Questions about Samples, Presets and Patches!?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I’ve been working on a bunch of music and I’ve accumulated a bunch of samples, presets, and patches. To be exact 2500 samples, 320 for A4, 320 for RYTM, and various others. Nobody has really given me a great tutorial for samples other than https://splice.com/blog/tips-for-creating-your-own-sample-pack/ and http://tweakheadz.com/sampling-tips/ Is there a more comprehensive tutorial or a post talking about preparing samples and presets for Elektron gear?

I’ve followed most of those tutorials but I still have questions…

  1. I guess my main concerns are with amplitude on the samples. How loud should they be when bouncing them? Some of my samples are low in volume. My best guess is to raise the volume slowly before distortion. Is this just a subjective thing or is there a min volume to keep it at? Is there a rule to follow here?

  2. My other concern is with distribution and organization. Looking for anything that talks about this. Are most people’s samples distributed on their own individual websites? Is it organized specifically other than like a typical pack on splice?

Anyone an expert here?

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#2

in terms of samples , i’d prepare them relevant for any sampler , not elektron specific (unless you start making sample chains for octatrack)… otherwise you are limiting your customer base.

i also suggest you download free packs from various places and see what they do.
in particular file names, folder structures , if they create kits for easy and quick use.

i suggest you look at samplesfrommars , they might have some free packs but they also prepare their samples well.

they’re very probably normalised too , 24 bit , 41k (maybe 48k mono if theyre elektron specific) , but theres likely to be a lot more processing going on that i’m not familiar with.

synth samples might be created for the entire note scale for 6 octaves , i think some might only do certain notes (e.g C and f# within each scale)

i don’t think theres ’ anything out of the ordinary’ that you should not do when creating samples , i’m sure there would be many vids on youtube for this.

as for distribution , i think you just need to dig around the net to see what everyone else is doing.
a few people sell their own packs on here , i mostly see big sample companies licensing samples from known artists and advertising online/in stores …
and try to do something new/original , e.g. doing another 808 pack isnt bringing anything new to the market.

I’m very far from being an expert.

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#3

Good stuff above.

I’d suggest leaving plenty of headroom 4-6db, with little to no dynamic processing for further mangling by the costumer.

Look forward to checking out the pack.

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#4

Genuine question, why is this important for samples? Wouldn’t it be most efficient to have them normalised to the loudest volume possible without clipping? I would assume all samplers would be able to deal with a sample normalised to maximum…?

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#5

Not a necessity at all just personal preference tbh. Leaving headroom for further processing possibilities, unlike most commercial sample packs where the audio can peak at 0dbFS [even clip] and complicates further processing without destroying the audio. Sure your sampler can handle samples with no headroom but i like to further process and sculpt sounds into something new and having plenty of headroom helps.

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#6

Samples from Mars stuff is normalised to -0.5db by the looks of it.

You can always reduce gain if you want to process them further. One thing they do very well is provide clean samples AND compressed/coloured ones.
So you have hits “ready to go” and ones that are ripe for processing.

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#7

Yea, I suppose my issue is with the dynamic range of a sample not the peak level.

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