Thanks for the Memories | AutoSampler

Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Markkus Rovito

AUTOSAMPLER PRESERVES THE CLASSIC SOUNDS OF YESTERDAY'S HARDWARE SYNTHS AND CAPTURES THE MAGIC OF MODERN SOFTWARE SYNTH-AND-EFFECT CHAINS BY AUTOMATICALLY CREATING DAW-READY SAMPLER LIBRARIES

You can't open an Urban Outfitter's catalog or hit up a Radio Shack these days without finding a USB turntable that comes with software to help you convert vinyl records into digital files. Because vinyl takes up a lot of space and becomes old and less reliable and because the way many people listen to music has changed, digitizing records resonates with a lot of people, whether they plan on getting rid of the bulky things or would just rather not deal with them as often.

For the same reasons people want to record vinyl, anyone who mainly uses a DAW and virtual instruments to make music, yet still has access to vintage or modern hardware synths, has reasons to “digitize” those synths. Although such an idea may seem absurd, there is software that helps you more or less digitally archive hardware synth patches by automatically sampling them and creating soft-sampler instruments out of them. The logically named program, AutoSampler, comes from Redmatica ($149; www.redmatica.com) distributed by MV Pro Audio (www.mvproaudio.com).

Speaking of logic, AutoSampler works especially well for Apple Logic users because it can automatically create Logic EXS24 instrument patches out of the samples it records, which then open up easily from the EXS24 virtual sampler. However, it should be noted that AutoSampler's generated instrument patches are also compatible with Native Instruments Kontakt, Digidesign Structure, MOTU MachFive and Steinberg HALion, so most computer musicians are covered, although AutoSampler is a Mac-only program (OS 10.4 and 10.5, G4/G5 or Intel machines).

AutoSampler is not limited to recording samples from hardware instruments. It can also sample from virtual instruments entirely within the digital domain. So whether you want to dust off a vintage keyboard and take some samples from it before selling it, transfer some of your favorite patches from virtual synths into a soft sampler for extra processing power and convenience or borrow some friends' synths or iLok keys and archive some of their sounds for yourself, AutoSampler can help you do it with the least amount of individual effort. It's certainly not a bona fide replacement for having a real-life Roland Jupiter-6 or Moog Memorymoog+, but it can be a godsend for someone wanting to reclaim closet space (and some cash) from his or her dormant monster synths. (Note: Sampling raw presets or waveforms from electronic instruments may violate copyright laws, so stay within the spirit of AutoSampler's intent and only archive your own created sounds.)

THE SYNTHESIZER REST HOME

Let's begin by sampling a hardware synth. You need an audio and a MIDI interface hooked up to your computer; those could be separate devices or a single one. For whatever synth you're sampling, connect its MIDI In to the MIDI Out of your interface and connect its audio output to an input on the audio interface. If you have older synths without MIDI, you can usually find an external MIDI converter for old CV/Gate and DIN Sync instruments. I used a Future Retro Mobius (www.future-retro.com) to sample from the Sequential Circuits Pro-One and Roland SH-101 mono synths. While the Mobius is out of production, Kenton Electronics (www.kentonuk.com) makes some very good MIDI converters. As long as you can somehow trigger notes from a synth using MIDI, you can record it in AutoSampler.

Now launch AutoSampler. Toward the top of the window, there is a row of settings tabs. In the Audio tab, choose your sampling rate from the options of 32, 44.1, 48, 64, 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192 kHz WAV. You can also move over to the Samples tab and pick 16- or 24-bit files. Sound quality is a matter of choice, and you should probably sample at the rate and bit depth that you usually set for your DAW sessions. Sample size and CPU requirements rise sharply the higher you go, so sticking to 16-bit/44.1 kHz (CD-quality) is usually good enough if you don't have a speedy computer and a lot of hard-drive space.

Back in the Audio tab, use the Record In menu to choose the audio input that you plugged your synth into for sampling. AutoSampler never had any problem recognizing my audio interfaces and all their different inputs. Move over to the MIDI tab and make sure the correct MIDI Out port going into the synth's MIDI In is selected. Now click on the Set button above the tabs to choose the location for the WAV files and EXS24 instrument to save to. If you plan on sampling a lot, you may want to make a dedicated folder for AutoSampler instruments on an external hard drive. Finally, set your hardware synth to the patch you want to sample and play some notes at full velocity to make sure AutoSampler's input meter doesn't go into the red. You don't have to worry too much about the levels being too low because you can set a normalization level in the Samples tab. AutoSampler defaults to a medium normalization setting, which you can turn up, down or off. If a note clips, the software will try to adjust the volume using MIDI messages and re-record that note until there is no clipping.

Now, if you don't want to mess with any other detailed settings, you can hit the Start button, and AutoSampler takes off creating sampled notes and a ready-to-load EXS instrument file in your chosen location (see Fig. 1).

