Crucial ESX Sampling question

robosardine · Post by **robosardine** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 8:57 pm

Hi folks. I was thinking of getting an ESX in preference to my Roland MC 808. I was a little alarmed not to say confused to read on another thread that the 'one shot' keys are only meant for percussive hits as opposed to one shot lasting several seconds or indeed the entire length of your pattern- like a sampled guitar riff. Is this really the case- if so, why is this?
Cheers Robo

m4m · Post by **m4m** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 1:13 am

you can do that if you wish

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 3:04 am

yes but the esx is more significant in radical short sample mangling... what's the purpose of using a long one shot sample, when you could create a spectacular melody from two notes of it with heavy modulations...?

if you want long guitar loops why not get a lap top and use ableton?

trust me you will not be disapointed with the esx... maybe at first, it's frustrating for a while to figure out how it works... but after that it's a f*ck*ng beast....

load it with high quality radical clean samples and it will not dissapoint you.

Setsonics · Post by **Setsonics** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:27 am

Do you guys make your own samples? Or what?

Where can I find good samples to work with my ESX-1?

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:50 am

hmm I use a combination of my own and rather random samples that I have laying arround... I have a 26 gig sample collection it's on a dedicated 30 gig partition.... most of it suck but I know exactly where the sweet spots are...

DO NOT USE STEREO SAMPLES.... they take up twice as much memory as mono... and the electribe does not have too much memory....

here's how I organize mine... I have about 120-130 drums, all organized by type (kick snare hat... tom so on).... then I have some synth wave forms(borrowed from rapture virtual synth you can get it from the demo version and they KICK ASS).... all you really need is your basic waves.... sin tri saw square and some variations of those(the ones in the pro sounds directory of rapture are f*ck*ng potent and wicked)....

then I have some one shot recordings of my favourite synth sounds... maybe up to four five seconds long... this includes massive and fm8 recordings.... all I do is I have a clip inside ableton that will hit the c note for say one bar and have an empty bar after, and I sample this in another audio track, and then take all of them and stick em on the electribe...

after that what's left fill with strange samples... what I find best is like short vocal phrases from tv shows... even if they're totally random you can add a lot of rhytmatics on the esx...... also like cut ups of guitar riffs cause you can chop em up and arrange very rhythmatically.... so on...

I'll tell you it's a F U C K I N G B I T C H to put together a good sample collection cause it's tideous organizing work, and you gotta convert all the samples into mono and normalize them and such (soundforge's batch converter does wonders).... but in the long run it is WELL worth it, you will have one wicked little monster to reek havoc with

robosardine · Post by **robosardine** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:16 am

I would like to have long one shot samples because I play the guitar and would like to sample riffs that I improvise that are already mangled with FX before I mangle them with the sampler. I don't use computers- only hardware. Robo

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:37 pm

then get a lap top and buy a cheap midi controller like trigger finger that will come with ableton live lite.....

you will be plenty more sattisfied.... recording guitar is something you do on a computer.... not a sampler.

robosardine · Post by **robosardine** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 8:32 pm

I don't want to use a computer though. I don't want to record guitar tracks on the sampler either- just riffs lasting 4-8 bars eg. Is this practical on the ESX?

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 6:48 am

that is what I ment by guitar track, well ur right wrong wording. but no it's not practical at all, you'd be able to have like 5 of those and have barelly any room left over for anything else...

you don't do samples of this length on a sampler, that's not what a sampler does... this is what a computer is for.

a sampler does not record instruments and play them in sync with other stuff, it is an instrument, which uses weird sounds to create melody....

a sampler is ment to record a couple notes from a guitar and piece em together to create a whole melody..... not take a whole melody and play it back....

robosardine · Post by **robosardine** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:22 pm

Thanks Ruso. I'm beginning to understand why I had difficulty in the past with other samplers getting my long riffs to time in properly.

anselmi · Post by **anselmi** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:17 pm

robosardine wrote:Thanks Ruso. I'm beginning to understand why I had difficulty in the past with other samplers getting my long riffs to time in properly.

well, it´s not completly true that samplers can´t manage those audio lenghts

check the roland sp-404 and sp-555, the sampling time on this samplers is huge...

404 can use up to 1Gb of compact flash memory for samples...also the format is compressed so you can have hours of sampling time

555 can manage 2 GB compact flash cards

robosardine · Post by **robosardine** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:20 pm

What about Akai's are they any use?

anselmi · Post by **anselmi** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:46 am

robosardine wrote:What about Akai's are they any use?

today akais samplers is represented by the MPC series

MPC pros are:
sequencer
audio quality
good pads

but they read sample data from ordinary RAM instead of some storage media as a compact flash in the roland SP range

RAM in the MPC series is bigger than the ESX one but since they use no data compression it still way smaller than the audio storage capabilities of a computer

some old akai S samplers could read audio direct from a hard drive, check the S-5000 and the S-6000 samplers...they are bulky gear but excellent samplers anyway...maybe too much for just loop triggering