Any Samplecell development news???

[Bushpig]

Hi Digi,

A couple of months ago you asked people on this forum to submit suggestions on improving Samplecell for us. Any news to report?? I need more power from my sampler and at this point I need to know if my existing SC II PCI is going to serve me well or at all in the future or do I need to to just move back to Akai's for the functionality I need and I'm familiar with?? Perhaps you're going to launch a new product. I would be very dissapointed if I had to stump up for a new Digi product when we have all been struggling with the current SC for so long now.

Any news would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers. Steve Bush.

[Frank Senior]

Hi Bushpig,
I have a PT Mix system and I'm interested in SC II PCI because of the integration of 8 channels of digital audio with PT 5.0 software. But I'm kind of stuck trying to make a decision. The local Digi dealer doesn't have a SC II to demonstrate so I can't hear the sound. I'm also concerned about the lack of traffic on this thread. Is SC II widely used or is it a dead-end product? I can't make a buy decision until I hear it and evaluate the integration. If I buy it and Digi announces a successor product I'll be stuck with upgrade or trade-in expense. I guess I just have to "wait and see".

[Bryan]

fellas,

i would say that digi will _eventually_ offer an alternative to samplecell. whether it will be a software solution (ala bitheadz), a tdm solution (ala tdm virus synth), or a new pci card approach is anyone's guess.

in the meantime, get a samplecell ii+. it rocks and once a new one comes out you can use them both; or if you are short on slots there is a healthy aftermarket for these things, so you wouldn't lose much money. heck, you can find em these days for sub $1000us with a tdm piggy-back.

samplecell with mix+ makes for a very powerful system.

[Frank Senior]

Thanks Guys,
I'm one step closer. To me making a commitment to a sound card, guitar, bass, piano, whatever--is like marriage--you know, try before you buy! I still gotta hear it to know where I can go with it. I've got a room full of crappy old (read "vintage")synths that I still use--now I want to move on. I'm gonna chat up the dealer and see what I can work out. SCII+ TDM...Hmmm
I'll probably be back with some geek questions.

[PaulV]

Yes, we plan to continue update the SampleCell software to work with the newest versions of OS's and ProTools for the forseeable future.

The feature requests were heard loud and clear, and are taken into account for future products (sorry i can't be more specific there).

-Paul Vercellotti
Digi Engineering

[noize]

I have to comment that I have used SCII for the past 5-6 years, and in general, am very happy with it. I will mention that the drawbacks about this product are:
1. The playback on the audio is relatively low. My inputs are "gain staged" and the actual audio files are always normalized to get the hottest signal possible.

2. There is a small amount of hiss out of 2 or 3 of the outputs on the card. (I HATE HISS) And even though I have sent the card to Digi twice, They have always claimed they ran tests and there was nothing wrong with the card. I have a digital mixer so I know it isn't my input!

Otherwise, The advantages of having your sampler right on your computer desktop are tremendous. It makes the following much easier:
1. Easier to back up both files (audio & instruments) to 1CD-Rom.
2. Easier to swap audio files between sampler & sequencer.
3. Easier to pull off audio off of audio CD's, sample CD's, CD-ROM's, and hard drives.
4. Quicker loading of song projects (sample bank just a mouse touch away)
5. Full integration of all channels w/TDM SC2 (plug-ins, eq, levels, and automation!)
Good luck and maybe DIGI has a comment for me regarding my hiss.

Noize

[DaveG]

Just thought I'd drop a post in here to make this forum's "light bulb" come back on (ha). I used a Samplecell II card back around '93-95, and although my ears weren't as discriminating then I thought it sounded quite good (I ended up switching to a Kurzweil because I wanted a more extensive voice architecture). I don't think the third-party sample support is in danger of drying up yet. The newest CD-ROMs from Ilio/Spectrasonics are still being offered in Samplecell format.

