestral libraries (Advanced Orchestra, Vitous) have been reprogrammed to allow for all playing styles at once via keyswitching, which saves a huge amount of time and aggravation.

[Jules]

I swapped my Akai S6000 for a Mix Farm! The file transfer to & from the mac looked to be a nighmare...(had to be done via jaz or zip, NOT scssi) I will look into a Emu or wait till Digi come out with a 24bit sampler card!!!
http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/shocked.gif
Jles

[sidereal]

Jules,

Why not go with software synths/samplers? Bitheadz, Koblo and Native Instruments all work with DirectConnect which is a 24-bit engine.

This is the way I plan to go. Hardware be dammed.

[Doug Shugarts]

Speer-

I record Gigasampler output via an ADAT bridge. I use a Wavecenter PCI card in an Athlon 650 and it works very well. Gigastudio will be released soon, with 160 voices, 64 MIDI channels, etc. Sounds promising.

It's true that Gigasampler costs a lot more than Unity, but you have to consider that to do as much with hardware samplers as you can with Gigasampler, you'd spend tens of thousand of dollars. And Unity and other software samplers just don't compare.

I'm not saying it's for everyone; its strength lies in capturing acoustic instruments. If you're into digital orchestration, though, it really deserves your attention.

[lwilliam]

I recently bought an Emu E5000 Ultra, upgraded the RAM to 64MB, put a cheap ATA/33 18GB 5400RPM drive in it, bought some sample CDs, and couldn't be happier.

It's been solid and dependable; not a single crash or glitch.



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LW

[DaveG]

Regarding feedback on Kurzweils, I've been using a K2500RS as my main instrument for the past four years, and for the most part it's been great. SCSI sample dumps to and from the Mac work fine, and the voice architecture enables it to do double duty as a synth (you can get some very warm, thick analog sounds in particular).

As far as sample libraries go, the Hans Zimmer Guitars Vol I and II and Symphony of Voices are discs I use constantly. The Double Platinum Drums and Double Platinum Rock Piano discs are also two of the best bang-for-the-buck values I've come across.

I'm waiting for 24-bit samplers to become standard issue as well...

[Philee]

how would you rate those samples such as Hanz Zimmer Guitar and strings, voice and drums? Do they sound better than Roland JV-2080 with expansion boards?

[Nick Batzdorf]

Philee, asking which synth is best is a 'how long is a piece of string' question!

The reason there are so many different instruments available is that they all sound different. It's also the reason why so many musicians own several synthesizers.

You really have to go listen to a bunch of different synthesizers to decide which one you like best.

[DaveG]

Philee,

Unfortunately I can't comment on the Roland unit since I've never used one. But just in general, it can be very useful to have a sample CD that concentrates on one specific thing. For example, the Double Platinum Drums disc offers samples for 4 different velocities on each drum, plus additional articulations such as flams and rolls. Every drum hit and cymbal also has a full-length, natural decay. My basic acoustic kit assembled from that disc uses about 38MB by itself. If you then toss in a few of the live drum fills from the CD here and there (played on the same kit so they blend perfectly), the realism factor is pretty high.

What I'd love to see is Alex Lifeson doing a guitar sample CD (courtesy of Lerxst Productions Ltd. of course). What the hey, with Rush on hiatus he ought to have time for such things. http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif

[Fred Cannons]

Re: Bitheadz vs Hardware Sampler - the only problem is that software based samplers like Unity DS-1 is very DSP hungry and you have to have a fast and large Mac - G3 500mhz or G4 450mhz are recommended. I have opted for the E-MU E4XT so I can leave my humble G3 266 to get on with other tasks. The SCSI interface between E4XT and the Mac seems fine which is handy as you can then share CD/Jaz/other drives without shutting down and re-connecting - however the EOSLink software leaves a little to be desired. My Mac sort of coped with my Roland S-770 Jaz sounds - it just ignored it eventually and I could load them into the E4XT. What is really cool about the E4XT is that you can connect a PC keyboard - so much easier for naming samples/patches etc and there are lots of commands which can be enter via the keyboard!

[Baba Omar Jun]

Akai S6000 is a BiG DUmMY Sampler i ever came across, I trade it off for a PTIII->PT24|Mix upgrade! then bought a second hand SCII+ with TDM board and was winner...

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Just PT myself and I...

[agradl]

who is the most beautiful girl in the world?

... depends

[Nick Batzdorf]

My daughter, of course!

Just wanted to comment that I've had better luck than Fred Cannons with Unity on a 9600/350. I don't use a lot of its DSP (and certainly not its reverbs), but I have no trouble getting 24 sustained voices with bursts of quite a bit more. The 9600/350 is between a 233 and 266MHz G3.

That's running under a MIDI sequencer and MIXplus. Host-based audio would be a different story.

[sidereal]

Regarding fast CPUs and software synths, at least with TDM you have dedicated hardware DSP so you can free up CPU cycles. Could you imagine trying to run a soft synth with Cubase via ReWire all off the host? Has anyone had any success with that with a lot of audio tracks? Just curious.

[Steve MacMillan]

With all the ProTools TDM systems sold, you would think an updated SampleCell with all the modern features, memory, voices, ability to use AKAI library, proper filters, etc. would sell very well. I wouldn't think it would need converters.

sm

[This message has been edited by Steve MacMillan (edited March 11, 2000).]

[Corey Shay]

Skywalker Sound and many other sound design companies have used the Synclavier Systems for years, but as far as I know they are moving away from them.

[batman]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Steve MacMillan:
With all the ProTools TDM systems sold, you would think an updated SampleCell with all the modern features, memory, voices, ability to use AKAI library, proper filters, etc. would sell very well. I wouldn't think it would need converters.

sm

[This message has been edited by Steve MacMillan (edited March 11, 2000).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Here here Steve....
An updated Sample Cell is well overdue...... and the best synth is the expanded series 3 Moog...and the best sampler....the E4 Ultra...(although I'm getting to like the Akai S6k!!)........or could this be the Ondes Martinet and the Akai 612????.....I...dunnno.

Ade
http://www.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/smile.gif

[scottgreiner]

I also agree. I'm not keen on host processing for workstation or sampler. I would happily pay for a modern/updated SampleCell card to go with my Mix+.

Scott Greiner

quote:

Originally posted by Steve MacMillan:
With all the ProTools TDM systems sold, you would think an updated SampleCell with all the modern features,
memory, voices, ability to use AKAI library, proper filters, etc. would sell very well. I wouldn't think it would
need converters.

sm