Softsampler advice

[k]

Hi people. Got about £150 squids to spend on a softsampler. Everybody seems to love the one they use and hate everyone elses. I pissed around with a cracked Halion and it a) was about as intuitive as trying to do a rubix cube on magic mushrooms, b) crashed lots (maybe the fact it was a dodgy copy, but I've heard people with legit copies with similar complaints)

Mainly I want to use it for loading up individual drum hits and programming (from a midi keyboard). It'd be great to be able to route these through different channels (ie: hats to one plugin, snares to another etc etc).
I presume if you can do this with drum audio, its easy enough to do it with any old sample and transpose it accross a midi keyboard
Anyways, what do you reckon gives the best bang for buck (irritating phrase, but you know what I mean)
Personal tastes please...

[k]

Oops forgot to add an 'other' option to the poll. I'd be interested to hear about anything else which may fit the bill.

[JOBU]

So far I'm satisfied with my DS404, but I'm not an experienced samplerman,tho.
Regards

[stickybud]

You gonna buy some software??

Ladies and gentlemen, I toast the K guy, hip hip, horay!

PS Get logic 5.5, it's sampler is the best for quick results. It's called logic for a reason...

[clootie]

Add £60 to your budget K & go for the beast that is Kontakt, you wont regret it & it will serve you for many a year.
+ you get a great sounding 5 disc sound library with it [the sound library alone is worth £100+]

Re: StickyBud - I agree that the 'Logic' sampler is a reasonable tool, but its simply not in Kontakts league, in function or sound wise...
& Logic as a sequencer, dont buy it K, its a HUGE FECKIN NIGHTMARE mate, its learning curve alone will have you spitting expletives all over the place for sure...

& the Logic 'Enviroment'; whoever designed that wants a bullet in the head... It works almost like a convoluted Modular Synth, where you have to go through the same 'piping' process everytime you want to add new stuff to it; a really futile process that needn't be there in the first place, but it is... (Whats wrong with the simple 'dropdown' list / select & away you go?)

I guarantee youll spend FAR more time trying to figure out how to get a work flow going than actually making any music with this app... Its not a sequencer, its a god damn huge lesson in '...........'


Got a good sounding Audio Engine though... :wink:

[k]

Already got SX second hand for the beautiful price of £250 (don't you just love mates who work in music shops?)
Hence, I've no need for a sequencer. I just want a beast of a sampler that lets me do heaps of cool stuff in an easy and intuitive manner. (With special attention to drum programming)
Clootie, in a nutshell, what is it (features / techniques -wise) that you love about Kontakt. Practical example?

[clootie]

Im on SX too [from a previous SL upgrade].

Kontakt in a nutshell?

Erm... It works is one. LOL!

Great interface, & a very handy feature you can use esp. once stuff gets heating up, & youve lots going on is that you can re-size its whole window to 3 different sizes. [So you can actually see with ease what youre doing]

It sounds excellent! The filters are as good as some hardware filters Ive heard, without question. [Very good sounding FX & Compression too, esp if you want to 'quickly' mangle up a sample on the fly]

Its fast to work with, even when mapping your own multisampled patches.

It reads Akai & Giga format with 'gusto' [Ive a large Akai Library so I need something that reads these discs without problems which Kontakt does]

Its learning curve if you can be bothered to do the manual [its HUGE btw] is musically 'educational' & not a bog down in 'geekdom'...

Its good for on a long session [on XP pro anyway] & hasnt caused me any major crashes yet, longest session so far,Im guessing,but probably in the region of 12 hours straight...

All my other softsamplers have now been removed from my machine cos simply put; I dont need them anymore...

...

But dont take my word for it, give the demo a test drive & see for yourself...

[k]

Will head towards the haven of fun that its the music store and give it a whirl this weekend. I presume that instead of doing multi-samples accross a keyboard you can also assign say bas drum to c1, snare to d1 etc etc?
Silly question. At £250 you'd bloody better be able to....
Cheers for the advice.

[junglist2k5]

Kontakt is the don dadda of virtual samplers in my opinion. try loading an average bass sample into it and f~~~ about with the various parameters, sound sculpting, synthesis and sampling all in one bundle! and you can also f### up loops in it too!

[dR-Green]

I was gonna recommend Emulator X sounding much better for (filtering) bass than kontakt, but seeing as you want it for drums, I'd probably say kontakt. I've got both and usually go with kontakt for drums. Clootie has said the rest.