SoftSamplers Vs.Hardsamplers

[Akai96]

So What Are you thinking of the comparison? :p

[emulatorloo]

Originally posted by Jason Gaines:
So What Are you thinking of the comparison? :p

Hardsamplers don't drain your CPU and are mighty cheap now on ebay. . .you can get a real nice EMU for ridiculous prices on ebay right now.

SoftSamplers are easier to edit, don't have the Ram restrictions of hardsamplers, easier to interface w your soundcard, and have all the latest and greatest sound libraries.

BTW, here is a cool article about things that Hardsamplers are still good for:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/sampling_software.html

[Akai96]

What About Sonic Quality

[emulatorloo]

Originally posted by Jason Gaines:
What About Sonic Quality

Your softsampler only sounds as good as your audio card's converters.

Your hardsampler only sounds as good as its converters. Some hard samplers I guess have great converters which was one of the reasons they were so costly. . . And sometimes even older "obsolete" ones can impart their own nice qualities to the sounds . . . I think the old Emu EIII and EIIIx sound great -- warm and full etc (hence emulatorloo); and the Roland S series knock me out too - warm and punchy. . .

OTOH lack of memory constraints on softsamplers is good for sonic quality too -- don't like hearing loops on Roland samples.

All in my humble opinion. . .

<small>[ May 22, 2005, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: emulatorloo ]</small>

[Percy the Burp King]

I have only used hardware playback samplers. Still do!!!
There is no lag time when selecting and altering a parameter as can occur with a soft syth as the cpu is stressed.

However...the potential to custom build a sample library from different formats (akai,emu, giga,etc) within M5 without memory limitations is hugely enticing!!! The options are staggering!!! Just add a fast mac.

If I had sample libraries coming out of the wazoo, I would probably part with my hardware. Not there yet. In time!

It's kinda of funny, I plan to contintue to use film vs digital to take pictures into the future.

[grimepoch]

Personally I think the quality of hardware samplers has gone the way of non-existance. I bought an AKAI Z8 a few years ago when they came out, and waited and waited for AKAI to release better software for working with it. The effects sounded horrible, and it was an absolute pain in the neck to work with. For the price I paid, $1400, I sold it and used the money to buy a G5. (plus another $700), however, I think that was the BEST decision ever. Now I run Mach5 and MX4 and NEVER run into problems, the effects and bank making of Mach5 is superior to the Z8. I've even demonstrated it's power to people who own other older hardware, like S1000, or S5000 from AKAI, EMU32, Kurzweil K2000 and even ENSONIQ ASR10, and these people are about ready to go out and buy Mach5 now if they had a bit faster machine

[tcollins]

I know it's only a matter of time until I must give in and switch to software instruments, but my AKAI samplers still sound great and respond quickly. I take comfort in the fact that 5 years from now I will still be able to turn it on and work, and it won't care what version of OS X or OS XI or OS XII I'm running! Plus, I love reaching over to it's beautiful glowing face and pushing real buttons.

[lordtoranaga]

collins, witch akai do you use?

[thracks]

A couple of years ago I spent about $1,700 on an E6400 Ultra. I added RAM, Hard drives etc. Now I use Mach 5, and my Emu sits collecting dust. I'd sell it, but I just can't see the point in getting rid of it for around $350. Maybe someday I'll find a use for it.

[Saintmatthew]

I still use my Akai s2000, plus I picked up a Korg ESX recently for $500. Both deliver quickly and reliably and their output is just plain thick. I've played with soft samplers and just get frustrated. Even though a graphic interface would seem more convenient you still have one mouse cursor and "turning" nobs with a mouse is just annoying to me. Plus there's latency issues and such. Hell, the original gigsampler cost me $300 and then I find out you had to compile instruments rather than being able to tweak and play. The only real constraint with hardware is memory. On the other hand, I tend to build progrmas as I write songs, rather than create complex instruments and not one song's samples have yet to break the 75% mark of meg of sampler ram. I guess I stilll feel spoiled after years of composing on an EPS with only 2 meg.

[spirit]

Softsamplers are newer computers can access newer sample libraries (or these libraries come with their own sample player) which have use considerably larger amounts of memory (either RAM or DiskStreaming off a harddisk (or a combination) than hardware samplers made to date can accomodate. Other than something really expensive like a Fairlight (if they still have samplers) Hardware samplers usually top out at about 128megs, maybe 256? Softsamplers can access as much ram as you can give (in a G5 that could be several gigs) and/or stream from harddisk to have a single piano over a gig. Newer libraries are using this to have more detail-with samples made of the changing detail of an instruments natural sustain without looping to save memory, more velocity layers to try to emulate the dynamic response of an instrument, cross sample switching to get performance detail like up bow/down bow etc. Many of the newer libraries are not available for Hardware sample use, even if a hardware sampler was capable.

The down side is the software and the large samplesize and intricacies of these sampled instruments can tax even a powerful computer to where running multiple instruments with a sequencer with a number of audio tracks and plugins can overload the CPU or memory. Especially when the libraries you might want have their own engines and each are different so the computer may have to use double power to run say, multiple instances of Kontakt player, some Spectrasonics engines and UBI (isn't that the people who initially developed MachV). Those free players are not really just a promotion or good will- they are a means to make sure you can't import samplelibraries, like, say, Trilogy or EWO orchestra into Mach V, which you might do to minimize the number of samplers you have open and using CPU power. The free players are a type of copy protection.

Because of the computer Drain
Many people are utilizing 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th etc.) computers as sample (or softsynth) instrument playback machines- sort of like hardware samplers. This happens a lot with Gigasampler especially, where large libraries like Vienna Symphony require multiple computers to load the whole orchestra with full detail available.

If one doesn't need these newer libraries, hardware samplers tend to be less prone to conflicts and instabilities sometimes seen in software samplers (esp with upgrades as mentioned previously). For simple small existing samples they could be faster and easier to use (cables and outputs and inputs are needed for each seperate channel- and forget working on your session at the beach with your laptop unless you recorded hardware sampler tracks to audio first- a bit of trouble). Some hardware samplers had digital outs (An option on EMU ULTRA's) to avoid any quality loss (or coloration gain possibly?) from A/D conversion But then clocking issues have to be worked out.. Another reason for a hardware sampler is that translations into soft samplers frequently sound different - Kontakt for example doesn't always know what velocity sensitivity or release settings were from AKAI libraries, etc. (Mach V has some problems as well, none of them seem to do Samplecell I translations except sample by sample- Chicken Systems translator promises to do folder by folder at least).

In theory softsamplers should have the advantage of conveniently saving all the information on the same harddisk as the audio and sequencer data- but it doesn't always work that way, either from neglect or that simply saving Vienna symphony will fill the disk by itself. And with 2nd computers this won't happen anyway unless there is a network setup, or possibly by physically reconnecting harddrives and copying ("sneakernet").

Samplecell cards were a good combination of good features of both hardware and software, but they maxed at 32megs memory and don't work in OSX. It would be nice to see "UltraSamplecell" with 8 or more slots that can hold 1 gig ram each. complete control in one computer (with digidesign TDM the audio was routed digitally internally), open up your project on that computer- double click the document and everything is open and accessible. Is there a market for a card that the memory alone would cost $1k (8gigs) for in a world of $300 softsamplers?

There is a market for "DSP acclerator" cards for plugins like DIgidesign TDM cards, Universal Audio, TC electronics etc.-
wouldn't there be one for a softsampler?