Samplers, sampling, suggestions for a sample based workflow

[shellfritsch]

@marcus_fischer

i’ve always been curious about the 500. how is it to work with?

so far so good. the two line display means lots of time with the arrow keys and jog wheel - but the menus aren’t deep so it’s pretty quick to learn. also the abundance of dedicated buttons allows for building muscle memory.

i picked it up because i wanted to stay mobile, but didn’t want to have a big touchscreen with me - and i have grown increasingly frustrated with the op-z / op-1 sample management approach and extremely limited storage capacity. that and i wanted to be able to use/record stereo samples. this solves all those issues for me.

it’s a funny object - the thing is solid with a very tough/heavy metal enclosure - but the buttons and jog wheel feel like they could break at any minute. the upgraded “fat pads” provide decent velocity response. the workflow is easy and classic mpc - surprisingly capable for such a budget instrument - but apparently the firmware is super buggy and was abandoned very early by akai. i haven’t had any issues with it yet…

kinda surprised there isn’t anything else like this these days.

[encephalitislethargi]

i have found a lot of these same things to be true.

1.tranposing samples only works the way i want in ableton. i wish to god that the octatrack had the sample pitching abilities of ableton’s simpler + maybe some autotune effect and midi keyboard capability

2.granulator 2 is maybe the most practically useful software granular tool for creating musically useful pads from source material and further textural processing of recorded material

I am really interested in the little deformer but i dont think i could justify it until i get rid of one of the pieces of gear i already have, since i have a lot of the same bases covered, even if they arent implemented as well. but i will take note of that. i definitely have been considering it since i’ve learned about it. i never knew about the lofi aspects of it. it kind of sounds like it has more of what people love about the microgranny, which is very intruiging

nebulae is the most exciting hardware granular/experimental looping tool i have ever used. maybe not as useful as granulator II. but to me, its what i wanted pedals like Outward, Tensor, or Mood to be as far as random loop restructuring and for exploring new textures inside of old samples. it has the window shaping, density, overlap without going straight into clouds blur territory, sos recording, a bunch of secondary functions for little details, modulation over the parameters you need to automate, and independent pitch/speed. i think the phase vocoder addition is important as far as the overall sound too.

so i haven’t completely given up on a hardware solution i think. but i do use ableton for vocal chops in octatrack. i think i do agree that modular is mostly going to be for interesting new tactile effects processing

@janglesoul the boss sp-202 does chromatic sample pitching well? can you use midi in for that?

[Net]

@encephalitislethargi

i never knew about the lofi aspects of it. it kind of sounds like it has more of what people love about the microgranny, which is very intruiging

I didn’t mean to suggest its sound is lofi. In fact its sound quality is extremely high; moreover I’ve noticed no noise floor whatsoever. One of my favourite things about it. It was misleading to use the word ‘gritty’ I think, so I apologise for that. My participation on Lines occurs usually between my toddler’s naps and therefore tends to be rushed and clumsy.

What I meant by ‘gritty’ was really just that many of its (granulation-based) effects more readily give a rough, glitchy, quite clicks&cuts/Mille Plateaux sound than they do something you might find in more gentle styles today. I had the sense the device has a kind of punkish indifference to ‘pleasant’ sounds – it’ll make them when appropriately patched, but doing so isn’t one of its prime directives. Being myself indifferent to most ambient/drone music, this is something I respect about it.

[WhiteNoise]

Very interesting thread, thank you all for the replies! Considering I already have a Qubit Nebulae v2 and I enjoy Tardigrain on iPad, I was thinking about the Octatrack to be able to support me live, but then I really don’t like that the OT only has a stereo out so it can ONLY be used live and not for production. Is there maybe a eurorack sampler that allows me to do stuff similar to the Octatrack and maybe even at a cheaper price? Otherwise I’ll have to invest in the Octatrack knowing it will only be used live

[petesasqwax]

Have you looked at Drambo on iPad? Apparently AUv3 is in beta now so it will be a fully-featured standalone application. You could ally it with a MIDI controller and whatever class compliant audio interface you wanted and get whatever outs you need (perhaps it connects with an ES-8 in your rack, for instance?)

