#1962834 - 06/25/08 05:27 PM
Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
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Geoff Grace
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I dusted off my old E4XT Ultra last week and sampled hits and other odds and ends for the first time in years. I'm getting ready to score a film this summer, and I wanted to have as large of a palette to work with as possible. Considering I was already using my old Mac for video sync, my main Mac for my DAW and string section, and my Receptor for brass and woodwinds, I still needed a host for hits and percussion, and my old E4XT Ultra was suited fine for that task. I'm glad I kept it around!
It was fun to sample again, although admittedly tedious as well. When I ran into a problem auto naming the samples, I tried to call E-mu and was disappointed that they no longer offer technical support over the phone nor any support at all for their legacy products. I guess that makes sense considering how few people buy from E-mu anymore. Man, what a difference a decade makes!
Regardless, I figured out how to fix the problem myself; and I'm happy to be using my E4XT Ultra again. Who knows, maybe I'll pull my original E-IV and Akai S1000 into service as well!
How about you? Do you ever sample anymore? For that matter, do you even still own a hardware sampler? Share your experiences below.
Best,
Geoff
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#1962838 - 06/25/08 05:55 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Geoff Grace]
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eric
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I had a Triton Extreme for awhile into which I sampled some Juno 106 sounds with mixed results. Prior to that, I had not really done much with sampling since a Mirage rack in the '80s. Just not really something I've ever dug into very much and had minimal reason to do. I was jealous of a keyboard player friend back in the early '90s who had all these silly sounds mapped to a keyboard like "Marge! Beer Me" and stuff like that. But it was pretty much for gimmick and not really for music. I've found that as romplers have evolved, I've had little need for sampling to support my live gigs.
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"Actually, this is what I came for. Look at all this gear. I love equipment. I love it to be stacked up high." | Stewart Copeland SoulerCoaster
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#1962854 - 06/25/08 06:49 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Geoff Grace]
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Kayvon
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I wouldn't mind getting into sample loading & manipulation with a Nord Wave or a Roland V-Synth. These two synths look positively inviting when it comes to playing round with samples. I don't have a great interest in actually going out and sampling my own sounds but it'd be fun making VA synth pads with filtered bell tree samples on and what not.
Loading ROMpler waves and record samples seems like it'd be fun with the tweakable interface of a Nord Wave, diving through the OS of Emu sampler, not so much for me. However, I am a big fan of the sound of the mid '90s samplers, I was brought up on the sampling mangling they did in UK electronic music like Drum'n'Bass.
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#1962865 - 06/25/08 07:20 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Kayvon]
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DanS
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I had a Korg DSS-1 back in the day, and found it such a pain in the ass to program & multisample, that I eventually just used it as a rompler. I remember them coming out with the M1 shortly after, and saying "I should have waited for that!"
I picked up an EMU E4XT sampler about a year and a half ago off of Ebay for the band I'm in now, for sampling bits & hits, but for live use it was just too damned heavy & bulky to cart around. I sold it and put the money towards my current Fantom X7, and just use it for all the stuff I need to sample. Again though, it's just phrases from tunes and effects to periodically throw into a tune to generate interest from the crowd.
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#1962913 - 06/25/08 09:49 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: DanS]
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mate_stubb
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Nope. I was fairly creative in the early days of Emulator 2 and Emax, but left it all behind after I quit playing dance music.
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#1962975 - 06/26/08 04:39 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: mate_stubb]
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Bosendorphin
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I got a Roland MKS-100 (the rackmount version of their entry sampler the S-10) back in 1987 on clearance. Boy was I excited at the time!!!
I ended up using it in a score for an animated film the next year, and lots of sound effects up through the late 90s for computer games.
I still have it because it's not worth selling anymore, I have the complete library I downloaded from the Internet. The QuickDisk drive died but I use MIDI to load the sounds. It's fun to play with and I've used some sounds for a TV show pilot I'm scoring. Only other hardware sample-based gear is my Alesis QS7 with a Flash RAM card for storing samples and sequences which I might use for an upcoming sci-fi flick.
I REALLY should get a software sampler, maybe SampleTank or somesuch but I'm running quite a few softsynths as it is so I'd like to keep the stress off of my CPU.
