Subject:What samplers

Posted by: andyf

Date:1/24/2003 8:54:48 AM

What samplers do you guys use with Acid Pro 4?

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: dkistner

Date:1/24/2003 9:37:49 AM

I've tried a demo of Kontakt with Acid and it seemed to work okay. (I'm waiting to see how their new Kompact is going to shake out price-wise.) I've got Geniesys' SF2 OPT plugin (specifically developed for use with Acid) that, so far, seems to be working well for working with soundfonts. And I'm playing with the VSampler demo now, and that seems to be working well. I haven't really wrung any of these to the max, though. Computer Music magazine's DS-404 is a sampler you can pick up free if you can find a copy of the magazine. I have not tried using it in Acid.

Diane

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: jam

Date:1/24/2003 1:09:03 PM

Until NOW, GigaStudio works OK with Acid 4 for me. Not a VSTi, but the BEST sampler ever made!

Regards,
jam

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: liquid

Date:1/24/2003 4:51:43 PM

I can't find a download for the ds-404...do I have to go and buy the magazine to get it?

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: liquid

Date:1/24/2003 4:52:05 PM

oh, and what are soundfonts?

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: MacMoney

Date:1/24/2003 4:57:50 PM

Right now Knotakt 1.11 waiting on MOTU Mach Five!

George

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: dkistner

Date:1/24/2003 5:16:55 PM

You have to go and buy the magazine to get DS-404. When you do, you also get tons of other free stuff on a CD, too, plus a kind of funky mag that's good for a few afternoons of educational reading (not to mention some really serious stirrings of kit-lust; you are forewarned). I got the free Computer Music version of Musys with my last one, so it was worth spending the $13.95 to get just that. Hard to find in the U.S., though. Barnes and Noble might have it, although ours here doesn't get many copies in. You can also buy single issues off their web site, but they're not really set up for U.S. buyers yet. Amazon.com carries the year-long subscription.

Soundfonts? Here's a snippet I just copied off a website:

"SoundFonts" are RAM-based digitally sampled instrument definitions for the Creative Labs SoundBlaster family of cards. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of SoundFonts freely available from sources such as www.thesoundsite.net, www.hammersound.net, etc. There are also commercial SoundFont offerings from www.utopialive.com and other vendors.

In the Creative Labs implementation found in the driver software for the popular Sound Blaster Live! series of cards, a user-definable static cache of your PC's system RAM is set aside for "SoundFont" memory, into which you may load one or more SoundFont collections.

That's if you're using your soundfont-compatible soundcard to play back midi files.

I think of soundfonts as intelligent samples (somebody else will have to explain the deep dark details to you), although some of them out there are horrid. Problem is, few people want to use Creative's cards for serious audio work! (I won't get into it. There's a ton of discussion about this already in the forum.) But because there is such a huge installed user base of, e.g., SB Live! cards, there are tons and tons of soundfonts. So all kinds of software has proliferated to let people use them for audio work, with or without a Creative soundcard. Pretty cool, really. Because some of them are pretty sophisticated and sound wonderful. And they still take lots of RAM.

Anyway, that's a little tad about soundfonts.

Diane

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: andyf

Date:1/25/2003 3:48:02 AM

Thanks for all the replies guys. Very educational.
I am relatively new to computer based music. Having toyed with Acid Pro1 for several years I decided to UG to Pro 4.
Jam.... When you say you use Giga with Acid but not as a plugin. Do you save the samps in Giga as .wav files then import or can you play samples in Giga recording straight into Acid at the same time?
I am only asking about Giga because it seems to be the sampler of choice for Musicians making Orchestral/film scores, something I would like to experiment with in the future.

Subject:RE: What samplers

Reply by: jam

Date:1/25/2003 2:35:04 PM

Hi,
Here are the few answers I can bring.

Q: Jam.... When you say you use Giga with Acid but not as a plugin. Do you save the samps in Giga as .wav files then import or can you play samples in Giga recording straight into Acid at the same time?

A -> What I do is:
launch Giga, click on the sequencer button in there, it laucnhes acid (I configured giga to do such an association between the 2 softwares) and do new MiDi tracks in acid choosing "Nemesys MidiOut: Port 1". Then I can play music in acid from giga with samples loaded in it. I use gig files in giga, not wav files. you can, but it's not my way to work with it. I just use few midi tracks and gig samples, in order to improve acid projects I create. I beleive using wav files are easy, even if you need (not sure of that) to use GSeditor.

Q: I am only asking about Giga because it seems to be the sampler of choice for Musicians making Orchestral/film scores, something I would like to experiment with in the future.

A-> Absolutly. GigaStduio is the MOST powerfull sampler ever made. It has an incredible sound, and ALL others VSTi Samplers can NOT provide an equal quality as well as the possibility to load many GIGAbytes of samples without RAM limitation! Kontakt, HALion and other well known samplers are limited by RAM. Giga is NOT. Moreover, giga librairies are considered to be THE BEST for calssical music. Friends of mine have Miroslav vitous collection CDs (maybe the best) and when they compare AKAI version to GiG versions, guess what version wins?

Regards,
jam

PS: if you plan to really composed high riched classical music, i'm NOT sure Acid is the best application to do that. You will need more achieved midi sequencers like Logic or SX. Pesonally, these applications offers more that I need and are too much expensive for me. And by the way, i don't do classical music either...

PS: concerning film scores composing, I beleive some acid loops are really powerfull for that purpose.