To me, probably the biggest drawbacks of the current Samplecell II are the 32MB RAM limitation per card, and the inability to capture Samplecell's output digitally without using Pro Tools/TDM. I was waiting the last few years to see a Samplecell III card appear, preferably with 256MB RAM capacity, a more powerful voice architecture (a la Kurzweil), and internal resampling. But now, with the advent of software-based samplers, I can't help but think that a hardware-based SCIII would almost be an anachronism...why not just utilize a portion of the host computer's RAM, and the outputs of the same audio interfaces used for hard disk recording? The new software-based samplers can also be routed into the "virtual" mixing consoles of many host-based hard disk recording apps (I haven't tried that out yet myself), instead of having to invest in a high-end TDM system to achieve that kind of integration.

Having said that, if you already have Pro Tools/TDM, then a Samplecell TDM card would still probably be pretty cool, since you could route it digitally into your Pro Tools mixer and use PT's EQs, plug-ins, etc, to make up for SC's limited voice architecture.

[tonemeister]

I just have to add my $ .02:

I would love the anachronism of a dedicated hardware samplecard (SampleCell III). I find it very stable and that should finally become the most important factor, after years of just adding bells and whistles at the expense of stability. A software version will always be more crash prone.

I also want to mention two of the most blatant design flaws of the existing SampleCell:

1. the sample tuning is NOT memorized by the Instrument file, but the sample itself, therefore preventing a potential benefit of such a system:
If I want to change the tuning of the same old sample just for a new project, I have to save a copy of that sample into a new folder, then tune it differently. Otherwise every older Instrument I previously used that sample with will not sound the way it did. The user interface suggests you could just keep a pool of samples on your harddrive and create new instruments for each project, but that's essentially not pratical the way SampleCell works. I've gone back to the same way I work with AKAIs: just make a folder for each new Bank, containing not only the instruments, but wasting harddisk space and adding all the samples, for safety and peace of mind. There is nothing worse than wanting to do a quick remix only to find out that your loops are not grooving anymore . . .

2. The Octave- and Semitone tuning parameters of an Instrument (under "Miscellaneous") are in fact MIDI Transpose parameters and should be appropriately named. It would then become apparent that there are NO Octave and Semitone Tuning facilities in SampleCell. ADD THEM, for crying out loud!

Fixing these two flaws alone IMHO would have justified calling the latest incarnation of this product SampleCell II "PLUS". Just adding 32MB of RAM didn't justify that and is essentially deceptive to a newcomer.

Having ranted again I have to say that I use the SampleCell on every production I work on. That should say something about it's usefulness, despite the flaws. I have a few AKAIs and a new EMU IV ultra, which I like a lot, and which is, BTW, digitally integrated into my TDM system thru ADAT bridge. If Digidesign had created a comparable Card for the MAC, I would use no other samplers anymore. Quite a few dollars waiting to go Digi's way, but NOT YET!

You design good product: I buy.
You keep 8 year old design: I buy elsewhere.

best regards,

tonemeister

[DaveG]

You know, actually you're right Tonemeister...in the rush to try out all the latest cutting edge toys it's easy to forget how nice it is when you have something really stable that lets you WORK (instead of spending half your time giving your computer what Roger Nichols refers to as the "three-finger salute"). I'm sure the new software-based samplers still have plenty of bugs to work out, whereas my Samplecell II card/editor never gave me any trouble.

That's one reason I'm really falling in love with Pro Tools. I just bought the Mac Toolbox, and whilst waiting for my 5.0LE upgrade I've been playing around with 4.3.1/DAE. After messing with PT all weekend it hasn't crashed ONCE (and this is using Mac OS 9 by the way). Whereas Vision DSP seems to crash every time I look at it funny.

[motive]

I Just got a SampleCell II with TDM for a good deal..simply because I would love to keep the majority of my work on screen if possible...I have a Yamaha A3000 sampler which is a blast to work with..but nothing beats the ease of on screen intergration with PT 5.0..which to me is amazing..I ve only had it a few days but it seems that it does have a few major shortcomings that could easily be fixed to make something completely amazing..As someone stated I almost want to buy an E4 just so I can use it directly with the Mac but it still is an external unit. If Digi would just think about it for a minute they could really corner the market with a "SampleCell III"

A few questions?? Has anybody got PEAK to work as an editor for SampleCell while running PT's? and if anybody has a manual for the TDM piggy back..that would help since I have a million questions about using SCII in the PT mixer.
Thanks so much