Greatest Sampler Of All Time Options

[lepetitmartien]

A good trick to make a crappy sounding S2000 sound better on drums is to sort the outs into an analogue opto compressor, the more wall thinking the better. It can make wonders… I use a Publison CL20-C but I'm sure more current ones can do.

[jeroleen]

I do not want to be insulting but I find it remarkable that anyone would insist on quantifiable differences between hardware sampers in such subtle increments yet finds that a software sampler can "emulate" any one of them. It seems to me that the variables such as the sample, the routing, the gain staging, the filtering, eq, effects etc. make significant differences in these instruments. On the other hand maybe thee is something to it.

To me samplers are quite felxible and the differences are usually more functional than anything else.

Still, the original question had to do wit h the greatest sampler of all time. The answer to me has to be the original Emulator not necessarily for its sound but rather for its impace on the whole field of sampling.

Prior to the Emulator samplers were prohibitively expensive, in the tens of thousands of dollar range. Without the advent of the Emulator, t he Akais, Rolandss, Yamahas would never have existed. Also, if it were not for the failure of the American manurfacturers of samplers the history would provbably look different.

The Emulator is the greatest based on its ability for its time, the time it did come out, the manner in which it was sold, updated etc. and tha manner in which it influenced the art of sampling which in turn defined what a sampler does.

Just my opinion.

[peabreu]

The S3000XL is very good for percussion I agree it has a special "punch", but my all time favourite is my beloved Emax 1, analog filters and processing with 8/12 bit samples...precious!!!
Note that I never used the BEST sampler ever... the Emu EIII keyboard, the one with the analog filters...it seems it sounds even better than the emax.
Last, I loved my long gone Ensoniq EPS16 plus..great sound, FX and sequencer.
To finalise, if you want the most powerful but somehow not very straightforward sampler get an Kurzweil K2500 with KDFX or and K2600/2661. They sound very rich, are unbelievably powerful but are somewhat complicated as samplers IMO.

[NicholasFaith]

I really can't pick one over the other, they all sound different and are used for different things.
I have and use An Emax se., An Emax II, An EIIIX and E4X Turbo, an Akai S-1100 and a Kurzweil K25000rs. First sampler I used was a fairlight II CMI. It was a beast and I really had nothing to jugde it against. from their I got my own sampler, a SCI prophet 2000, the Emax a SP202 or SU10 (they both were used as scratch pads and were sold off not long after I got them.) Followed with ther kurzweil and everything else.
I use the Emu's and the Kurzweil for things with more of a synthesis based need (filters, lots of modulation routings) The Emu's are Best Suited for bass and low midrange, or anything that makes use of it's filters.
I know the Akai's catch a lot of flack but I find them usefull for things I don't want to change much and play back fairly close to the source material. The Effects can also be used to warp sounds into washes of ambience (think FSOL) playing back drums/loops back and running them through a tube EQ and compressing them makes for a good match. I find the Kurzweil is the real workhorse, it's truly a great synthesizer with the added sampling, you can take a sample and process it through the algorithms and use many types of synthesis to make a sound far more complex then a sample alone could ever yeild.
I'n short., we live in an age of software, in which our favorite and least faorite pieces of sampling hardware has bottomed out in price, so buy a few things and find uses for them all their own.
In closing, I also use a kontakt/Reaktor/trio of macs set up and I always find myself going back to the hardware, sitting on the floor twisting dials, we live in fairly good times.
I have a question for everyone here too, starting off I always sampled from the machines interfaces and as time went by ended up using a few sample editors and then midi-dumps, then scsi dumps.but, Lately even though terribly more time consuming I'm finding myself sampling through the samplers A/D converters and interface more and more. has anyone had a similar situations?

[Fader8]

Well, the Mirage definitely gets my vote! OK, maybe not.

The funny thing about softsamplers is that they're not really samplers at all. I mean, I have EXS and Kontakt2 and they have no facility for actually sampling something. They are convenient at times though. Hardware, on the other hand, can have those wonderful quirks that you get to know and exploit. Even though my K2500RS w/KDFX is aging and I've worn a lot of paint off it, I wouldn't give it up for anything.

A couple of years ago, I sprang for a Kyma system, which is really a hybrid of software/hardware and in some ways could be considered the "ultimate sampler". Watch out, the learning curve makes the Kurz look simple.

But hey, the Mirage, True Grit.

[lepetitmartien]

Trouble is, Mirage floppies can't be replaced…

No floppy, no Mirage…

[gloriaonley]

That was a GREAT cup of coffee and I haven't been able to determine who the manufacturer would have been. I bought it right after Christmas 2011. Thanks.