Sampler shootout (4 x Akai, 1 x E-MU)!

I’m a sampling freak. And a sampler freak.
I’ve been loving hardware samplers since early 2000.
Mostly, I’ve been using a whole lot of Akai as well as E-MU.

Around 2009 I, like many, went all digital and thought my hardware days would be over as I considered DAWs so convenient and magnificent; quick, easy to use, and you can take them wherever you go. Little did I know that I’d go back to my roots. I made an album and some EPs with my all-digital setup (mixing some of it in an outboard desk for a while), but ever since I sold my hardware, I realized I missed working with a hardware sampler plugged into a desk.
You can say what you want about working with a laptop setup, but I’ve always found that hardware samplers, when plugged into a good desk, have that certain warmth that I find extremely pleasing to the ear.

Anyways, cut to the chase and fast forward to today: currently I’ve got an Akai s900, Akai s2000, Akai s3200, Akai MPC Renaissance, Akai MPC Studio, and E-MU E4XT Ultra.

I wanted to sample the same drum break into all of them and see – or hear – how they'd sound in comparison.
I'll let you hear for yourself as well as read my thoughts on the sampler shootout in my blog: http://fanumusic.com/sampler-shootout/

All thoughts are welcome

What mixer is that in the picture?


Cheers,
Ian

Great project BUT it all depends on how ya sample ect.This is not a neutral task and different machines have there hot spots.I trust you will make them all sound the best as you can tho.Cheers

Ian Canefire wrote:What mixer is that in the picture?


Cheers,
Ian

Looks like an allen and heath??

dryad-66 wrote:

Ian Canefire wrote:What mixer is that in the picture?


Cheers,
Ian

Looks like an allen and heath??

looks like a soundcraft 200sr

Fanu wrote:All thoughts are welcome

I'll check this later, but I had a quick read of your bio and it's always nice to read something in the first person. It's daft when people write a bio and pretend it's someone else writing it by doing it in the third person.

Also good to see someone else who has been influenced by FSOL on here.

mr_debauch wrote:

dryad-66 wrote:

Ian Canefire wrote:What mixer is that in the picture?


Cheers,
Ian

Looks like an allen and heath??

looks like a soundcraft 200sr

Yes, that's the one. A grrrreat desk.

Coz wrote:

Fanu wrote:All thoughts are welcome

I'll check this later, but I had a quick read of your bio and it's always nice to read something in the first person. It's daft when people write a bio and pretend it's someone else writing it by doing it in the third person.

Also good to see someone else who has been influenced by FSOL on here.

Thanks – although I still hate my bio; but I guess you need one.
And FSOL rules. Did you check the Archives series? So many hidden gems from the past!

dryad-66 wrote:Great project BUT it all depends on how ya sample ect.This is not a neutral task and different machines have there hot spots.I trust you will make them all sound the best as you can tho.Cheers

This I agree 100% with; I kind of tried to find the same-ish spot for every sampler.
I trust that if I had sampled the stuff in louder, the differences between models would be bigger and more notable.

Cool blog Fanu.

mr_debauch wrote:

dryad-66 wrote:

Ian Canefire wrote:What mixer is that in the picture?


Cheers,
Ian

Looks like an allen and heath??

looks like a soundcraft 200sr

Yeah.On retrospect.ha ha

thanks for doing this dude... when I purchase new samplers I always look for sideXside comparisons and its pretty hard to find...

Being that I live in a small community where not to many producers are still using hardware it makes it damn near impossible to play around with a s3200 or a 900 before buying, little lone comparing their sounds...

thanks again, you made my decision to buy a 3200 that much easier

SEANSTATIC wrote:thanks again, you made my decision to buy a 3200 that much easier

Grrrreat!
Make sure to hunt down a SCSI CF reader for it, too...makes it so worth it!

Thank you for the shootout!! Its a good read and you know what you're talking about. Since you have the E4XT would you please do me a favor and make another audio?
I really would like to hear the E-mu on 22kHz but with a sped up sample. So if you don't mind please:

convert the original sample to something like 96kHz, tune it to +12 semitones (and on another run +24 semitones) and sample it at 22kHz (slightly in the red).
Then play it at the speed of the original file (pitch down -12 and -24)

These are extreme settings but I would like to hear how the E-mus 22kHz setting handle this.

Thank you!

peace

BTW if you are interested. I got some comparisons of my own on soundcloud and some other experiments on my HD that I could upload (made a few tests about the relation between the gain, bandwidth and the aliasing of the 950. Interesting to see is that the internal "half bandwidth" function sounds completly different that the bandwidth setting in the sampling menü). Well I did this with testtones so its not THAT pleasure to listen to it......but interesting

peterpiper wrote:Thank you for the shootout!! Its a good read and you know what you're talking about. Since you have the E4XT would you please do me a favor and make another audio?
I really would like to hear the E-mu on 22kHz but with a sped up sample. So if you don't mind please:

convert the original sample to something like 96kHz, tune it to +12 semitones (and on another run +24 semitones) and sample it at 22kHz (slightly in the red).
Then play it at the speed of the original file (pitch down -12 and -24)

These are extreme settings but I would like to hear how the E-mus 22kHz setting handle this.

Aha, sounds wicked! Might do that at some point...

Fanu wrote:And FSOL rules. Did you check the Archives series? So many hidden gems from the past!

As a huge fan of FSOL, I'm quite embarrassed to say I never got round to checking out the Archive stuff.