Hi, yes I drop the samples to 24 kHz (to me that is hardly noticeable, drop it to 12 kHz and it starts to sound completely different though). Assigning samples to keys is extremely simple with the free software.
There are two sample playing modes as you may have read:
- Keyboard mode: take one sample and play it across the keyboard. Suitable for many synth sounds (of which I made one bank), but less so for more 'realistic' instruments.
- Sample mode: here you map your samples across the keyboard, from G (low) to B (high). The highest C key is reserved for audio monitoring in this mode. For most of these instruments (incl. Mellotron), I have assigned one sample to every 4rd key or something. There is a built-in feature that lets you play back the same sample at lower keys, if no samples are assigned to these keys. E.g., when you assign a sample to C and one to the G above, the 'G sample' will also play for C# to F#.
By the way: you can not assign notes outside these three octaves. For Mellotron is doesn't really matter (even though the overlap in octaves is not exactly the same I think), but if you use piano, you are also limited to three octaves. (By the way, if you want to use instruments like that substantially, you'd better look elsewhere anyway
)
One of the advantages of the MicroSampler for me was that it seemed the only low cost (<1000 euros) solution for playing my own instrument samples. Other samplers seemed not so suitable for playing e.g. piano (the MPCs or Roland's samplers), and I loved the portability of this unit. If you don't care too much about the portability but don't want to spend money on an expensive workstation, you could look into:
- the Waldorf Blofeld module with sample expansion (even though it seems to have a bit less memory) It only has MIDI support for loading samples, which takes ages, so the trial-and-error approach you can use for the microSAMPLER is not possible here. The cost is about the same I guess, but instead of a portable instrument, you have a very powerful synthesizer module with sampling capabilities
- the v-machine. Many people seem to hate this device, but I love it. The new software makes it quite easy to work with. If you have a sampling program that is supported (e.g. SampleLord) you can build your own samplebanks. I bought this unit for 200 euros, it has 1 GB of storage space (can be extended with USB memory) and acts as my main sound module for all the sounds that are not in my Roland stage piano (my main instrument).
I must say that I love the microSAMPLER. I can play all my favorite sounds everywhere, in high sound quality. That it has a keyboard (and not just a module) is a big plus for me too. I nowadays also often use the pattern sequencer to make more hip-hop oriented music, something that always seemed like hard work on my PC, suddenly becomes much more enjoyable with this instrument.
Hope I have answered you questions