[hyena]

very long post, beware

my experience with samplers:
i started with an akai s950 (unexpanded) which i still have and will upgrade with usb drive and led display soon. probably the best one i ever used features wise if you don’t consider the ram limitations and clunkyness of the small old display. great features, multisampling, variable sampling rate!!! this is something i used a lot both to save memory and to process sound. the onboard filter is great as well, plus you get a nice bonus sine generator the sound of this machine is so cool is almost unbelievable! despite (or thanks to) its 12 bits converters this spits out sounds that are almost solid matter! my drums never sounded so good as on the 950.

then i added an mpc 2000xl , great gear but with its limits re: multisampling and live performing, so i upgraded to an mpc4000. this was a real beauty. glorious machine with tons of modulations, i often used it as a synth multisampling simple waveforms and looping them as oscillators. great i\o’s (even mic in with phantom and phono preamp with ground). great visual feedback (piano roll like view of sequences! yesss!). cons: it was huge to bring on stage and prone to some malfunctions, had to repair it thrice. sold it in a bad financial moment, missed it a lot. then years later i bought an mpc500, it was nice but too toyish for my needs, so brought it back to the shop the day after and purchased a mpc1000. upgraded the pads, installed jjos2xl (great alternative firmware) and fell in love. the 1000 is a great little one: i did tons of live sets with the 1000 alone, or with it and a micromodular, or with it and another single multitimbral synth (blofeld, jv1080). jjos adds incredible value especially for performance, new clever ways to change patterns while playing etc… then i felt the need for bigger pads and swapped it for a 2500 (with the same jjos). same experience, better user interface, bigger and heavier. then sold it, bought maschine, loved it, then felt the need to get rid of computers for performing and go back to hardware only. tried the octatrack. loved it for its open-ended, experimental nature but had two issues: 1)i’m not really a fan of step sequencers (even advanced ones like elektron’s) 2)the sound of it is good when you go minimal, but mixing different busy tracks on it? gainstaging nightmare. overall i always found it sounded dull compared to what i used before. swapped it for a er-301\monome grid + ansible combo. dream come true. the er-301 is probably the best instrument i ever used, it sounds so much better than the octa and you can basically program it to do whatever you want with samples, live recording, synthesis, you name it. of course it lacks the sequencer, but you can build them inside it to suit your needs.
then felt the need to something a bit more physical and i was missing the mpc world. bougth an mpc live mk1. now i have the best of both worlds, crazy bizarre totally customizable on the 301 and mpc workflow optimized for the new millenium on the mpc live. the fact that you have so much ram on these newer mpcs means you can get creative throwing in entire songs, and then chopping only the parts you like and building programs out of them. i’ve chopped a shitload of my unreleased tracks. you know, often you have tracks with wonderful sounds and phrases but that don’t go anywhere musically, that’s perfect food for a modern sampler! plus the autosampler feature built in means i can conjure up a great patch on the modular, use a midi-cv interface and let the mpc sample it automatically (multisampling) and then play it like a poly synth!!!
the effects and instruments inside were a huge great surprise, they actually sound very good (where classic mpc’s effects were basic to say the best). i think there is still a lot of space for improvement (in the mixer section, in the sustain loop department, in the “next sequence” performance options etc…) but this time akai nailed it, the whole line is a great improvement on a classic machine!
the live and the x have phono preamps built in. i have tape machines, cassettes players and turntable hooked up to my main mixer and a dedicated out to the mpc so i’m always ready to sample and chop. sampler’s heaven, eventually! <3

(p.s.: some last considerations. the new mpc line feels a bit like working on a computer, or an ipad, with its touchscreen and advanced graphics. this is a pro but it lacks that aura of dedicated, ninja style unit that older mpc’s had (if you get what i mean). if i had the cash and space i would pair it with a 1000 with jjos2xl, for sure. they are different and differently inspiring. but: keep in mind both 1000 and 2500 have one big issue: all buttons are prone to die sooner or later, they are badly engineered and very fragile. if you use them a lot and perform a lot you’ll need to change them sooner or later. the mpc live rubberized buttons feel eternal in comparison. i’ve seen some users on mpc-forums did some mods to the buttons to have them more solid years ago. that was my only complain on the 1000\2500 line.)

[cluster_automata]

i love samplers,
i have the little toy yamaha vss300 so simple but very curious machine.
rytm mkll is amazing i finished a lot of track and could make an album with that so immediate and sounds beautiful , i am stuck with octatrack layout, it’s not for me!
i bought recently a akai s1100 to pair with the octatrack sequencer.
but i have always been curious about the mpc samplers, so thank you hyena!!! , the new generations seems solid… if i wanted to go that route which one you guys would suggest?
mpc one , mpc live or the fource??? thanks

[kbra]

So far I’ve found my home with Polyend Tracker, which is kind of understandable considering my first touch with electronic music over two decades ago was trackers - way back when there was no way I could afford synthesizers and samplers, but still had a home computer with a sound card. I think it was around half a decade of first just the trackers and then having synths and sampling them to trackers, before starting to use other things day-to-day and spending less time with that particular paradigm.