_________________________
"I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer!" - Richard Strauss
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#1963019 - 06/26/08 07:02 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Bosendorphin]
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ABECK
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I recently got rid of my beloved EIII. A very tempermental beast, at best. As far as sampling goes, I used it mainly for hits and FX. I think the possiblilies are far more vast for sound design/fx when you can "play" your samples, rather than just dropping elements into a DAW. However, I rarely had decent success sampling an instrument, per say. I downloaded some Mellotron and CS-80 samples, which were great, but again, a pain to program.
I too had a DSS-1 and it was impossible to sample anything musical and map it accross the keyboard. IMPOSSIBLE! I also had an Akai S2000. With the Akai software editor, it was actually fun to sample and create patches. Again, for me it was most useful for sound FX
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#1963129 - 06/26/08 10:19 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: ABECK]
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MusicWorkz
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I do sample via my MPC or Reason's NN-XT saample via Audacity. it's mainly for drums and voacls fly-ins...nothing too power-userish...
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#1963136 - 06/26/08 10:33 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: ABECK]
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MikeT156
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Geoff:
I use the sampler in my Motif ES8 quite a bit. For my gig, (classic rock covers) its a biggie. Primarily I have used it to load sound effects that are not resident on the ES8. However, I have recorded and played around with samples of some other things to see how it works. Truthfully, theres a whole lot of samples available commercially or even free or almost free on the internet, most sounds have already been sampled. Brother Prof D told me about the sample libraries that Best Buy carries. Pretty darn inexpensive and there are a number of them available through their Internet site. You can also find a ton of free drum samples just about everywhere on the web, incredible numbers of them. I had been thinking about more drum sets for my Motif and did a Google search....Wham...tons of them in WAV format for free. Longer samples usually cost money, but that's OK, they are still cheap. There are voice libraries available on Motifator.com too. The only drawback of the ES8 is that it has USB 1.1, which is pretty slow compared to v2.0. As Sven Golly pointed out to me, the 1MB sampler size limit on the Motif would be small for some string sample libraries. I've checked the prices of them and the speed of USB isn't as big a problem as the cost. Yikes!
But, a sampler won't do you any good if you do use it folks. Maybe some players have no use for it, but I'd say its not just for gimmicks, it can be used to enhance your sonic palette. Being a little resourceful can make your show just a little different and perhaps a bit more interesting than the "competition".
Players that do movie scores make good use of samples of just about everything.
Mike T.
_________________________
Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Suit case 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Mk III, Oberheim DMX, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist. Lots of Amps, mixers, PA speakers!
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#1963257 - 06/26/08 03:32 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: MikeT156]
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marino
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I have a huge sample library for the Kurzweil, and I use it all the time.
About my own sampling, it's been a while since I tried to sample instruments and make them playable from my keyboard... I did it with my Rhodes Chroma before selling it, but I've rarely used the resulting sounds - simply, they weren't the same, both in terms of sounds and of playability.
I've sampled electric pianos, but getting rid of the extraneous noises required more effort than I was willing to bear (at the time, at least).
That said, I'm still sampling in the Kurz... sometimes I sample strange softsinth from the computer, and further mangle them with VAST. Ambient/natural sounds too. I've had a lot of fun with vocal synthesis, animal noises, granular, and weird modular stuff. 
_________________________
“I never changed being acoustic. I’m just using an electronic instrument. That doesn’t mean that it’s not acoustic." Josef Zawinul
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#1963680 - 06/27/08 12:37 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: marino]
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MikeT156
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Marino, have you ever found the sample size or the maximum sample size on your Kurzweil to be a limitation? I don't recall which Kurweil you have or what the maximum sample size it can handle.
Mike T.
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Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Suit case 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Mk III, Oberheim DMX, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist. Lots of Amps, mixers, PA speakers!
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#1963977 - 06/28/08 03:42 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: MikeT156]
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marino
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Mike - I have the K2600 maxed out to 128 meg, which is ridiculous by today's standard, but perfectly good unless you don't want a whole orchestra loaded at the same time. For mangling a few strange/natural sounds with the synthesis engine, it's more than enough.
_________________________
“I never changed being acoustic. I’m just using an electronic instrument. That doesn’t mean that it’s not acoustic." Josef Zawinul
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#1964022 - 06/28/08 09:28 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: marino]
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percussion boy
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The Halion soft sampler is nice for doing and tweaking your own samples. I've multisampled old synths, and taken drum hits off old demos cut on an Otari 8 track. (Drums like tape).
