Old school sampler

@drrumble
Sampler format k7 vhs lo-fi

Zoom st 224 is great!

Is going to be sold in a flash though :wink:

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Yamaha SU10 | Stereo Digital Sampler 1995 | DEMO
Also great from same channel Kawai K1m

Echolevel: Portable Lofi Moments 2017-2018 [Yamaha SU10]

Yeah I got an akai S20 a few years back for just 60$, that 8khz mode definitely has its own special lofi magic. I feel like back in the day they were not very well liked because other akais had way better features but these days in conjunction with samplers with better tools and workflow it is pretty great.

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Had an EMU 6400 Ultra back in 1999.
That thing had a nice modulation matrix and sounded damn good to me.
8 individual outputs if I recall well.
Filters sounded pretty good as well.
Issue of sample loading was solved through purchase of a ZIP Drive. Not practical but it worked.
Sound library (when bought new) was HUGE and of quality although mainly finished/processed.
I believe more oriented towards synthesis than beat making. But then again, someone else here will tell you the opposite :slight_smile:
These used to cost a fortune when I see ongoing second hand priced units nowadays.

I used to own this one back in the day,great filtering with the touch strip,unique.But oh boy noisy sampler and small sample space.

checking out the Yamaha A3000 and it’s crazy effects with Model:Cycles :slight_smile:

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I didn’t read through the thread but the main issue -for me- with most post-2000 samplers (both hardware and software) is “pristine” interpolation with a “too perfect” anti-aliasing which smooths out the aliasing. This is especially problematic when you pitch down drum samples. I entirely avoid pitching down drums on a computer. It just sounds like pooh.
And then came polyend tracker with an option to entirely disable anti-aliasing. The difference on drums is just night and day. Enable anti-aliasing on the Tracker and it sounds like your every day computer. Disable it, and drums sound crispy-crunchy.
It is baffling software sampler developers still, in 2021, don’t include an option to disable anti-aliasing. I just don’t get it…

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Never understood why Yamaha never put the A-series FX in an SPX rack. They also had Loop Remix and Loop Divide, which was sort of a riff on Recycle/ACID’s tricks.

10 or 15 years ago, an A3000 without the SCSI board went for as low as $30 on Ebay. And Yamaha used to sell the encoder board for ~$100. (They always fail after ~1 year).

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maybe people think of the MPC500 as too basic for too much learning(?) the compactness/portability/playability hasn’t been superceded by anything yet.

Same here. Still curious about TAL-Sampler or TX16Wx. The TAL has an interesting resampler module with different DAC modes, I wonder if it’ll get those crunchy sounds.

No but it (TAL) sounds great if not used to downpitch drums. Its imho the best sounding software sampler.

The best sounding drums imho are on Paul’s Boutique. For which they used a 12-bit E-mu iirc. Maybe the e-max?

I got an octatrack yesterday again and its the same pooh for drums

Afaik only the Polyend Tracker gives good results for drums. I have yet to test my volca with drums, but downpitching notes sounds great on it :+1:t3:

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/dust-brothers?print=yes

Dust Brothers:

We did all of Paul’s Boutique on an Emax HD, which was mono and 12-bit and had a 22kHz sampling rate. So we had plenty of experience of the primitive domain of early sampling: low bit rate and low sampling rate. But we’ve never been in love with the degraded sound of those early machines, we were always trying to make samples sound better. We had Pro Tools in our heads before it even existed. Since both John and I came from a computer background, we knew what computers were capable of, and we were kind of bombed that the samplers were still so lo-fi or hard to use.

:upside_down_face:

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It’s the same with these mid to late 80’s roland keyboards. The D-series. If you play the samples (PCM’s?) on the lower octaves, you get this gorgeous buzzing sound. It’s just aliasing. So simple yet so effective. Of course it wasnt really intended. Only in hindsight by comparing with new tech you appreciate it

I think I need a Polyend Tracker.
Any idea if the 1010 Blackbox does it? (Disable antialiasing).

I think those early samplers also resampled on the fly? (With each key-press?) Unlike modern samplers?

I’ve owned most of the rack Ensoniqs, Akais, and Yamahas. Used an E4XT, but not much else from EMU.

My favorite sounding (Edit for clarity: for drum crunch & sizzle) was the Casio FZ10m. :grin:

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Im not sure how the old ones did it. But different. Im not very tech savvy :slightly_smiling_face: Something to do with changing clock…

The Polyend Tracker is great but it has it’s quirks and it’s still in a very early stage. But the sound -to me- outweighs it’s bugs/issues by miles. The reverb is kind of nice too on drums. A million times better than the octatrack, which honestly stinks (for drums) -in my opinion.
Ive never used or heard tge 1010 blackbox. Its the one with tge touchscreen, right?

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That’s the one. Elektronauts seem to love it. Mega-thread is here: 1010music Blackbox

Tracker’s been on my shortlist. Glad you mentioned that we can disable antialiasing. Love that crunch and nasty sizzle.

What do you think of the modern MPCs? They convert/sample everything to 32-bit floating point. Sounds better than most everything I’ve tried when pitching down.

I stopped using them once they came with software and touch screens, so i have no idea!

The MPC5000 i feel had a crunch and sounded bad ass loud (again imo) but also not particularly good at the same time(depends as often) but i far prefer it to the clean later models.