Samplers / Sampling

If you want to artificially extend your instrument samples, or make entire backing tracks from one rhythmic snippet, you'll need to know about looping and time-stretching. And then there's keygrouping... We explain these fundamental sampling processes, and more.

If you want the sample playback features of Steinberg's Halion sample player, but you don't need its detailed editing facilities, there's now an affordable answer to your needs — and it includes the full Halion sound library too...

Having introduced the concept of looping, velocity switching, and multisampling, it's time to actually make some samples. We give you a few hard-won tips that can make your life easier on the way.

FXpansion's software drum machine takes the 'pad sampler' concept pioneered by Akai's MPC range to new levels.

As we saw last month, sampling is really just a form of digital recording, but to use short recordings to emulate real instruments, you soon need to understand new concepts like multisampling, looping, and velocity switching. We explain all...

Most modern musicians use samples, even if only in Sample & Synthesis-based keyboards or virtual instruments. But sampling itself has become something of a lost art. In the first part of a short series on rediscovering this skill, we look back at how the technique and the technology developed.

Native Instruments' Kontakt has become one of the most popular software samplers since its release in 2002, and the new version, with its many excellent new features, should keep it near the top of the heap.

DJ Format has been making funky, sample-led hip-hop since the old school was new — and it seems the world has finally caught up.

The Dust Brothers changed the course of record production with a new approach to sampling. In their first ever in-depth technical interview, John King and Mike Simpson explain their unique way of making records and open the doors of their remarkable LA studio, The Boat.

The latest in Roland's SP series of phrase samplers can also double as a computer and audio interface, and PC users can take advantage of a bundled Cakewalk sequencer/mixer. Is this the best SP yet? We find out...

I have some sampled drum patterns that I am trying to loop. I find that they are losing sync over the course of the track. What's going wrong and how do I fix it?

If you are keen to move to an all-software setup, but still depend on sounds from your hardware synths, Redmatica's utility might smooth the path...

I have recently bought an Akai S5000 sampler and I am attempting to create samples of some synths I have...

Version 3 of Gigastudio has taken a long time to arrive, and plenty of other software samplers have come along during the wait. Does it still have what it takes to see off the competition?

Storm, the French software studio from virtual-instrument creators Arturia, keeps on improving. We check out version 3.

MOTU's software sampler seeks to be accessible to everyone, irrespective of preferred platform, sequencer or sample format. Can Mach Five really be all things to all people?

When the epic, studio-created drum sounds of the 1980s had to be translated to a stage setting, sample triggering from drum kits came to the fore — and our man Gavin Harrison began his personal quest for the ultimate setup...

Emu's range of soundcards offers an unprecedented level of flexibility, DSP power and sound quality for the price — with the added bonus of a very impressive software sampler.

NI have taken the technology behind Kontakt, and used it to build a sampler that's all about loops.

Rackmount studio samplers may be pretty much a relic of the past, at least in terms of manufacturers producing new examples, but it's not quite all software and computer RAM yet — not if instruments such as this new one from Korg are anything to go by.

Sampletank was a hit: a sample-based virtual instrument with great sounds and, at the time, not much competition. Two years on, there are plenty of fully-featured software samplers and non-sampling virtual instruments too. Can Sampletank 2 keep up?