Samplers...

travisthered · Post by **travisthered** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:01 pm

I am looking to add another piece of gear and am wondering about the pros and cons of some of the different samplers you folks use. I recently owned a KP3 and was not a fan of its sampling capabilities.

I am no great singer but I would like to incorporate some phrases into my sets and one feature I am really looking for is the ability to have longer samples.

Suggestions?

musikmachine · Post by **musikmachine** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:02 pm

The Sx can play back vocal phrases. There's 21 voice phrases that come with the SX. They are short but you could swap those for longer ones of your own voice. I heard a demo once which used a vocal fom a moloko track and it had most of it in the song iirc. It's amazing what you can squeeze out of one sample on the SX!

travisthered · Post by **travisthered** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:16 pm

musikmachine wrote:It's amazing what you can squeeze out of one sample on the SX!

This is what I have been leaning towards.

It's crazy that the KP3, ESX and SP404 are all around the same price range...

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 3:12 pm

esx is not good for vocal phrases.... you can only do a sample that's 8 bars long at a sacrifice of a large amount of your memory.it's ment for short vocal bursts like. "Put on your jacket" and "Dance DJ"

anything like sentances or phrases longer then that are not worth it because you lose too much ram.

you want the sp404 if you want to do this however I am against that machine personally... it truly is what it is, it lets you trigger samples and pass them through effects. The sample modulation is not at all realtime and all the controls are hidden away. You will read the manual cover to cover and go... "that's it!?"

It's a good sampler if you're a di and want to trigger stuff on the spot like with a traditional sampler. Which is allright if that's what you're into but for me, it's nothing exciting and is very overpriced.

It's nice for long samples, and recording loops, so you could use it like a sequencer but at the same time the sample bank is not very big.

The fx are great but I don't think it's right to have a performance based on primarily effects modulation which is the only thing besides muting available real time. I see the sp 404 as a basic looping sampler with a kaoss pad 2 that you constantly have to touch to produce any form of variety.

kp3's sampler feature is almost worthless. It's nice for live looping and stuff but it's not really a sampler. You can't just like trigger samples at will and tweak them.

the esx will be your best bet for sonic modulation posibilities all available real time instantly at a tweak of a knob. At a sacrifice of long samples.

If you really want long samples and are willing to go into software, I would highly sudgest getting a lap top with ableton live. You can have whatever samples you want however long and as many as you want, and you can modulate them however you want whenever you want......

travisthered · Post by **travisthered** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:30 pm

hrmm, that's too bad. I would really rather not go to software, but i understand your critiques of the SP-404... Has anyone had good experiences with that box?

travisthered · Post by **travisthered** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:32 pm

From your post i get the impression that the SP-404 might not have any kind of step sequencer for the samples? Am i understanding correctly?

OR they all play constantly in synch and you just turn them off and on. That would be ok i guess...

Diametro · Post by **Diametro** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:43 pm

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/for ... ?t=2052820

Check this short thread out ...

plosive · Post by **plosive** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 5:54 pm

there's a big difference between samplers (esx) and phrase samplers (kp3/sp404). phrase samplers are pretty much weaksauce but they're handy in a live performance or dj setup.

musikmachine · Post by **musikmachine** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:43 pm

What about the SP-808? I was looking into getting one but i wouldn't have room for one in my setup. Sounds good on paper but i've read there are issues with th zip drives or whatever but it looks pretty good for phrase sampling. I've seen them on ebay for around £200 but i have no idea how good they be.

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:15 pm

look into roland mc808

djhuck · Post by **djhuck** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:10 pm

i have the esx a freind got the 555 i love my esx for what it does. he loves his 555 for what it does. he records long phrases and triggers them while he dj. he does not sync it up or any of that stuff. but for vocal playback the 555 is tits.

also as far as using the ram on the esx. i got an adapter that lets me use xd cards with mine and i switch out sounds all the time. the onboard memory of the esx is small. but you can get a few short phrases in there. but like the guy above me said it is limited on long phrases. there are work arounds though.

zalo · Post by **zalo** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:38 am

diametro

ive been wrestling with getting a 404 for a while now to throw acapellas on to do remixes in and such

now i have read that when programing on the 404 you can quantize to get like perfect eighths

is this only for creating loops on it or can it be used in a live setting for triggering vocals to be perfectly on beat

see my problem comes in the fact that my group (this is an adventure) we put on more of a show than just stand behind our gear and play (ever growing light show, dancing, singing, crowd surfing)

and this leads to not always being able to reach our gear to calm down and hit a pad at exactly the right moment and jumping over to hit a button is rather common practice haha

if i midi sync the clock can do i have a little leeway with the triggering? like if i give silence before the sample so that i can have it start on a quarter note no matter what and if i am a little late it will jump ahead to keep it on time?

thanks

also how do you have the 2 kp3s connected? i have noticed that it is extremely hard (read: impossible so far) to get a clear signal through them even when they are not effecting the sound

right now i am sending signal to my kp3 from the fx send on the mixer then coming back in though a channel

bus A is selected for the signals i want to effect and bus b is the kp3 and everything else is unselected

but when i slide the crossfade over i can not get smooth clean uninterupted sound (whether it be distortion, volume drop, or frequency drop)

any advice?

sorry for the long post