well, what you have to consider is that any sampler is really running
software on a processor ... some processors are more generalized than
others and can also do spreadsheets or play quake
most samplers you will find (besides a mellotron *grin*) use the
following ingredients:
Analog-Digital Converter (ADC) == inputs
Digital-Analog Converter (DAC) == outputs
Memory (RAM)
Storage (Disk)
Editing tools (trim, loop, DSP, etc)
Effects (filters, envelopes, LFO)
external Control (midi/keyboard)
the nice thing about hardware samplers is usually they come with all this
stuff built in, and you don't have problems with stuff like MIDI latency.
but the disadvantage of hardware samples is most of the time storage and
memory are somewhat limited.
a good software sampler, on a computer with lots of hard disk space and
RAM will be great in terms of storing and playing back samples, but since
you have the overhead of running an entire operating system designed to
also connect to the internet, print out spreadsheets, and play quake, the
timely handling of MIDI data gets lost along the wayside and you wind up
having the problem of latency, when you press the key on your keyboard and
there is a teeeeeeny pause before the sound comes out of the computer
then there is also the issue of the sound that comes in/out of the
computer/sampler itself. hardware samplers generally have fairly good
ADC/DAC hardware. unless they are made by Akai. (sorry, couldn't
resist.) your computer on the other hand probably has a 1/8" stereo
mini-jack for output and a 1/8" mono mini-jack for input. of course you
can buy a sound input output card for your computer, but a good one will
probably cost you around the same price as a decent hardware sampler...
and whether it will work with your software is a whole 'nother story.
on the other hand, the fact that a computer has this amazing operating
system capable of doing all that other stuff besides playing sounds means
that you can make editing super easy because of the huge screen and
mouse/keyboard interface.
basically there are advantages and drawbacks to both kinds of sampler
system, i think that if you can get good I/O hardware and a REAL operating
system (read: "YOO-niks") the flexibility offered by a desktop computer
would win out. unfortunately you would probably wind up paying more for
the computer/midi-interface/large HD/RAM/IO card than two good hardware
samplers.
myself, i use a combination of the two ... i use a hardware sampler (EMU
ESI-4000) for playback/effects and a Macintosh for editing and sample
management and all kinds of other boring off topic stuff.
josh
--
String Theory : Digital Music for Humans
http://www.enteract.com/~yoshi/index.cgi
On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Scott Allison wrote:
quoted 15 lines With all the talk of hardware samplers, has anyone used a soft sampler? I
> With all the talk of hardware samplers, has anyone used a soft sampler? I
> just got unity ds-1, actually i havent installed it yet on my computer, but
> i was wondering if anyone has used this before and what the experience is
> like. I would love something like an a3000, but cash is limited, and the
> software is cheap. Does Unity work as well as a hardware sampler, is it
> worth my time learning it?
>
> thanks
> -scott
>
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