RAM and in General "why small Storage Size in modern samplers"?

Elektron Gear
#1

Hey everyone

I was hoping that someone who has more knowledge than me (which is not hard) on the subject could enlighten me-us

What’s is with the size of the memory on most samplers? Why does for example the new TE EP-133 K.O II has 64 mb, why does the Tr6s and even the Tr8s have 64 mb ? etc etc

Is the next size of memory so much more expensive and hard to implement? How much would a
tr6s selling cost more if it had , say 512mb or a TB of memory instead of 64mb?
30 euros more? 100? 200?
I have no idea. Just trying to understand , cause in phones , mp3 players , basically on almost any device over the years I feel like samplers had the slowest increase in memory when put into proportion to other consumer devices.

Cheers!

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#2

I don’t quite understand it either. The SP-404 Mk2 was a very welcome change with its 16GB at a sub $500 price, hope we see more samplers that are that generous. As for the TE and other ‘lo-fi’ stuff I guess the small capacity might be seen as part of the anachronistic charm and one of those limitation = creativity kind of things, but I’d still just rather they gave us at least quadruple that.

I think a lot of manufacturers design samplers as drum machines or short one shot affairs, meaning that theoretically you don’t need that much RAM and they can save manufacturing costs by going with older and perhaps more readily available chips. That sucks for those of us who would like to record in much longer sections and loops of audio though.

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#3

In practice I rarely hit the full RAM of Rytm and when I do it’s because I loaded things I did not end up needing. I think the reason for low ram is because samplers are usually used to playback one shots.

For big ram you have workstations and DAW’s that support multisamples etc. I think most manufactures don’t bother with more ram because 90% of users use DAW’s that are more powerful. Rack samplers have not been made in ages for the same reason.

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#4

Honestly I prefer it. I end up spending less time navigating sample folders and more time making music.

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#5

I’ve never hit a memory limit on anything sample wise but I do wish hardware makers put a bit more into things to give themselves some room to grow features as I’m tired of reading that something can’t be updated anymore as the hardware limits have been reached.

#6

Never been an issue for me. I don’t see the point in loading a sampler with a million sounds. Less is more.

Also samplers like this are really meant more to be sampled into, opposed to firing a million sounds into it via USB.

Imagine making music when you have less than 10 seconds of sample time. Yet tons of bangers were made this way and still are.

#7

I haven’t hit the limit on the OT yet but I think I probably will end up doing so at some point with the way I use the buffers. TBH it’s enough most of the time but I would definitely expect to see much more if/when they come out with the successor. Chip capacities/cost has come along way in the last decade so it would be frankly insulting if they just gave you the same amount in a new flagship sampler.

There’s definitely uses for large amounts of RAM, like live recording a whole song or even full performances and being able to immediately much about with it.

Also skipback type functionality where the last x seconds/minutes are constantly recorded, a very nice thing I think a lot of people would like to see on more devices.

1 Like
#8

Its possible they are using pre-manufactured CPU boards (like daisy or teensy)that just come with that much memory, all the do is program them. DAISY SEED has 64megs Daisy Seed — Electro-Smith

#9

…realtime access is not mass storage…up to now…

so the fast ram capacity will never equal the slower mass storage…
that’s why ot is still that special…since it can “abuse” the card reader (it’s mass storage) for “little” realtime access functions, too…

and all brands have to work with the electronic components that are available…
64 mb of ram is way more than it sounds at first and actually the best price vs function ratio to work with…end price always matters…

ot, again, is the only sampling device that does not work with either 64 or 128 mb of ram…
guess it has a 128 mb inbuilt but needs more realtime access for other things at the same time, so u’ll end with this uncommon inbetween size…

but all those storage solutions get faster and cheaper every year…
the days of dedicated fast ram are coming to an end…tomorrow, there’s no difference anymore, any mass storage solution will offer fast enough read write functionality…

3 Likes
#10

I was looking at current Raspberry Pis and the $15 Zero has 512MB of SDRAM, not sure how much of that you’d need to put aside for the average sampler OS but surely with one of those you could get more than 64MB usable sample RAM?

Then there’s always the bigger models which have much more. The Torso S-4 seems to be using one and offers 1GB of RAM which is really nice to see.

#11

The Rossum Assimil8or sampler module has 422Mb of RAM.

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#12

I would believe it’s related to the technology.
For samplers that you will likely finger drum, you want the lowest latency.
There is some relationship between size of memory and time to access a particular place of it.
Now I’m not an expert so take it with how much salt you want.

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#13

Because they want parts that are guaranteed to be in production for many years they aren’t using off the shelf PC parts but embedded systems meant for stuff like washing machines or smart lighting. Those systems don’t support gigabytes of attached memory.

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#14

Low latency is generally achieved by not using an off the shelf operating system, but just running code directly on the cpu. Memory access time is not an issue.

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#15

TBH I’m much more bothered by modern samplers that don’t support stereo files for some reason, obviously memory is probably often related to that. Glad to see that the EP-133 has stereo support (I think that’s correct?).

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#16

Truly, what’s the use case for more than say 256 mb of ram anyway? It’s not like these things are designed to stream full tracks. You could sample every classic drum machine in less than 16 mb. Add in 50 or so loops and you’re at 128mb max.

Like I understand the specs would look better on paper, but wouldn’t more ram just make this thing harder to use especially since it doesn’t have much of a GUI?

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#17

Well this is the thing, if you only see a sampler as a drum machine type device then it seems like more than enough. If you want to utilise much longer recordings for whatever reason then it becomes a limitation, and one that seems frustratingly arbitrary in 202X with how much memory you can get for cheap these days. 256MB probably is more than enough for most tbf, but there’ll still be the odd use case where you would really want a lot of recording time or for slicing up whole songs for whatever reason. And it would be great if more manufacturers included a skipback type feature which probably necessitates having a bit more RAM for it to be useful.

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#18

256Gb will increase the unit cost significantly (you need a CPU that can handle it and the memory itself, possibly more power and better heat management). That can easily double the price and if you sell less you have to raise the price more to compensate. (you’re getting into TE camping table pricerange then :wink: )

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#19

Edited to MB, not GB, oops :stuck_out_tongue:

#20

I dont disagree about latency and all the arguments.
What I am asking though is not what type of memory it has to be but:
“how hard is it to have more” and “how much does it really cost more to have more”.
Someone once analyzed it and put it down in numbers. He said
“this costs X amount and if you want Y amount of storage then the Cost is at least XY dollars more”
However I cant for the love of God remember ion which forum it was …