Always struggled with all the other hardware samplers in some way, feeling I’m not really in control of what’s happening (eg. I still don’t think the x0x steps + parameter locks type UI is that suitable for other than very simple sample-based workflows, knowing there are many who disagree), can’t slice and manipulate the samples quickly in a way I want, et cetera. Octatrack was closest to love before, but was more of a live / loop / percussive oriented and struggled with pitched one-shot stuff and such so ended up being less than suitable for what I wanted it to be (and superb for what many others want it to be). Classic MPCs I could never gel with despite borrowing several during all the years - not even the “MPC 1000 with JJ OS” combo a lot of friends liked - and didn’t feel like trying out the MPC Live as every person I know who owns it says it feels like “DAW in a box”, which I didn’t really need.

Now, the Tracker. You can’t really do fancy granular stuff with it, nor live sampling and processing. It has 8 tracks and somewhat limited sample memory per project (more than your average unexpanded vintage sampler, but less than any modern device of the “memory costs nothing” age). It has a decent master verb, delay and limiter, but nothing super special, and no per track eq, track compression or such. It doesn’t have multiple outputs which really forces you to treat it as a single self contained music-making device. You can’t play back anything while sampling. Et cetera.

All that is forgiven at the point when one takes up the unit and can immediately get interesting things done fast, without pressing the wrong buttons, getting lost, stumbling upon things that require menu diving when they should be accessible behind their own button, or reading the manual regularly. Seeing the whole sequence at once and actually having an overview what was just recorder / programmed, being able to program all kinds of fun tricks one was routinely using with old trackers. Actually being able to play samples across the whole pitch range like with a normal sampler, with or without horrible (or cool) aliasing. And so on. It’s really a case of limitations being a good thing and enabling a super fast workflow for me (I do have complaints, but they’re so small I think there’s a good possibility they’ll eventually be addressed).

Don’t try this at home unless the paradigm is equally familiar to you, though…

[marcus_fischer]

@WhiteNoise

I really don’t like that the OT only has a stereo out so it can ONLY be used live and not for production

Hey there. Octatrack has four outs. Any track can be sent to any combination of those four outs.

[hyena]

can’t speak about the force (also keep in mind it has a similar OS but different workflow, it is not an mpc), so i can only talk about the one and the live.

mpc one
pros: small, more buttons (better interface)
cons: no ssd option (very important imho) , no battery (you can use an external portable powerbank tho), no multiple outs, no phono preamp, smaller pads.

mpc live
pros: very solid, big pads, ssd option (i have a 500gb samsung evo installed, perfect!), more outs, phono preamp, battery (about 6 hours autonomy).
cons: heavier, bigger, less buttons (more button combos or menu diving)

keep in mind that the mpc’s NEED external storage, the internal one is pretty small and it is better not to save anything on it and dont remove anything of the factory content, they don’t like it and it can cause glitches, freezes etc… you can install ssd (live, X) or use sd cards (up to big sizes), thumbdrives or usb hdd.

seeing all pros and cons i’d suggest the live. overall a more solid release. i have the mk1 which lacks cv\gate outs unfortunately, but the mk2 has those and the internal speakers (which initially seemed a bad joke to me, but people are reviewing them as pretty good to sketch out ideas or to play to very small audiences, friends, collaborators)

[WhiteNoise]

Is it good as a sampler? I did not look into it because it seemed pretty complex

[varispeeder]

@cluster_automata

i have the little toy yamaha vss300 so simple but very curious machine.

such an amazing tool!! I got it maybe 17-18 years ago and it was a massive upgrade from my beloved SK-1…I’ve even left the thrift store’s $9.99 sticker on mine so no one thinks I paid $300+ for one online! running it through a filter and reverb really softens the digital harshness, and I’ve gotten a few great songs by sampling an A (like from a Rhodes or string patch) and playing them with the built-in patterns. also the ability to stack samples makes such rich and organic sounds!

for years it was my X-factor production tool but alas, the OP-1 has more than taken its place. I was even able to program in some synth patches to replicate the built-in VSS-30 sounds I loved. so it’s on loan to a friend but I will never ever get rid of it!!

