Anyone still using a hardware sampler?

[Monotremata]

Well everything I do is MPC Live based, and my EMU 6400 Ultra does most of the actual playing, so yeah still using them until they die.

[Soy Sos]

That's actually the last hardware sampler I had,
an EMU 6400 Ultra. For old heads like myself (55)
it's just a question if you're having fun and feeling inspired with certain original equipment and techniques
or if you want to adapt your creative process to newer technologies. I love combining iOS and Live with modular, hardware mixers and physical boxes like digital delays and reverbs. To each one's own

[Soy Sos]

dubl
post

[3hands]

I just read a modern review of the old Yamaha a3000, which was a brilliant sampler, but this paragraph made me laugh out loud, and I figured some people would appreciate it..


“Sometimes, on a cold lonely night, I think back to the times I had with the A3000 and miss the way it pushed you to be creative with your sample programming…

Then I wipe away a tear and load up a project with 23 instances of Kontakt.”

[SPOD]

I love hardware samplers for how it makes you value samples. I’ve done tonnes of projects using software samplers, looping and cutting directly in a DAW and while you can hone something deliberate quite efficiently you can also lose time just diving into micro editing hell. Another thing that bores me is the lack of surprise. There’s definitely an enjoyment in that, and it’s a whole different workflow and result but I’m finding, the more homogenised and efficient software gets and the more looping becomes automated the less creatively interesting or satisfying it becomes for me. The workflow seems cheap and constantly adjustable.

When I load a sample into one of my samplers, I know I need to want to hear it in there, to see what happens and I’m usually surprised by the outcome. The idiosyncrasies and limitations force an outcome that I tend to respect a bit more and that shapes my creativity in a way that’s personally satisfying.

I love using the Emaxs filters, aliasing and weird grouping, the sp12s fun workflow and heavy sound, the s900s punch and alternating loops, and just got an s1100 which seems to hype things up a bit and has each one has its own quirks that I love to work with. Sequencing everything from the MPC 3000, recording to tape, there’s less space to smoothen out the edges and in a time that it’s so easy to lazily homogenise what you’re making and trying to chase ‘perfect’ I enjoy being forced to succumb to creating in a more primitive context, relying more on the feeling of what you’ve made.

And there’s also the element of their place in the history of the music I love, stepping in their footsteps and seeing what comes out of that today.

It’s good shit.

[anselmi]

I’d love a eurorack module of the 3000 series akai filter - it was the sound of the mid to late 90s. An in/out with a knob for cutoff and a knob for resonance 0-15 (with the zipper noise) plus cv control of both. That would be great.

Isn´t the ALM MUM M8 close enough for you? I know it´s the S950 filter but maybe they share some DNA

[the PMO]

I have a few samplers I own and have sold a couple. I have a Roland MV8800 which still controls the mothership that is my studio. To this day it is a workhorse and although it's missing some more modern features it's still ahead of the curve in other things. Also, it is what I'm most familiar with so its what I turn to when I want to get shit done!

Otherwise I have a Pioneer SP16 which I use for drums mostly or more minimal tracks. A Roland SP555 i use as an effect box or two track recorder. A Bastl microgranny for field recordings or ambient effects. An elektron octatrack that surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven't decided on how to incorporate yet but I can see the many possibilities at hand. Finally I have 2 Akai s1100 that I bought in a non functioning state with dreams of cobbling one together out of the two but I'm not quite there yet, if I'll ever get there.

I've had and sold Korg ESXII, MPC1000, SP404, Yamaha RS7000 all for various quirks or shortcomings. Not to say that there was nothing great about each, because there was, they just didn't jive with me.

One thing to consider with hardware samplers as well as having a variety of them is the option for resampling between each sampler for various effects. I think that this is where the hardware angle may be most different from software. Not that you couldn't approximate it but that it'd be different is all. It certainly would be from a workflow perspective.