Sampler with best filter and effects

DonovanDwyer · 2023-01-20T19:53:50.317Z

Best filters per voice: Emax 1/Emulator I/II
Best filter bus: Toraiz SP-16 (second place Syntakt)
Best FX: That’s a tough one. Ensoniq and Kurzweil in the 90’s definitely. Yamaha A-series are supposed to be great as well. Today, maybe the 404 Mk2? Only heard it in demos though. You can do cool things if you dig into the SP-16 dual fx blocks per track, but somewhat limited (no decent reverb or ping-pong option on the delay for instance.)

soup · 2023-01-20T20:32:32.430Z

Best is such a boring question. Now the weirdest fx on any sampler I’ve had is definitely the Gotharman Little Deformer. I mean Double Step Granulator, Glitch Shifter, Abstruct0, what can fuck with that?

Also the sampler with the best sounding filter is most likely the Korg DSS-1, but it was designed by people who obviously had never seen a sampler before, is the size of a small car, and has an annoying 80’s interface made up of 1 slider and a numeric keyboard. It’s pretty much the worst at anything other than sounding amazing.

blurrghost · 2023-01-20T22:55:30.341Z

-Big fan of the filters in the rytm. The compressor is fantastic too. Delay and reverb are fine.
-Esx filters and fx are great but not the best for typical lush/ fat filter sweeps. The effects can get weird and the knob movements can be motion recorded into the 128 step sequences and you can switch that between stepped and smooth on playback.
-The Mirage has a great sounding filter but suffers from poor build quality (and the worst keybed in history). I don’t think I’m going to keep fixing it over and over anymore but I’ll probably pull the boards and build a standalone filter from it’s chips.

frankk · 2023-01-21T10:29:24.178Z

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but to me the OT filter sounds garb. It sounds more like a volume dial than a filter. I’m probably doing something wrong

Claid · 2023-01-21T10:58:26.399Z

In terms of raw sound, the Isla Instruments S2400 is king. Once the analogue filter board is released there will be envelopes and LFOs added to the mix. Then there will be a separate FX board. So right now, I would say for filters the Toraiz SP-16 is the best sampler, and that the SP-404 MK2 is the best for FX, but soon the S2400 will have both those bases covered.

neilbaldwin · 2023-01-21T11:17:03.313Z

soup:

Commodore 64

Which had the best filters…

Encephalitislerthargi · 2023-01-21T11:24:53.698Z

electribe es-1 sounds so dope (12 bit adc i believe, when sampling internally)

octa filters are my favorite digital filters ever, the digitakt obviously sounds very good as well, but less character imo than the octa

blurrghost · 2023-01-21T17:11:23.236Z

Encephalitislerthargi:

electribe es-1 sounds so dope

It really does. Nothing too special in the effects department but the raw sound is one of my all time favorites.

Doug · 2023-01-21T18:20:28.394Z

I’ve got an ES-1 that I’ve been meaning to fix for like 3 years at this point. (It has that issue with the power connection that a lot of them have.) It is a nice sounding sampler.

dee · 2023-01-21T18:43:31.359Z

s950 is nice.

octatrack filter is really good. very versatile

FZ1 from what I can remember worked wonders on various bits

effects … too many … a lot sound shit … a few sound good.

Eaves · 2023-01-21T18:52:50.986Z

Dr.K:

For me they sound bland and not special in anyway

I understand what you mean, though I’d describe them as precise, or polite, or utility. The filter on the Heat adds some awesome weight to everything in high pass mode with a resonance bump on the low end, but filter sweeps didn’t sound nearly as nasty as I expected, even with the dirt parameter maxed out. The drive circuits are all really nice, though!

I think the filter I like the most is the one on the Octatrack. It was super convenient with a resonant low and high pass filter at the same time, and it has a (sadly not p-lockable) drive, and it really crunched up the sound in a way I liked. They’re not all samplers, but I like the character on the Octatrack’s filter more than the one on the Digitakt, Digitone, Analog Heat, and Analog Four. They’re all good, but the OT sounded dirty in just the right way every time. Oh and the dj equalizer fx was magic on my paino stems, very glittery and sparkly without being shrill.

