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Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 3:43 am
by Prime Mover
Hey, got a curious question. I used to use an Alesis QS8 for all my synth sounds up until about 4 years ago, when I switched over to performing exclusively with my laptop (and I'd retired the QS from studio duty long before then). Generally, the QS is not a particularly great synth, even for a rompler, however, I find myself missing a few key patches that I'd created (from scratch). I've attempted to replicate them with Massive, Kontakt, Absynth, or Korg KLC, with no success. There was just something about these particular samples that made these patches sing. So I'm really looking for a way of either finding the original raw QS multi-samples online somewhere, or figuring out how to download them off the keyboard directly. From there, I'd probably load them in Kontakt. I can't simply record these patches as they are since there are some modulators and envelopes that a processed sample wouldn't do justice.

Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:45 pm
by David Polich
Here's the only QS sample set I could find:

https://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php ... dfonts-sf2

It looks dodgy at best to me. You may just be throwing away your money on it.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 4:58 pm
by bayswater
From what you say, I guess you intend to program modulators and envelops etc in Kontakt. So all you really need is the basic waveforms. If you don't have Redmatica, it's not difficult to do the same thing with a sequence. It can get a bit tedious naming the samples so your VI of choice (M5 for me) can read the pitch and velocity information for each sample from the name, automating the construction of keymaps. Not really practical for more than a few sounds.

Set up a MIDI track with all the root notes for the samples used for an instrument, repeat the notes with as many velocity values as matter, play, and record the result. Name the samples as mentioned above and you should be able to drag the samples into Kontakt.

I've done this with a small number of K2000 sounds I wanted. It wasn't as much work as it might sound because most of the sounds didn't have many velocity layers, most only one, and not many discrete samples. The difficult part was replicating the algorithms, not the sampling. In theory, you should create loops for each sample, but I didn't bother -- I just made long samples and used a lot of disk space.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 2:47 pm
by Prime Mover
Crap. Even with a streamlined method, it's going to take me a good hour to get a single sample off, and many of these sounds use 3-4 per patch, and I have a number of patches. We're looking at a good weeks worth of work... that's probably not worth it for what I was going to do. I was hoping there was a far simple solution. I'm shocked that no one's ever been able to find a way of directly accessing the ROM multi samples.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 2:53 pm
by buzzsmith
Might be worth searching (if you haven't already) to see if some company has made a VI of the Alesis gear.

I found the old Korg M1, all of the Emu "Proteus" modules, the Roland D-50, a Mini Moog and others.

Just a thought!

Buzzy

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 4:30 pm
by bayswater
Prime Mover wrote:I'm shocked that no one's ever been able to find a way of directly accessing the ROM multi samples.
They're probably proprietary and protected at that level. That's the case with the K2000 sounds. You're welcome to play the sounds though the algorithms, output as analog, and resample them, but you can't get at the basic ROM waves.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:10 pm
by mikehalloran
buzzsmith wrote:Might be worth searching (if you haven't already) to see if some company has made a VI of the Alesis gear.

I found the old Korg M1, all of the Emu "Proteus" modules, the Roland D-50, a Mini Moog and others.
I imagine that many of us received the email pointing to this:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/software ... nth-legacy

$50 from MF or Guitar Center

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 2:45 pm
by daniel.sneed
There used to be a little software which sends MIDI notes in sequence, and records sounds from any hardware synth. It sets the sounds ready to import in a sampler, including note names for each sample file.

It creates a basic set of audio files, with no synth controllers access. Just a single audio sample set, right out of the synth.

Can't remember its name right now.
It may help in your situation.
Or whenever dealing with a basic old hardware synth in a modern DAW.

Any idea ?

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 5:05 pm
by bayswater
daniel.sneed wrote: Can't remember its name right now.

Any idea ?
Redmatica. No longer available. The company was bought by Apple and then left to rot.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 5:53 pm
by mikehalloran
bayswater wrote:
daniel.sneed wrote: Can't remember its name right now.

Any idea ?
Redmatica. No longer available. The company was bought by Apple and then left to rot.
There were rumors that it would become part of ESX24 which kind of made sense. Then there was an announcement that Redmatica would be available in the App Store soon. This was 2012.

I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2014 8:39 pm
by bayswater
mikehalloran wrote:There were rumors that it would become part of ESX24 which kind of made sense. Then there was an announcement that Redmatica would be available in the App Store soon. This was 2012.

I'm not holding my breath.
No breath holding here either. I wonder whether there was some concern about copyrights for raw samples. I'm going to have to keep a ML partition forever so I can keep running it.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:12 am
by Prime Mover
So will it not run on newer OSes? Is that what I'm hearing? Sounds incredibly useful if there's some way I could get my hands on it.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:49 am
by billf
Prime Mover wrote:So will it not run on newer OSes? Is that what I'm hearing? Sounds incredibly useful if there's some way I could get my hands on it.
I can't vouch for this myself as I've not used it, but others claim it's good

http://www.extranslator.com/index.php?page=exsc

There is also this, but somewhat expensive:

http://www.samplerobot.com/

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:24 pm
by bayswater
Prime Mover wrote:So will it not run on newer OSes? Is that what I'm hearing? Sounds incredibly useful if there's some way I could get my hands on it.
It runs fine on ML, you just can't buy it anymore.

Re: Getting samples off an Alesis QS

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:36 pm
by wvandyck