Hardware samplers

[Peter Korsten]

So I just watched a video by Espen Kraft about his Akai S700 sampler 
that he bought when Reagan was still president. Sampling at a 
ridiculously low sampling rate of like 6.3 kHz, it sounded remarkably 
good. Also, Paolo "SynthMania" had a video about sampling CDs that I 
found enlightening.

Now I've always been dismissive of samplers, associating them with "ah 
yeah!" and orchestra hit samples, in the worst of 1990s dance music, but 
when you think about it, they're just synths with very flexible 
oscillators – provided, of course, that the rest of the synthesis engine 
is up to snuff.

Now Jay is going to say Yamaha A4000/A5000, and those have the advantage 
of using IDE drives. But what hardware samplers would you say are 
musically interesting?

Hey, the 20 year anniversary is coming up, as is my birthday, and 
Christmas... 🙂

- Peter