ENDLESS ARCHIVES

You have plenty of other options for customizing your sampled instrument. There's a button in the main window with the picture of a keyboard on it that opens the Virtual Keyboard and Pad window (see Fig. 2). There you see the notes that are currently selected to be sampled. If you want to change them, click on the Scan Parameters button in the main window and a parameter drawer slides out. There you see the Start Note and End Note that you can scroll through, or click on the Learn buttons to enter those notes by pressing keys on your MIDI keyboard. In the Note Step menu, you can choose to sample every note, or if you trust the soft sampler you use to eventually do some transposing of its own, you can choose to sample only every 2nd note, 3rd note, 4th note, etc., all the way to every 12th note (an octave).

AutoSampler sets it default sustain time at 7 seconds, but that's way too long for short stab sounds, drums and the like, and not long enough for some pads or arpeggiated patches. So you can set that to your liking in the parameters drawer. You can also choose to sample anywhere from one to 16 velocity levels for each note, depending on how valuable you think different (evenly spaced) velocity levels would be for the dynamics of each particular sound. You can cap the maximum velocity level at a value within MIDI's range of 1 through 127.

The bottom half of the parameter drawer is dedicated to creating Multi-Dimensionally Sampled (MDS) instruments, which take advantage of a feature specific to the EXS24 sampler's playback engine. This is a powerful feature for Logic users. When you turn on MDS control 1 or 2, AutoSampler will capture another complete keymap of samples that takes into account the change of a user-specified MIDI parameter. You can choose which parameter takes effect by clicking on the MDS Learn buttons and then using a control on the MIDI keyboard or by entering a MIDI CC number. The Steps menus decide the number of equally spaced intervals at which AutoSampler samples a keymap of notes for the MDS parameters. You can choose 2, 4, 8 or 16 steps. If you want to use both MDS parameters, you have a powerful way of varying the sounds and making them feel more like the original sampled instrument, but turning on the second MDS parameter disables velocity levels because otherwise the number of samples per patch could go way too high.

That takes care of the parameter drawer and the most commonly needed features of AutoSampler, but there are still many options hiding in the tabs. The CustomVelTable tab lets you customize the velocity range in case evenly spaced velocity levels from 1 through 127 aren't right for the sound you're sampling. In the Instruments tab, you have transposing options, instrument-naming options and the ability to set the material as a one-shot for drums, percussion and sound effects.

New to the latest update, AutoSampler 1.6, the Samples tab holds modes for sampling electronic instruments (default), acoustic instruments (with noise rejection made specifically for MIDI-fied acoustic pianos recorded through microphones) and “noisy” instruments, such as vintage synths and sounds miked from guitar amps. Among a few other options, the View tab simply lets you see the waveform of the sampled sound (see Fig. 3).

THE DIGITAL DOMAIN

Let's say you have some instrument-plus-effect sounds rigged up in Ableton Live, Propellerhead Reason or some other software program but you want to save those sounds as an EXS24 instrument to use in Logic, in Pro Tools using the Structure or in another preferred DAW/sampler combination. AutoSampler will work with virtual instruments entirely in the digital domain so you don't have to go through your audio card at all to sample from software.

However, you do first need to download Cycling '74's free driver Soundflower (www.cycling74.com/products), an inter-application routing utility for Mac PPC and Intel machines OS 10.2 and later. It lets you route an audio output from any software to the audio input of another program, so it has its uses beyond this project as well. With Soundflower installed (reboot required), in the Mac Finder, go to Applications > Utilities and launch Audio MIDI Setup. From there, double-click on the IAC Driver, and then in its Properties box, check “Device is online.” That turns on the internal MIDI driver for internal MIDI connections (see Fig. 4).

Now launch the DAW or virtual instrument you want to sample. In the preferences for that software, choose “Soundflower 2ch” (stereo channels 1 and 2) as the audio output (see Fig. 5). That may mean you can no longer hear the instrument, but that's fine for now. Next, launch AutoSampler, and in the Audio tab, choose Soundflower 2ch for the Record In, and in the MIDI tab, choose IAC Driver for the Main MIDI Interface. Now if you click on the Mon (monitor) button at the top of the AutoSampler window, you should be able to hear the software you want to sample when you play it. All that's left then is to determine the other settings already mentioned and hit Start.

THEY LIVE AGAIN

With AutoSampler's EXS instruments created, loading them up into a DAW environment is as simple as it is with any other EXS instrument file. In addition to the compatible samplers listed above, I also loaded up the EXS instruments into Live 7's Sampler; all that was required was the extra step of finding the EXS files in Live's browser, double-clicking on them and then waiting a few seconds for Live to convert it into an ADV (Ableton Device file), which it placed in Live's Library, rather than in the original EXS's location.

Saying goodbye to trusty old hardware synths feels kind of like when you're a kid and your best friend moves to Florida. In the case of my Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, that was the first synth to include MIDI, which is strangely special to a geek like me. Not only did it have MIDI, but it also had 100 user-programmable presets, and cycling through them was like flashing back through more than a decade of late nights, hair-brained schemes and some moments of true inspiration. While AutoSampler can't replace the real experience, it does act like a wonderfully accurate camera; calling up those P-600 patches in my DAW of choice is like rifling through the perfect photo album of lost friends. It's a small price to pay to preserve those memories. And even after you've archived all your hardware, AutoSampler's simple recording of samples from other software continues to rejuvenate your creativity and streamline your workflow.

Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus

Want to use this article? Click here for options!