I liked the synth part on the 5k quite a bit! Synth wasnt the best sounding VA, but was fun to use inside an MPC.
The 5k was loud and clean but nothing special. No crunchiness when downpitching
The old Nintendo cartridge games - there are many software emulations for Windows, though I’ve never tried them. Do they have the same 4 or 8 bit sound?
If so, can this done for old sampler firmware? Ensoniq Mirage (without the hex editing system) would be interesting.
Hmm, completely forgot about Arturia’s Fairlight and Synclavier emus. I’ve got the official Synclavier app on the iPad, need to spend more time with it. There’s the official CMI Fairlight app too.
this is probably the best
I think it is still not QUITE like having a gameboy or a NES though. I don’t have a NES, but I have a few Gameboys and there is still something delightfully sh1tty about the actual hardware.
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Also, since my last answer on this thread I inherited an old AKAI… and there’s definitely some mojo in there, even though I have an S3000Xl which most AKAI heads seem to rate very badly.
I think with a combination of saturation and Decimort and whatever you could get the sound… but then that’s loads of messing about when you can just sample a hit through the AKAI, send it back out to Ableton and it just slams more.
might just be nice premaps slightly overdriven… but it’s definitely a “thing”.
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Having owned a few rack samplers, an SP202…an Electribe ES-1 I would say no. None of them were worth the money or time and effort for the results I got. Unless you really want those Z Plane filters on the 6400. Currently owning the M:S and a DT I can’t see the point–not even to just make things “sound old”. There are too many easier ways to do it.
I would still own an Electribe S but only because I have a fantasy of having an functioning Electribe mini museum in my studio some day.
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Still worth what?
You’re probably interested in: TAL Software
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I’m pretty partial to the EMAX
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I don’t think I’ll ever voluntarily get rid of my S950, because on the occasions you can be bothered to set it all up, it does bring something to the table. The sound and filter are part of it, but it’s more the rote and ritual of sampling and processing in that UI, the way it steers you, that leads to results you wouldn’t get elsewhere. Keeping the floppy drive in there is part of it… inconvenience can be a driver. Less so, I’m sure, if you’re doing this for a living and have bills to pay. But as a hobbyist who can indulge himself, it’s an interesting thing to keep around.
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The Electribe ES-1 was my first sampler and I definitely see why it’s so loveable (good lo-fi sound, superb sequencer, fx, processing, resampling) and then a Digitakt (all of the above, but at 48khz) but I still ended up purchasing a few rack samplers. Sure, they lack many of the luxuries from the drum samplers above. But still, they have amazing polyphony, chromatic tuning across the keyboard, several different filters, and deep modulation options. The ES-1 and DT to me are drum machines that happens to sample while the rackmounts are synths whose oscillators happen to be samples. I happily live with both types and will gladly send material to & fro.
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The rack samplers defo have lots of features a lot of modern samplers don’t.
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I just bought a CD3000XL with the Gotek drive. Literally the first sampler I ever touched (thanks the studio we access to when a friend of mine was doing his music degree). Going to pair it with my Launchpad Pro Mk 3 as 20s Vs 90s MPC alternative
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I think the best combination for “oldschool meets newschool” would be a small Eurorack, like a 4ms Pod, with a Rossum Assimil8or and an Expert Sleepers FH2, maybe with one expander module for additional CV modulations.
Dave Rossum was the mastermind behind most of those classics from EMU, and the A8 even goes up to 192kHz sample rate, which is brilliant for pitch shifting and phase modulation.
It also has 8 individual Mono Outs, which can freely be combined as e.g. 4 Stereo Outs, and also a final Stereo Master Out, where everything can be assigned to in its Mixer.
Might sound a little overkill, but by far more powerfull than other options around which go to that direction.
And it even has a bit reduction function for each of its 8 channels, which gives control over the “oldschoolness” of the outcoming sound 
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I have an unused Iomega zip drive and a couple of disks that you can have cheap if you want. I used them for my cd3000xl but now I have an SD card working as an internal hard drive, so don’t need the zip.
Gotek is cool, but it just gives you hundreds of floppies, so each one is quite tiny. SCSI zip drive or SCSI hard drive gives you more space per disk (a whopping 60MB I think 
)
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I’ve not actually got the unit yet - I don’t pick it up until Thursday - so I’ll give it a go and see how I get on, but I could definitely be interested
Lemme know. I can’t be bothered listing it on eBay just for a tenner, and I’m not using it. Cover the postage and you can have it.
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Thank you, mate - that’s very generous of you!
Just remembered I also have a spare OS 2.0 EEPROM for the CD3000XL, if yours doesn’t have one already. You can load OS 2.0 from a floppy every time you start it, but if you replace the internal EEPROM chip it saves that step
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The s3000xl is very nice indeed and often overlooked. It has offline EQ, faster LFO’s (compared to old Akai models), 8 stage envelopes, resonance filter. I has linear interpolation, but still can sound gritty and clean (although not as musical as an s1100).
And also has the MESA software for Mac, but you’d need an old Mac with SCSI.
Be sure it has the label “Made in Japan” on the back
Wish E-mu’s had a better build quality. Both the rack samplers and early Proteus, Pro-cussion series all have either pot issues, data wheel issues (skipping values), PSU issues, shitty tact switches, or audio connection issues (no sound or sound dropping out).
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