Man, the Roland S550 and S330 samplers were so much more advanced than anything else out there (besides the Fairlight of course!). They sound amazing when you actually sample with them. Blows the Akai S900 and S950 out of the water.
No...you have to use EQ to get some low end on sounds and you get more high end crisp on Akai S series. I have an s330 and a w30 for playing back my s330 patches. I also own Akai s900 and s1000.
Joey Sanders I would never consider an s900 or an s1000 as “warm.” Both are digital and noises. The s1000 tried to sound much more like what your ears hear. A lot has to do with what machines recorded these samplers when they first came out. People recorded to analog tape machine through an analog board. The preamps and compressors were super lush and nice. It adds a nice rounding off of the digital hardness. Look into Harrison MixBus software. Their tape saturation and gain staging mimics this.
Joey Sanders I partially disagree. The 12bit sound of the s330 is not “clean.” The punchy you hear from Akai S series samplers is because they retain high end frequencies compared to their competitors. The d/a convertor on the S1000 would have the most character on bass tones which is why jungle and house producers prefer this sampler.
