Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Based on my interactions here on Bmix, I doubt anyone will have advice on this topic but...

I'm considering a new sampler... I currently use an ESI-4000. I have an external scsi hard drive and am not at all happy with it.

I'm thinking about moving towards an Akai s5000 or EMU E-IV Ultra or yamaha A4000. As far as I can tell these are the only models that have decent-sized internal hard drives available... any thoughts?

P.S. Before you tell me all about how giga-studio/halion or 'the like' will be the way to go: I'm not interested. I want a hardware sampler because sampling on the pc is a processor hog, and doesn't work well with a elec drum set firing it in real time when you are using 3sec (full-decay) samples with multiple layers.

yeah, I didn't think so.

I'd love to help you out but I have no idea what your talkin about.

Sorry no experience here.

I have a Korg DSS-1 that I'd be happy to sell you.

I didn't really explore more than about 1/10th of its capabilities & got into other stuff. Never got into MIDI stuff & the like. If you listen to my "Heads Up!" you can get an idea of what it can do. Only "real" instruments on that recording were acoustic guitar & vox.

I never really had any huge complaints about it, but I'm sure that there are a lot of more user-friendly samplers out there, these days.

well, thanks for the attempts anyway...

dss1... not bad... but no room for a 'giant keyboard' nor does it have competitive specs.
I need at least- 256mb ram, 40+ gig internal hard-drive, 256 polyphony...

everyone seems to be going the software route these days... you don't even see any new hardware models on the akai or emu websites. HAS HARDWARE SAMPLING GONE ABANDONED? sure looks that way...

Hi mistermikev
yep everyone does seem to be going software these days but there are a few alternatives.
Until the software revolution Akai samplers were seen as the 'industry' standard but most 'workstation' keyboards/modules are now sample based and offer user sampling.
The Roland Fantom XR (19" rack) has 128 voice polyphony and can be upgraded to 528 mbytes of sample ram. The downside is that all hardware units (except for the new Nord Wave) lose the user ram on power down so you would have to load up the samples every time. The Clavia Nord Wave only has 180mb of flash rom and is a keyboard. Apart from software or an Akai sampler, you will always have a lot of sounds that you might not want or use, as I say workstations seem to rule the keyboard world these days. Hope I've been of of some use!

hello, and thanks for reply.
yeah, I am familiar with sample loads at startup... I have an esi4000 now. I'd be fine with something that has 256mb ram... but I have to have an internal hd. I currently have my esi hooked up to an external hd and my scsi card... but it blows. The hard drive seems to need to be 're-found' every time I start up and I understand the internal hd's don't require this.
I had actually given some thought to a korg triton... cause it has sampler features... but it's not much of an option. no internal hd... weak sampling options compared to an s6000 or an ultra.
I like the idea that akai works with wav format... at least I wouldn't have to do so much converting! anywho thanks for the ideas.