[petesasqwax]

It’s exceptionally powerful, but does seem quite complex in addition. I’m sure it’s simply a case of getting used to it, as with anything, though. Many friends with Elektron samplers liken the Drambo feature-set to those units. I’ll see if I can find a decent video of somebody utilising the range of functions it has within a sampler scenario.

[soysos]

Drambo Yes!
I’ve been experimenting with various abstracted sequencing/sampling/chopping approaches with it and have gotten some really interesting results. They just released a wavetable module, updated the flexi sampler and I’ve heard there is some kind of granular module in the works. The wavetable was an additional $5 and I’m fine with some extra cost add ons if it helps for this platform to grow. Borderlands covers some great approaches for me now and since I got my head around AUM as a host, the ios world has really opened up for me.

[petesasqwax]

I have to confess, I’ve barely scraped the surface of what it can do but I’ve been really impressed with my explorations so far & the things I’ve seen/heard others doing with it shows really impressive power and versatility.

The wavetable IAP makes sense to me - it’s considerable extra functionality and I’d rather a developer got payments to spur on development than gave everything away forever after collecting the entry fee. That said, I believe the AUv3 hosting may well be a free upgrade!

[WhiteNoise]

I think I am going to buy a Morphagene in the end and place it in a skiff together with my Nebulae v2. Anyone who has experience in recording in real time in the morphagene? Can I just plug my zoom h6 into it with a mono cable to record in real time?

[jkile9]

I’ve been struggling to determine a solid sample based workflow and I’m hoping that I may have found a halfway decent solution. I’ve been eye balling an Octatrack, MPC 1000, Polyend Tracker, Maschine+, MPC One, even Push 2 and just couldn’t find a solution that really checked all the boxes. I didn’t necessarily want all the maintenance that may come with an MPC 1000 and wasn’t really in love with what I’d seen of the work flow or the current OS on MPC One as I had previously owned an MPC Live. The Octatrack was super enticing but I also wanted pads if I could help it for something a bit more immediately playable which I’ve heard people have mixed results with. The Tracker looked great but only samples in mono which just doesn’t work for sampling my heavily stereo focused modular, and Maschine+ just looks a little too much like a preset machine for my tastes and is also a bit pricey. That’s not to say all of these boxes aren’t incredibly well made/designed, there’s just a very specific criteria that I had and couldn’t decide which would suit it.

I’ve since ordered a 1010 Bitbox Micro, a Pod 64x case, and a Novation Launchpad Pro mk3 and hope that this might be the route for me. I’ve got a direct midi over trs connection with the launchpad and bitbox which gives me super quick sequencing or sample playback from the pads, I can sequence it from Ansible or even PNW if I’m feeling like it, stereo samples direct from the modular, I can pull a .als file from SD for projects I’ve made, can resample and mangle with my effects in my modular, and I can now use ableton more effectively with a controller made for it on days I’m feeling like staying ITB. Should all be here tomorrow and looking forward to seeing if I’ve finally nailed down what I’ve been hunting for after all this time! Boi that turned out longer than I expected

[kulturhaus]

I didn’t see anyone mention the S2400 by Isla Instruments. It might be an interesting option for those looking for a simple workflow, and it has faders!

The machine is based on the E-mu SP-1200, which the hip-hop crowd swears on. As for me, I’m just hoping to get a solid and inspiring sampler with character (think 12 bit, aliasing, input and output filters). It is supposed to be direct, easy-to-use and not heavily menu-based. Another feature which I liked is the included looper (currently it has 8 mono channels with 20 or so seconds recording time each). Also multiple ins and outs, including RCAs with phono.

I ordered mine for a reduced price during the preorder period. Now, the shipping is about to start, but it will take a few months to handle all the preorders (around 1000 units, I believe, but no one knows for sure). The community around the S2400 seems to be very enthusiastic about it, and so am I, as this will be my first sampler!

Note that this is only the second product of the company (actually it’s a one-man operation), so it might not be as refined as something made by a large manufacturer. But from what I unterstand, a good care was taken of the hardware, which includes decent-quality faders and custom molded caps. Design-wise, it’s rather okay. Not sure about the pad action, as it was not emphasized much.

[jkile9]

WOW that thing is cool. If I didn’t need something immediately, that honestly would’ve been a pretty damn good contender. Thanks for the heads up on this!

[timp]

re Isla, I’m a happy Kordbot owner… have watched the development of the S2400 - look forward to how you find it