Hardware sampler or software for sound design?

Tom Marshall

Tom Marshall

Actor!!!!!!
Hopefully someone will have some good input...

I have an EMU E4XT Ultra in my rack and it's great for music. I'm wondering, does anyone here use / prefer / have any input on using a hardware sampler for doing sound design or just going with a software sound library?

The hardware approach would sound better, but is the time spent really worth it?

Just to put this into perspective, I'm not a sound design person - just an independent director / filmmaker (for now - until I can afford to hire someone to do it instead).

What are your thoughts?
 
I have the same box and LOVE it. I used a couple of soft samplers, but they went out of business or were dropped from development and stopped working after an OS upgrade. I like the theory but I got tired of having to learn a new program and find some way to convert libraries. The E4 was THE standard for film designers (at least the ones who didn't have the $$$ and space for a Synclavier). And the Ultra can use ATA drives so you can keep a really big internal library. It doesn't care what my OS is and it's solid as a rock and is one of the smoothest pitch shifters around. The only down side is that I no longer have any computers with SCSI ports so archiving to anything but MO cartridges is difficult. I use it for a lot of Faux Foley, and various sound design tasks. It's great for big tonal beds etc and being able to punch stuff up.
 
I love using samplers for placing sound effects, especially foot steps.

I have no idea why anyone would bother with hardware samplers nowadays. Software samplers are simple and have (virtually) no limitations.

I agree, Reason is a great software sampler (and synth) program.
 
Hxd Ped said:
I have no idea why anyone would bother with hardware samplers nowadays. Software samplers are simple and have (virtually) no limitations.
Click to expand...

The limitation is the developer. PT changes a version and suddenly you don't have a sampler anymore. The developer finds they make more money programing games and you don't have a sampler anymore. And each time you loose all your programs. Sometimes you can find an app that will convert but not always.

Anyway the OP already had a great hardware sampler and was asking if there was a reason to go to a soft sampler for FX work and the answer is no, not really. If your starting from scratch then it's your choice, the down side to the hardware being it's getting next to impossible to get it repaired if it breaks. But if you already have a sampler that you know (hard or soft) then there isn't a good reason to change for FX work. For music I can see it because of the really good HUGE libraries that would never load in a hardware sampler. But your never going to load that much for FX/ design. Cost wise, ironically, the hardware probably wins right now. A totally loaded E4 can be had for under $400 on eBay.

Now I really liked the soft samplers I owned, but they all went away. And they were not cheap. When a soft sampler is discontinued you have nothing, no resale value, it will or has stopped working with the DAW you need it to, zip. If the hardware sampler is discontinued (as almost all now are) you still have a fully functional sampler. Until it physically breaks it doesn't matter at all that it's no longer made. And it has resale value for many years to come. And there are very few samplers that sound as good as the E4. I have yet to hear a soft sampler pitch as smoothly as the E4. Higher sample rates may well change that and with the E4 you are capped at 48/16 (24? maybe but I don't think so).
 
Thanks for the input everyone. I think I'll stick with the EMU. :)

Noiz2 - I picked up a SCSI memory card reader from a guy on ebay. It's by a company called "Spyrus". He's still selling them and I can attest to the fact that they work great. You need to use something like Chicken Systems Translater to convert from a .wav file (or whatever format you have your sample in) to convert it to something the EMU can use (.e4b file, I believe). It didn't cost me more than a couple hundred bucks for the setup and now I can use a 2 Gig CF card to go back and forth between the sampler and my PC.

I've also got a 120 gig hard drive installed in the EMU that the previous owner had put in with about 30+ gigs of samples.
 
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