Hardware samplers

Sun Sep 19 19:26:33 CEST 2021

I’ve been looking at these things lately since I sold most of my “boxes” and  elektron etc… The Deluge does pretty much everything I want but does not look inviting to me. It’s not like “oh look it’s so simple it doesn’t need a screen” it’s more like “f’you no screen for you human.” And I’ve heard the black box excels at playing live rather than creating a track. 

I thought about getting an octatrack again but I still have nightmares about trying to learn that thing, scored by the background music from those old elektron tutorials. 

> On Sep 19, 2021, at 11:56 AM, Matt Seil <xeno6696 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Deluge... well I've been loving the blackbox so far, but Deluge looks like a crazy step up.  
> 
> Does the deluge allow you to degrade audio easily?  The 505/Fantom-S had a drop in effect for "bit crushing" that was sooo nice on percussion.  
> 
>> On 9/19/2021 12:53 AM, Ibi Sum wrote:
>> The workflow on Deluge is like nothing else you’ll ever witness.  It samples/resamples into oblivion, the only limit is the SD card. (Blackbox: same).  In competent hands you won’t even notice the whole trick of building up tracks and resampling sections/loops - you’ll only witness a performance and not even notice the rest of the process, it’s that good.  Zero menu-diving, only peformative actions.  The Deludge is in a whole other class of interface, it is light years ahead of anything else, but like a true instrument it really does need to be learned.  Sampling-wise it is POWERFUL, literally unlimited. You will stumble with the interface at first but once you grok the flow - and it really is a flow-friendly interface, with zero distractions - you will be in sampling nirvana.
>> 
>> Blackbox has the same feel, albeit different workflow, and a little more cramped.  I like the Blackbox interface, although it’s a little less “flow” oriented than the Deluge, a bit more mode/menu groping.  But also, an amazing amount of power - and the recent Blackbox update added Granular synthesis, and extra effects - it’s definitely a growing and lively platform.
>> 
>> I get the impression that the designers of these machines really wanted to take sampling into the 21st century, and they succeeded.  It’s very difficult to compare even with the older MPC flow.  The Deluge runs rings around the MPC and pretty much everything else.
>> 
>> These are high performance samplers/instruments, with fat emphasis on capital-P Performance, as in musical. Kontakt doesn’t even come close.
>> 
>> The only reason I’m keeping my A-sampler rack (I have all of the A-samplers except the 7000) around is to do some more Disky work for the ~1000 users that are still out there with Win98 PC’s wired up to their machines, still quite productively using them in their works. And the A-samplers still function as workhorse samplers, still some truly stunning users out there pushing the limits… I have some ideas for an upgrade to the A-samplers that would make it an amazing performance platform too.  Also, they are amazing FX processors in their own rights - something the Deluge and Blackbox aren’t quite capable of matching .. yet. (Both get seriously great software updates.. it’s refreshing to see and very rewarding to observe feature requests becoming standard features…)
>> 
>> Peter, get thee a Deluge!  You won’t regret it. If you can’t do that for budget reasons get a Blackbox, and if you don’t like it after a month I’ll buy it from you.  I have plenty of people in my jam circles who want one to replace their MPC or Kontakt rigs…
>> 
>> ;
>> --
>> seclorum 
>> 
>>> On 19.09.2021, at 07:28, James Coplin <james at ticalun.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I meant the Akai samplers. The Emu that are not the e4 Ultra are reasonable. The ESI series are cheap and even e5000 and e6400 have been going for $500. The e4 Turbo is also really cheap. The Akai stuff is even cheaper and quiet frankly I think they are better samplers. The Z series in particular was fantastic.  And, I have been on ebay and Reverb a lot because I have also been tempted to get a hardware sampler again.
>>> 
>>> That said, the workflow really doesn't make much sense any longer. I ultimately decided against it. Things like Kontakt, Maschine, etc really make much more sense. Maschine in particular is incredibly fast and immediate to work in. Ultimately, as much as I think I would like to have a sampler again, I suspect the reality would be that I would hate it.
>>> 
>>> James
>>> 
>>> Get BlueMail for Android
>>> On Sep 18, 2021, at 4:58 PM, Andrew Tarpinian <andrewtarpinian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> You have have not been on ebay in a while, have you…
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sep 18, 2021, at 5:56 PM, James Coplin <james at ticalun.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Anything Emu and the later Akai series are amazing and super cheap. The later Akai also used IDE drives.
>>>>> 
>>>>> James
>>>>> 
>>>>> Get BlueMail for Android
>>>>> On Sep 18, 2021, at 4:29 PM, Peter Korsten <peter at severity-one.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>> 
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