Hardware Samplers - Studio Time: S2E10 

Nice to see him playing with samplers. I remember when I was 18 years old and I had the ASR-10. I lost myself for 3 years in my room. I got out and I was 21 already.

Excellent video!!! Tom, i hope i'm allowed to add some extras: 1) actually just two of the samplers in here use variable clock rate (sampler changing the sample rate to play the sample) and those are the Akai S950 and E-MU Emulator II 2) all of the others use realtime resampling, which means they have fixed clock sample rate just like software samplers. However they differ from most software in the way they interpolate the data, They use primitive Linear interpolation, which produces certain artefacts, while most of the software uses far superior interpolation algorhitms nowadays. However some software samplers like Reasampleomatic 4000 let you choose linear interpolation. There are two oddballs in the last group which i have to mention: a) Ensoniq Mirage uses fixed clock rate but uses drop-sample interpolation (31kHz clock) which is super crude. I don't know of any soft sampler which does that but i guess it can be implemented. Yamaha DX-7 (49 kHz clock) uses this interpolation method as well. And so does the Prophet VS (250 kHz clock) and the PPG 2.3 (195 kHz clock). b) Roland S-770. It uses something that resembles Sinc interpolation but with Roland's cooking recipe. No matter what you sample in 770, it sounds super musical, magical and super sexy. Roland are masters of ear candy! Just listen to Super JV, would you believe i tell you it contains 8 bit waveforms, but with a lot of magic behind to unpack them into 16 bit data. Addendum: Actually Akai once made a sampler with Sinc interpolation. In fact it has a separate circuit just for that. It is model S1100. It is Akai's Rolls Royce and comes with incredible FX unit that screams 90's techno! However, Akai figured out this interpolation was way too expensive to put in the follow up models, hence why with S3000 and XL models, they degraded them back to Linear interpolation. Again, there is a way you can implement interpolation, it can look perfect from engineer's POV, but might not sound best in musical sense! So just because software samplers now offer sinc, it doesn't necessary mean it is exact same sinc as Akai engineers designed theirs. Keep in mind this was super expensive back then, one can assume they pulled some trickery behind, which of course results in unique sound. Give S1100 a shot, just for that incredible FX unit. There is so much more to tell... perhaps some other time.

This could be a TED talk on sampler history, Very informative

Bob moog said the following to me at a namm show. "Chris"..in the very near future a little trick called sampling will make it possible to record a sound from any source which means all that expensive gear that you might not be able to afford can be taken on the road or in the studio all inside one simple and elligant box called a workstation. He was doing demos for farlight then and that changed my life and how i do electronic music. Peace christo

thank you junkie for showing how you work in your studio.. um the best series so far on youtube. regards

Thank you VERY much for sharing this! it's not so usual to have an insight to the sound of this great machines.

been into all this music tech since 83 when i started buying.. seen a lot of studios through the years , and loads on line.. ive never seen anyone have as much stuff as Tom has... he has almost everything !!! amazing.

My job once as an Audio Producer for MTV Brazil (early 90's) was basically an Akai S1000 for EVERYTHING, even the voice overs,and I remember loving it's sound. Then when I sampled on software it was never as much fun. Now I got an Emulator 2, the Nalbantov USB thing and it's just addictive

That piano from hell patch on the Yamaha A series sampler was simply mind blowing. Thank you for making these videos as accessible to everyone. Long time sampler fan since 2000.

great video, ive got the s750 ,s330 , and all the akai's. i love these old samplers, I guess i couldn't afford them back in the day

A masterclass! The message is simple; know your gear.

You're doing such a great job, Tom! Amazing knowledge, you're an excellent teacher and providing a huge wealth of information to the scene! Thanks!

Thank you so much Tom, the arpeggios of the emulator brought tears into my eyes. You reminded me of the incredible sound of my own samplers, the newer emulators. I was always missing something from the DAW samplers, now i´ll go and get my machines back to work! Thank you!

Great hardware sampler memories flood back seeing his collection in action.🙂

Didnt realize I just watched 30 minutes of old school synths I got an emu e64 ultra, Akai 1000, kurzweil k2500 I find myself still playing these wonderful machines.

Thanks for doing a hardware sampler series. I'm just "rediscovering" an old ESI sampler I have, and your video is inspirational. Can't wait for part 2!

One of the greatest youtube videos EVER!