Schnork · 2023-01-21T18:53:58.167Z

You‘re not necessarily doing something wrong. Maybe you just don’t like it. It’s really highly subjective and we all make different stuff, have different goals.

lowph · 2023-01-21T19:11:17.293Z

Yeah, this is such a subjective topic!

frankk:

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong

Have you checked out the filter setup (double-tap the FX button)? You can change the filter slope and a few other settings in there that could possibly get it sounding more like what you want. If none of that sounds good to you, maybe you simply don’t like the filter on the OT!

What are some examples of filters you like?

lowph · 2023-01-21T19:21:46.015Z

DonovanDwyer:

Emax 1/Emulator I/II

Did those have those z-plane filters? I never had the chance to use any E-Mu samplers, but most of what I heard seemed to have great sounding filters

DonovanDwyer · 2023-01-21T19:27:24.689Z

Z-plane is awesome but digital filter technology. The Emax and earlier E-MU’s had actual analog filters per voice, that sounded killer.

Encephalitislerthargi · 2023-01-22T15:13:34.894Z

frankk:

more like a volume dial than a filter

i guess i can understand this if youre just filtering a sample without any context. but i remember hearing all the youtube demos and recognizing a pattern where every drum pattern that was made with an octatrack has this super nice silky sheen over everything and i notice it now when working with mine

its the perfect kind of compressed smooth sound that i love. i think the elektron digital filters are some of the most finely tuned ones i’ve ever heard. they sound almost organic somehow. and im convinced that the digitakt filter is what makes all of the cool digitakt jams you hear on youtube and instagram sound so tactile and rubbery and thick. it makes things pop somehow. like you’re punching through a trampoline made of jello. hard to describe the quality i hear in those, obviously

i think it makes things sound extra punchy and 3d. on both machines, snappy enveloped sounds with a lpf drawn way back and opened up with another slightly snappier envelope makes the transient sound so present and real. not sure what it is. like you can really make a kick sound like you put a pillow inside of a kick drum. octa and dt filters are different, but they both kind of do the same thing. i think they have a similar quality overall

also, both of them, i think the octa moreso, are incredible for pinging with ultra high resonance. they sound better than some analog filters (not all, of course) for percussion synthesis when pinged. very “buttery” or something

darenager · 2023-01-22T15:22:27.753Z

Yeah OT filter sounds great and is very versatile, it can sound pretty analog too I think. The PEQ on OT can be pinged too, very nice for percussion stuff.

Encephalitislerthargi · 2023-01-22T15:37:18.100Z

I love pinging the eq. I have been doing that like crazy lately. And I just realized how fast the lfos can get (although not audio rate like the other boxes), especially with the custom lfos modulating the eq freq and gain with high q, gets so crazy

I love it

I think the chorus, phaser, flanger should be ping able too. Can’t recall ever doing it recently, but i modulate them all over the place

Schnork · 2023-01-22T16:41:20.645Z

Yeah, the way the OT filter can bring out harmonics is really nice. If you turn up the resonance and just sweep through the spectrum, you’ll notice it. You may not like it, though, but many seem to do.

“Silky sheen” is actually a good description. I had this loop from Plaits I sampled into my OT, yesterday and was amazed at what the filter was able to do. As I swept the filter it basically transformed the loop as the resonance hit overtones of individual notes from the loop.
If we only had keytracking…

I’ll try to record something later, have to check if the Plaits loop is a good demonstration without the rest of the mix present. If not, I’ll try to get something else going to demonstrate it.

There are some analog filters that are also famously good at singling out harmonics, but I’ve never encountered one which has this “silky sheen”.

blurrghost · 2023-01-22T16:59:13.454Z

The Achilles heel of the original electribes. They all have either had that problem or just haven’t had it yet. Fortunately it’s a really easy fix it you can use a soldering iron (pretty low level soldering skills required). You just have to reflow the solder joints where the power jack meets the board.
You owe it to yourself to get that thing up and running, it’s such a great machine. If you can’t solder you can take it to anyone who can do it even a little bit.