Rant about the lack of modern hardware samplers.

[Boba JFET]

Yeah, I found my eyes a very important part of the process when looping on my Emax II: 0008902 2765443

Yeah, there was a time I thought editing loop points in decimal was an upgrade. Try looping on a Mirage in hex. Actually that's not even the hard part with the mirage, the hard part is that it doesn't really loop well unless the loop length is a multiple of a page (256 samples I think). Try making a loop that's exactly 256 samples by ear!

Really, I do get your point, working on the hardware samplers you end up relying on your ear more, and you do get better at working with samples by ear as a result. I just think that's an even better argument for software samplers (or at least very robust graphical sample manipulation interfaces).

[tallowwaters]

I was just giving you a hard time, I do my sample chopping and looping in software and load to hardware.

Oh, and I've owned a Mirage, with no manual none the less.

[blavatsky]

I like my sp-555, although there are a list of complaints people have about them (lack of fading, hard to trim stuff, pattern sequencer is not the best, etc....). I can't believe they are 799 new at some places though; it's worth what I paid , less than half that (used).

I won't get into the whole old vs. new thing, just wanted to voice support for the SP series even with flaws.
2 gigs of storages on a cheap card, 10 banks x 16 pads, good effects, d-beam , decent filters etc.
I realize you won't be sampling a grand piano on it, but to me that is what a real piano/expensive rompler is for.
I'm more of a sound effects/hits/drums on my sampler type-of-guy.

Also, no shame in using a PC to get samples/loops perfect before I load em, no reason to torture yourself if the hardware has a less than optimal interface for that sort of stuff. Some people are masochists with their workflow.

[PolarAC]

By the way, I still have the ASR 10. It's still at 100%. I could never let it go...

I hear ya' man. Had mine since '97. The funny thing is that I still use it for the bulk of my sampling duties. I also think that it actually being a great synthesizer has helped its longevity with me. As for my music making, I rely much less on samples as I did 10 years ago, so I really dont have a use for gobs of sample memory. So the ASR really fulfills my needs in this regard (though I wouldn"t mind adding a v-synth to my set up)

[balma]

$799 for a SP 555???? no thanks

With a sampler witth zones like the V synth you can emulate any acoustic instrument in a very decent way. You can sample sixteen notes of a grand piano and use the zone feature and spread those sixteen samples on zones into a single patch and format them. With a decen sampling technique and variphrase, you will have a realisitic piano.

Or you can go weird and create phrased patches using the step motion on patch parameters and combining va engine with sampled voices

Is a very creative, complete and easy to use sampler/va that can be purchased under the $1k on Ebay....

[blavatsky]

the vsynth looks awesome, I didn't know it was that easy to sample a whole instrument patch like that on it.

last time I was at a guitar center they had a beat-to-h**l sp555 in the discount/untested section (???) and still wanted like 680 for it I asked just out of curiosity and they were like, we'd probably sell for half that, but no guarantee it works at all .... uh.