SAMPLERS TODAY
Nov 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Doug Eisengrein
Throughout the years, computers have changed the art of sampling
Once upon a time, professional digital samplers were obese, beefy boxes that required an esoteric musical taste — and an extraordinarily large income — to own. The earliest of these top-shelf beasts featured computer screens and sample rates as high as 8-bit. Some examples of the classics are the Fairlight CMI; the New England Digital Synclavier; and, a bit later, the E-mu Emulator. Hardly cutting-edge by today's standards, those units nonetheless spawned revolutionary music by groundbreaking artists such as Kraftwerk, Thomas Dolby, Art of Noise and Peter Gabriel.
Fortunately, samplers rapidly improved throughout the 1980s and '90s while prices for the technology dropped just as rapidly. With the advent of superfast home computers, sampling technology has become more accessible to the masses. For many nowadays, software-based sampling has largely replaced the world of hardware sampling, as the proliferation of soft samplers on the market attests. To put in clear perspective how far the industry has come with sampling technology (while also completing a brief history lesson), take a peek at the features of sampler models from the late 1970s through the '90s and compare their features with some of the best soft samplers out now.
WELCOME TO LO-FI LAND
Briefly tracing the evolutionary path of hardware, it begins with the features of the first digital sampler, the Australian Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument), first released in 1979. The brains of this beast were dual 8-bit 6800 processors, which were later upgraded to “modern” 16-bit chips. The Fairlight possessed two six-octave keyboards; a towering computer chassis; an ASCI keyboard; and a Kraftwerk-esque duo-tone green-on-black computer monitor equipped with a light pen, which allowed free drawing and graphical editing of samples. The CMI featured 8-note polyphony and came with proprietary software that included sample editing, looping, mixing and sequencing — not bad for 1979.
At about the same time as the Fairlight, another early sampler, the Synclavier, was making waves, yet both were outrageously expensive. Perhaps the next major milestone in hardware sampling was the Ensoniq Mirage, released in 1986. Although still expensive (the original list price was $1,695), users no longer had to be Platinum-selling rock stars to afford one. Like the Fairlight, the Mirage featured 8-bit sampling resolution, a built-in sequencer and sample editing (sans the monitor).
As more companies throughout the '80s and '90s supplied the ever-expanding sampler market, Akai was one company that stood in the foreground, with the MPC line being perhaps the most prominent figure in its history. The most powerful of these is the MPC4000, which is still in production. Among its many excellent features is an Intel chip capable of 24-bit, 96kHz sampling; 64 voices of polyphony; 16 MB of built-in RAM, expandable to 512; 16 velocity-sensitive drum pads; an intuitive 64-track sequencer; and a USB port, which is useful for connecting the MPC directly to a Mac or PC or to floppy, CD-R, external hard drives or ZIP drives.
MICROCHIP MASSIVE
All of the aforementioned strides were made possible by the progression of computer chips, yet all of them are dwarfed by the massive possibilities inherent in present-day software sampling. Several DAW manufacturers have produced samplers that work directly as channel plug-ins. Emagic has the EXS24 mkII, MOTU makes the Mach5, and Steinberg offers HALion. In addition to these DAW-centric samplers, many other stand-alone versions exist. Some are quite sophisticated; they can work either as plug-ins, via ReWire technology, or in their native stand-alone modes. A few of the more notable are Native Instruments Kontakt, Tascam GigaStudio and Propellerhead NN-XT (built into Reason). The beauty of these samplers is that their power is only limited to the confines of the host computer's CPU and RAM, which makes them many times more powerful than virtually any hardware sampler ever made (unless, of course, the host computer is very old). Also, you can have four, five or even 24 of them working simultaneously, provided your CPU can handle it. Moreover, most software samplers are able to accommodate, at the very least, 24-bit, 96kHz — quality samples, and some go as high as 32-bit, 384kHz.
SAMPLERS 101
On the top of the sampler heap (depending on your level of interest and technical savvy) are the “erector sets” of software sampling. These are the graphical programming applications such as Cycling '74 Max/MSP, Native Instruments Reaktor and Applied Acoustics Tassman. These modular environments allow users to either reconstruct the guts of prebuilt samplers or build them from scratch. The learning curve for each of these varies. For example, although you can go deep into the building blocks of Reaktor, it retains a sleek, polished look to its user interface. Max/MSP, on the other hand, lacks some of Reaktor's eye candy yet is extraordinarily deep in its sheer functionality. Presets are definitely not the focus — or the starting point — with Max/MSP.
Samplers have progressed from fundamental machines that could store and repeat only a few seconds of grainy audio quality to highly complex and even user-customizable instruments that are capable of storing, playing, editing and synthesizing vast numbers of lengthy, ultrapristine-quality samples. They are no longer confined to the limitations built into the operating system of the hardware that houses them; some modern hardware samplers even have upgradable operating systems and ports that allow the swapping of files to and from computers for extensive sample editing. One thing is abundantly clear: Sampling is no lost art form; it is livelier than ever.
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