I'd love to make some new tuned virtual instruments out of household sounds, if there's ever time.
Sampling with a laptop fulfills the promises hardware samplers made but couldn't quite keep. The technology's there now.
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#1964023 - 06/28/08 09:32 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: DanS]
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Dave Bryce
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I had a Korg DSS-1 back in the day, and found it such a pain in the ass to program & multisample, that I eventually just used it as a rompler.
+1. Exactly my experience...
That was my second sampler. My first was an S550, which may have been the instrument with the stupidest OS that I've ever owned. If you edited a sample, you had to save it, go to the program level, and reassign it to the current program just to be able to listen to it.  
As mentioned in another thread, I really dislike sampling. I take no pleasure in looping, crossfading, multisampling, etc..I'd much rather let someone else do keymaps and then plug them into my favorite synth engine and go to town. 
I don't mind problem loading them, though - like Marino, I have a large library of samples for my K2000...but I only have the SIMMs in it - no sampling option.
dB
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#1964030 - 06/29/08 01:47 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Dave Bryce]
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Dreamer
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I do sample quite a lot and then load the results into either my Fantom XR (512 Mb RAM), my Korg PA2X Pro (256 Mb) or even my Tyros 2 (512 Mb). In the past I used to sample with my old Akai (1000 or 2800) or even an Ensoniq ASR 10r (with the most ridiculous user interface of all time), so nowadays sampling and editing samples with programs like Sample Robot, SoundForge or Extreme Sample Converter is a real piece of cake...
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#1964040 - 06/29/08 03:40 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Dreamer]
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zahush76
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I had the emu ultra 64 sampler, but not anymore. In any case, i used mainly for two things:
1) As a rompler.
2) To sample and loop songs, in order to use it as a groove etc. Like it's done on hip hop and house.
There's not much use of sampling instruments, because if you want to do that seriously than you have to have a proper studio with some expensieve microphones, and good acoustics. And why bother, when in our days there are libraries of very good sounds and samples?
The main use would probably be to loop some break or groove out of an old funk 45" record, and build something on top of that.
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#1964041 - 06/29/08 03:53 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: zahush76]
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Tusker
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I've used loop sampling, and I still do with a PC and a KAOSS pad. Never done the multi-sampling thing, and probably never will. The world of synthesis is so big, you have give up on some things to be good at others.
The Roland formant transposing capabilities in the VP9000 and V-synth appeared promising, and they are good for an octave or two, but will not substitute completely for multi-samples.
I'll pays my money and I'll buy my multi-samples. 
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#1964071 - 06/29/08 07:45 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Tusker]
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Yoozer
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A sampler is nothing but a primitive computer with a smaller display, and therefore, earlier samplers resembled computers rather than actual instruments - just with better interpolation algorithms and ADC/DAC. Both are solved problems in a way; what's left is the charm of an 8 or 12-bit ADC adding grit and noise and an interpolation algorithm roughening up percussive material.
Also, user interaction design and user interface design were generally seen as useless fluff - you had the money to buy a sampler, therefore, you must've had the brains to figure it out, too. The slew of presets and libraries you could buy didn't help, but that was the rule for digital synths in general anyway.
A sampler that overcomes all of this, though, is wonderful to work with, and can do things regular synthesis can't do easily. Sounds that would generally require several distortion stages or complicated audio-rate modulation, or worse, FM - you can do 'm easily on a sampler just by looping a short burst of noise. All kinds of percussion, single-cycle waveforms - it's just that hardware samplers have all died, but as said - they're computers anyway.
The Omnisphere videos show the art of sampling - you can make ethnic instruments with a wineglass and a cardboard tube, and it's not even rocket science to do so.
The rest of material I work with consist generally of split up breakbeats, or sampled reverb tails.
_________________________
"Part of an instrument is what it can do, and part of it is what you do to it" - Suzanne Ciani, 197x.