This is absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for shedding light on the hardware and techniques, as a new convert to sampling (SP-404 and MPC 1000) I am truly humbled.

great vid, was really fun to revisit those old digital classics, what a treat! thanks

So after coming back a bunch of times to this video to witness the Ensoniq Mirage, I happened to buy one, so thanks Mr XL x)

So much equipment. And the most cool, he really dig and mastered all. Amazing.

The sound of the noisy cable is great, very cool idea!

Glad to see the love for the Ensoniq Mirage. I still have a keyboard version tucked away under my desk.

I can't live without my S3000XL, the AD/DA converters are very good!

Thanks for the video, Tom! Wow, that sound at 20:00 is absolutely gorgeous! And the sound right after at 20:30 is also great.

this is fascinating! what a beauty comes out off these machines. thank you so much Tom!

Dear Tom! I think humanity need some time to understand what You have done! So much information, so much experience goes with Your words. And You share it for free! All that videos... That's the spirit! Believe in humanity just got restored again! Thank You....

Great Tour! I don't have a Hardware Sampler but i like the TAL-Sampler PlugIn from Togu Audio Line. It's not that complex than Kontakt is but you can just load Samples in it and playing around with the massive filter and modulation stuff!

I would be interested in hearing who the "doctor" you keep referring to is. Where do you send these magnificent machines for repair?

I'm impressed with your knowledge about all of your equipment thank you

Awesome!

I'm having the best breakfast with this.

Basically soundwise the shortcomings of the hardware became the go to character and sound. The Fairlight is in particular very recognizable.

I have no experience with hardware samplers, but I am blown away by the quality. How does it do that!? Wow!

Loved this episode so much. Really enjoyed the history of the machines. Best part was when you played the samples on the Yamaha a 4000 and the Mirage. Just beautiful. Thanks so much for this Tom.

Hi Tom. Thank you for taking the time to go through your sampler collection. I have several samplers and I am considering more. 👍

This is by far one of the most informative videos I've ever watched. ❤️

"Yamaha has a tendency to make everything overly complicated." - Junkie XL. Yes! Thank you Tom, I am vindicated! 😄

I recently sold all my equipment to go with the “all in the box” approach. NI machine, a macbook and every sound from VSTi's. To be compact and quick in producing. But now you made me want to buy samplers and sound modules again! :-)

Now i am happy, that i kept my E-MU ESI 32 Sampler. You made me start experimenting again.

This is a goldmine of a video right here

Thanks, awesome episode! The mirage and the emulator II omg..

Bringing back memories. I had an S550 when it came out.

This is absolutely priceless. I thank u for how much I learn from you.

How on earth haven't I found this channel sooner. Awesome stuff.

Aaah. Sampler NIRVANA! The Roland S-50 was my first sampler. I had it, a Roland R-8, a Technics 1200MKII turntable and an Alesis MMT-8 hardware sequencer. I miss that setup. The video out was so cool! And when I discovered subtones? WHOOO!

Love these videos. How you explain the hardware, demonstrate it and your passion for it :-) Groetjes uit Holland

Back the days I used a Emax II which had also incredible analog filters. For a very special job where I had to design pretty dark sounds for a modern stage play of "Danton's Death" I played sample up to 5 octaves below without any aliasing. Never did find this quality again.

This is so Dope ! Thank you !!!

Ok!!! Thumbs up! I have K200S, K2500R & K2600S since 1995 (for the 2000). Still use them and still love them! Keep sampling and synthing dude!

What drew me to the K-200RS is that you can run any sample through the VAST synth engine. It also had unheard of features like replicate, Mix beat, mix echo and the automatic ability to sample itself that pt it head and shoulders above anything that Akai had at the time. It's a beast to reckoned with even today - for those willing to look under the hood.

Those sounds omg!!...just can dream of having these great samplers

Inspirational Video. I have a ASR 10 keyboard which I mothballed when I stopped live performance. This has motivated me to plug it back into my set up and play around. Thank you.

Thanks again for another great video, Junkie! I look forward to your video where you will compare Kontakt to some of your older hardware samplers. I've been waiting for someone to do that. I was born in 1969, so I used and paid a lot of money "back in the day" for many of the equipment that you've showcased in your videos. I love modern technology, but I sure do miss the sound of many of the older gear that I used to own. Keep up the great work, and if you are ever in the Boise, Idaho area, please feel free to contact me, as I'd love to show you around my beautiful city. :)

24:05 - 25:40 So great, really cool soundtrack pad sounds!!

