Sampling companion for Syntakt?

My style is experimental, ambient with feeling. Want to incorporate original electric bass and guitar loops. Want to compose/create away from computer and transfer later to Live for project completion.
Obvious choice is Digitakt. Mono samples only holding me back. Next choice Octatrack. Cost, learning curve and age is holding me back. Which leaves:
MPC One - Powerful but not in love with the work flow / interface.
SP-404 mk 2 - Battery power!
iPad - not tactile and loose midi timing.
Any thoughts?
Digitakt MK II please!

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Samples are mono on the DT, but effects are stereo. And bass and guitar samples should be mono :relaxed:

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I used to think stereo was important and then I realized all my favorite records were mono only.

Edit: look up LCR approach to mixing…

1010 music Blackbox of course !

Will do multisamples, mono or stereo, live recording and playback of syntakt loops, sample slices, whatever.

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As a previous Digitakt owner I am aware of stereo effects and LFO panning and love those features. Nice but not true stereo. I should have mentioned I want to use stereo field recordings too.

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Thanks - will take a look at that!

You can still use stereo samples, if you use two tracks, obviously that a bit tidious. That’s the only sampler I have so… Not sure I can help more than this .

with ipad is good idea check loopy pro or drambo. they run on iphone also so u can try them there if u dont have got ipad yet. loopy pro has free trial i think. u can use syntakt as audiointerface inside so it nicely clicks together.

Is your plan to play the arrangements you have made on the syntakt and then midi sync with a sampler that will play your sampled bass and guitar parts?

Are you also planning to use the sampler to sample the sounds from the syntakt and further effect/resample those sounds?

Does this setup need to be portable?

Do you envisage wanting a lot of channels to play with on the sampler, or would 7 or 8 suffice?

Edit: is the max sample length on the digitakt long enough for your guitar and bass parts? How long can samples be on a digitakt?

Had pretty good basic results with Koala but want more power. Will dig in to Drambo. I noticed it has some Elektron inspired sequencing features.

My thoughts are:

Sp404 is really nice for effects/sampling resampling, has guitar level input and is super portable, but personally i find it a bit confusing or gard to keep track the bigger i make a project

Mpc one is great for sampling and resampling and you can go super deep. Its almost like a daw in a box. But is less portable and you do mention your intention is to arrange in a daw, so an mpc may be doubling up on that

I cant speak much on the octatrack as i am new to it (i hope someone else will) as i do hear people speak on how the syntakt and octatrack are a strong combo, and its designed to record and loop etc. not much more portable than an mpc one mind you.

Digitakt is great but with the limit on tracks and sample length i wonder if its the tool for the job for you. I have reservations

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Those are good questions.
Yes to MIDI sync, and I would like to sequence the samples from the Syntakt too.
May want to record/sample Syntakt patterns for purpose of consolidation to a single device. MPC will do that.
Portability nice but not required. SP-404 is winner there.
If I need more channels I will go to the DAW.
Bass and guitar samples don’t need to be more than 4 bars. Will chop them up. I think Digitakt is something like 30 sec max?? Not a lot of storage on Digitakt. Main drive is 1 GB total. No expansion.

i sold mine octatrack while ago because of drambo,it is kind of the same thing but with better view, better effects to use on and so,then buy octatrack again because it is best controller for drambo :slight_smile:

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I’d just go Digitakt. I don’t see the benefit of stereo sampling unless you are sampling stereo performances where you want to catch the split instruments in the sampling process.

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If you want to use a stereo field sample in Digitakt just split it to dual mono, throw the samples on two tracks, hard pan them L/R, and offset the values of the sample start param for a little extra coolness. Use a slightly different filter value on each of those tracks, maybe a boost filter with some resonance to pick out different frequencies on each side so the left and right ear get tickled a little differently. It will sound cooler than the straight sample would.

But also just using the field recording smushed down to mono by the DT with no daw prep, same sample on two tracks with an LFO sweeping the pan slowly, set it so the LFO is opposite on one track (when it’s at the valley on one side, the other side is reaching peak) it will give you cooler results versus just the straight stereo sample.

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what’s not to like about this workflow, I love it… plus you use Ableton and the mpc has Ableton export

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I use a Syntakt with an M2 Macbook Air and an Ableton Live performance template. One USB cable for all Syntakt tracks. The Syntakt makes a great midi controller with its keyboard folding, sequencer and eight CCs per track controllable by LFO and the encoders.

Session View is a great sampling platform with its clips, and has really good looping functionality. You can template a setup however you want it. The M2 Macbook Air is silent (no fan), and has a huge battery life. I copy the Ableton project across to my more powerful machine when I want to mix and arrange. With Ableton Live, you can even quantise audio takes!

I can plug and play a mixer, Push2 for looping (it has a footswitch jack!) and everything else it does, and a Launch Control XL for performance.

Not really what OP wants I know, but maybe someone else will realise Ableton Live offers everything they need already.

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I’m a bit baffled about why many people seem to want everything in stereo. Is it that perceivable for music? Surround sound for film is immersive but I too am unsure how critical it is for music. That’s not to say I don’t use panning in my own music or that I can’t see its merit at all - I can see how a stereo field recording might have immersive qualities. But it fan feel like a spec obsession at times - like stainless steel frets on electric guitars.

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It definitely makes a difference when using headphones. That said, I think it’s not important for a lot of samples, because the stereo comes from the effects, though I certainly believe there are exceptions.

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I think this is the answer.

It’s by far the simplest machine to use.

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