HW Samplers: What to Do?

glitched · Joined: Mar 25, 2006 Posts: 80 Location: phila., pa USA

So, I have this Akai S2000 laying around and it's hardly worth selling at this point. Is anybody doing anything cool with their abandoned hardware samplers? Specifically, I'd like to know if anyone's ever heard of a "hacked" OS for the Akai. The Ensoniq samplers had their modified OS (Autechre brags about it).

Any cool ideas?

-d

seraph · Posted: Sun Jun 04, 2006 11:33 pm Post subject:

I sold my S2000 before it was too late.

Alexander · Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:59 am Post subject:

I own a s2000 and bought a s1100 recently. I got a little tired of the time consuming editing on the s2000, but I still enjoy working with HW samplers. The hacked OS is all new to me, I would love to hear more on that.

I like to spend a lot of time with samples look and listnen carefully to them, before throwing them in a sequence, with a hw sampler you are almost forced to do so.. on a computer it's oftnen too easy and it makes me overlook certain details and or qualities of a certain sample.
Very personal but for me a reason to keep working with them..

The prices are absurd in my opinion. 150 euro for a s1100 is dirt cheap..

mi_dach · Joined: Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 133 Location: Sweden

I'd cut my eyes out to be able to afford that sort of gear...
count yourself lucky

Alexander · Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:48 am Post subject:

glitched · Joined: Mar 25, 2006 Posts: 80 Location: phila., pa USA

Oh sure, sampler OS hacking was popularized on the Ensoniq Mirage. Check these links: http://www.gweep.net/~shifty/music/mirage.html
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=3&q=http://www.syntaur.com/tech-mir.html&e=9797

All that granular, "wavescanning" stuff that AE does started with manipulating samples in Ensoniq machines.

RE: HW sampler prices
Values will continue to plummet until there is a hardware sampler revival, a la analog synthesis. I'm trying to sell my S2k on ebay right now, for a paltry $149. Original price: $600 + Boss Dr-550 trade-in.

-d

mi_dach · Joined: Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 133 Location: Sweden

Alexander · Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:52 pm Post subject:

Are you serious? I'm sorry but I have some closer by candidates..

I guess it shouldn't have to be very expensive to get some gear. I bought most of my stuff second hand for reasonable prices..

Save some money and check the internet.

mi_dach · Joined: Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 133 Location: Sweden

Alexander · Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:26 pm Post subject:

I envy that diy-attitude, but as I am not really rich myself, I manage to save money up every now and then to get some gear or get inked, every 'hobby' has it's price. I bet that creating, bending, assembling and whatnot you do with 'junk' costs you time and some money as well..

I like sampling stuff and in the case of self made instruments, bent toys, etcetera, a sampler is a perfect machine. Built a jack out on your 'toy', plug it in your sampler and go. Works for me!

mi_dach · Joined: Dec 17, 2005 Posts: 133 Location: Sweden

I'm starting to think about samplers, maybe someone can give me some advice.

I guess it is nice to load up your favourite sounds and start playing on the keyboard/sequencer, but I like playing with circuit bent instruments live, recording and mashing up loops on the fly. It is messier but more live performance oriented. Is a sampler of much use for this type of live looping work?

Gothboy · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 11:37 am Post subject:

Well.....getting back to the original thread. I have a Yamaha A-3000 that I actually quite use a lot. I don't use Reason and have yet to really get into softsynths and softsamplers so all of my instruments are hardware and I like that because I love to turn actual knobs of the real instruments. The Yamaha A-3000 has 16 channels of MIDI multitimbrl capability, 3 independent effects, and I use it for a lot of my drum sounds...AND synth sounds! I don't care that it's 16-bit. It sounds great. Came with a whole library of synth samples! Plus I love to sample sounds into a hardware sampler because to me it's sampling in it's true form. I even sampled my dishwasher, put an LFO and some effects on and came up with a killer sound that's somewhere between a synth and an I don't know what and ended up using it in a song! It was hard to learn how to program it at first but now I know it pretty much inside and out. I feel it's important to learn how to use the hardware samplers first....that's how they did it in the early 80's and great records were made using them.

Mr_krz · Joined: Sep 30, 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Sweden

I find it hard to believe you Mi_dach. When I started my music hobby in the early 90ies even the simplest synth cost a few hunder bucks. But from what ever I made from my summer jobs I managed to by a few second hand synths which got me going on my Amiga. Now I have been at the hobby too long and seen my gear plummet in pricedrops and envy everybody starting up fresh.

Back in the 90ies you almost had to be an established technostar if you had a project studio consisting of a digital mixer(yamaha 01), a digital synth module say Roland JV2080, a sampler S1100, a decent analog synth (jupiter, moog, or arp). The only thing that has held its wort of that is the true analogs that are still not dirt cheap. But all in all anybody that put his mind to it can come up with that setup now. The 01 or 01v can be found for 300 bucks or so, the JV2080 for about the samt, and if good anlog sounds can be made with cheaper virtual analogs or plugins for your computer.