I'm a big fan...this guy is concise, digestible and likeable...great knowledge too.

LOVE these videos!!! MORE PLEASE!!!

Amazing, thank you Tom!

Excellent video! I learnt a lot about sampling just from this! I have an a5000 I'm trying to get my head around. Now I think I am gassing for a Roland 770 after seeing yours! Terrific work, thanks so much for sharing your studio & knowledge.

Hi Tom, I would like to thank you for you all that work and time that you put into these episodes. They are very informative, entertaining and the topics you chose to talk about are super interesting! This episode in particular really helped me out and answered a lot of my questions about hardware samplers. I would love to see the second part of this, where you compare the workflow, the advantages and disadvantages and the sound of working with kontakt and these samplers. Cheers, Arthur

Absolutely fantastic. Thanks for sharing this info!

My first keyboard/ sampler was an S-50. Had my Mom co-sign a loan. Still have it. Converted all samples for use in my Mac. Haven’t used it in years due to a really noisy output. S-770 was always my favorite and easiest to get things done with.

Opened my ears that. Thank you

The modular wall in the back has one hell of a patch going

Always loved my old Mirage, I had the keyboard version that we built an interface for so it was linked to Amiga A2000 computer systems providing synthesis, sampling and control with the Music-X software running on one of the Amiga computers. It ended up with a VFX SD, Roland D10, TB-303 and various other fun boxes from back in the day. Looking back now it was somewhat over complicated but provided a wonderful blend of hardware and software allowing for multi-track sequencing, incredible sample layering, analog and digital synthesis & FX. After many years away from music I have recently dived back into electronics and started building my own custom analog synths and a hybrid analog/digital synth rack is gradually growing. One thing that has not changed over time is that synths and audio gear always needs way more space than expected. :-) Keep up the good work Sir. !

Boy oh boy do i remember having to struggle with that TX16W operating sys. for a lot of the early 90s :( Great sounding sampler but it took forever to get anything done on it with the yamaha OS. There was a third party operating system developed for it called "Typhoon" that we eventually moved to around 95 or 96 and that made all the difference.

Tom, this is a brilliant tutorial. Nice one mate! I’ve learnt loads about my studio of various hardware samplers just from 30 mins of your time. And yeah, I just bought an 8 bit Mirage after watching this :)

Fantastic ! Tom, you're our hero !!

I regret to this very day that I sold my Oberheim Matrix 1000, and that I haven't bought an Ensoniq Mirage (or any other Ensoniq gear) when it was dirt cheap about 10-12 years ago. However I bought a Yamaha A5000 back then, and I'm not letting that sucker go anywhere.

Excellent, really enjoyed that. Gave me some reassurance that I'm not the only old school sample nerd out there. You can keep all the modern convenience. Not even relevant. It's the sound that matters. Maybe I'm just old!

I would totally love to see you in this studio with a MPC One and giving some in depths about everything you think about its sound!

I totally agree about the mirage and with an sd card reader its a killer sampler!

You have the most envious studio setup!!! 😱 I'm surprised you don't have a couple of S-760s too though, better OS and editing, but still no effects. Anyway, I'm drooling here... 💖😜

This is like my new favourite TV show.

The first sampler I owned I bought used in 1990 was a Ensoniq Mirage for $400 with burger-flipping money. The K2000RS was NICE. You could edit waveforms on the front panel: crop, loop, etc. It also had a decent sequencer and mixer built into it. The real expense was the memory and the hard drive. 32MB of memory and 750GB of hard drive set me back another $2000. But it was a really cool synth with a great sampling option on it. It also had multiple routing set-ups available in the V.A.S.T. synth engine. Oh, it could even time stretch samples if I recall correctly. It was crude. But it maintained pitch.

Mind Blown. Thank You!

Yes!!! The ASR10 is still fantastic! I have the keyboard version with patch select buttons and polyphonic aftertouch. The sound is to die for! I also had a Mirage but at the time it was in this "almost new" valley were great gear seems to suck even if they don't so I kind of just disowned it haha! shame really, now! There were some sounds worth saving for now ... oh, well. eBay? :D

Loving this!!!

Nice vid! You’ve got all the toys man! I made some of my early tracks using the Mirage keyboard of a friend. Then he got an EPS keyboard that I also used. I eventually got an Akai S01 new, a used S900 and a MPC3000 which became the brain of my setup. I actually loved the Mirage and didn’t think the operating system was difficult. Of course at that time, I had nothing to compare it too.

I sold my S950 last year, that whas a very good toy that i used for many years. Tom,. dank je voor al deze video's, het is echt een pracht om naar te kijken.

YES my man the super producer talking about my favorite things in the world: samplers :)))))

Awesome. I would love to see a demo on how you make a nice sample, from start to finish, with the filters and such.

great walk down memory lane my first real sampler was an E-mu Emax II and I still have it with the drop in hardware sampler demand it was great to get a decked out (RAM, expansions) Emulator IV many years later that would have originally cost about $30k for a measly $250 with mountains of disks, CD-ROMs, and a MIDI controller, sounds great too and what an OS :-) eventually got an old Mirage, EPS, S-760, etc. for pennies on the dollar good times and lots of great sounds and experiences sill use lots of sampling hardware, much of it is portable: OP-1, SP-404, Volca Sample, etc.

Thanks for a great series, Tom. S950 was my first sampler, still have it! My workhorse was S3000XL, used them live until 2008 - same OS as 3200XL and just wonderful. A friend helped me modify them to load from CompactFlash cards sitting in a module replacing the floppydrive - the card comes up in the OS as an internal HD - technically connected via an SCSI-IDE conversion chipset :-)

A new shirt!!!

Excellent video! Mind numbing collection. SMH.. Just incredible!

I can watch these videos forever

The TX16W is running on an MSX computer (actually I'm pretty sure the Roland S-330/550/7x0 do, too). Crazy people from Sweden IIRC released a new, much better operating system for it in the late 90s (many years after its heyday). Usually the Roland S50/S550/S7x0 where used with the external monitor and mouse. That made them much easier to use than other samplers of the time. The TX16W, S950, S50/S550 where using 12 bits samples with 16 bits converters. The older S900 and lower end S330 had 12 bits converters and therefore much higher noise level. The Emu samplers had analog filters up until and including the EMUIII. They all sound fantastic :)

Wow! That was a great episode! Million thanks for that tour of your wonderful wizard's world.... ;-)

The thing about the Kurzweils is that they are incredibly flexible synthesisers that you can use your own samples as the foundation waveform. I don't think this clip really does them justice but I guess he has a point if just talking about simple sampling and replaying without additional synthesis. Of all of the hardware samplers that I've owned over the years from Akai, Ensoniq, Sequential, E-mu, Oberheim, NED, Simmons, and Linn, I kept the Kurzweil K2000 & K2500 and the Synclavier but regret selling the Emulator III (keyboard) and Simmons SDX.

i love how the S-770 menu-dives on its own when you use it with the mouse, instead of actually just directly jumping where you want to go :D Also note: the Mirage also has analog filters on the voices, the sweet sounding Curtis filters that Ensoniq used on all the DOC-based synths.

Beautiful sounds. Thanks for making these really interesting videos. Now I miss my emi esi. Maybe samplers will make a comeback, once the analog craze is over :)

Great video as usual!!

Used to have a s1000, loved the sound of it

I wish my son had a private tutor like you who teaches with all his heart... :) You are truely an amazing Person Sir!! GOD BLESS YOU. Btw we do get to learn a lot from your videos keep up the good work :)

Hey Tom, Thanks so much for doing these videos, much respect for your knowledge and experience. Looking forward to the hardware vs software sampler comparison as well. I would also like to hear how you catalog your sounds from the hardware synths and samplers.

Bit late to tune in since the program is released but nevertheless I’ll catch in. My son acquired an Akai s950 and I’ll be learning and experimenting along with him. I found the bit about Mirage very interesting so I have an idea of making samples on a 8bit sampler such as Casio SK and then that sample sampling again with S950 to see if that Ensoniq Mirage 8bit grit will appear on a useful manner in the Akai. It’s nice to have Mirage but perhaps this experiment I am planing will be rewarding. Thanks for the video. Regards

Hi Tom, loving your videos. I wonder if one day you may take us through some of your outboard effects. In particular Eventide racks :)

Great video! First time i watch your stuff. From now on i will come back to your channel.

Ensoniq Mirage ...My first sampler. Love that old beast ;) (Like the EII, the Mirage has an Analog Filter as well ...Curtis chip) Thanks for sharing! .