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#1964424 - 06/30/08 07:36 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Yoozer]
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DonaldM
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My Yamaha Motif XS8 has a lot sophisticated sampling and editing capabilities which I'm just now beginning to learn how to use. I've started collecting samples in Pro Tools (I can do a lot of smaple pre-edits there) which I will load in to the Motif and add in some of the Motif editing features. The Motif allows you to layer up to 128 samples to create a waveform (not that many would do so) and then you can combine up to 8 waveforms (assigned to "elements") to create a single voice. Add in arps and you can do some pretty creative things.
I've been interested in acoustics and the physics of sound for years. The idea of recording unique sound source material, and using the editing capabilities of Pro Tools and the Motif to create new sonic source material for music creation is too alluring to pass up!! One idea I have is to create a drum kit I'm going to call "Kitchen Kit" and will be made up of samples of things like hitting different pots and pans, glasses, clinking knives, plastic bowls and the like. Undoubtedly its been done by others, but it will be MY kitchen set -- and thats the fun of it. So why not do it?
I also want to sample my own acoustic guitars and my lap dulicmers and my bandurria and my banjo and my mandolin and my cat and.... you get the idea. I have the capability and technology, so why not? This is why its called a HOBBY.
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Music is life...everything else is details!
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#1964431 - 06/30/08 07:44 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Yoozer]
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learjeff
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I had a Prophet 2002 rack sampler, and as cool as it was, and as much fun as I had with it, I was elated to see it go. I donated it years ago to a high school music program, along with my synth at the time (Roland JX-10). I bet they still use the JX-10.
I sampled my Yamaha CP70 and it wasn't too terrible, useful for times when I didn't want to haul the CP70 but a huge step down in dynamics.
I also sampled my Rhodes, going only for the deep bass and bell-like attack, so using pp samples. I layered that with a cross-mod patch on the JX10 that was a surprisingly good imitation of the Rhodes "bark", set with more dynamics so it would disappear for quiet playing and be very prominent when I dug in. I remember A/B-ing the Rhodes with the imitation and grinning with delight that they were so close -- way close enough to satisfy me when playing out. (The Roland Chorus Echo I played them through helped a lot too, dispelling the mechanical quality of the sample playback. The JX had a great built-in chorus as well, and using different choruses for the two sounds made it work even better -- not more realistic, but more like I wanted it to sound.)
But what a time-sucking, aggravation-making beast that sampler was: a grid of buttons, a row of 16 dot LEDs, 2 LED digits, and one knob for a UI. Modes, modes, and modes, ack!
No doubt y'all know I later sampled my Rhodes on my PC. That was a tedious process as well, but the bar was way higher and I had lots more samples: total of 70 MB versus less than 512KB for the Prophet. Might have been half that, because I believe I was able to fit the CP70 and Rhodes in memory at the same time. In any case, my focus was more on playing the notes at the right dynamic level and getting the right peak reading, rather than coddling the beast. The note/velocity zone map was created automatically (by a program I wrote). Far better than doing it with a grid of buttons and a few LEDs!
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#1964438 - 06/30/08 07:50 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: learjeff]
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learjeff
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Donald, good luck with your sampling efforts. If you're the least bit nerdy and willing to install Python (a scripting language like to Perl), you might find my soundfont tools very helpful to create a multisampled instrument. Used the simplest way, they create a ".sfz" format result, which you can play on your computer using the free sfz player, and convert to the format of your choice using various translation programs. Or generate a soundfont format file, which hopefully the Motif has software to convert from. Follow my Rhodes link above if you're interested, and definitely post back because I think I have improved it since the posted version.
Note that the guitar is a particularly challenging instrument to sample well. I have a dream of doing mine someday. Tip: sample all notes stopped, rather than open. If you sample open strings, put them together in another octave below low E. There are better alternatives for handling guitar samples and the number of different places they can be stopped, but it gets real complicated and ... well, it's a HOBBY. (Plus I think you need a special guitar sample player program to take advantage of it.)
Start with the simplest and least dynamic instrument, and learn as you go.
Edited by learjeff (06/30/08 07:51 AM)
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#1964449 - 06/30/08 08:04 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: learjeff]
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MikeT156
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Quote by Marino:
"Mike - I have the K2600 maxed out to 128 meg, which is ridiculous by today's standard, but perfectly good unless you don't want a whole orchestra loaded at the same time. For mangling a few strange/natural sounds with the synthesis engine, it's more than enough."
The other side of the coin is, when using large samples, you need to have a fast I/O in order to load them in a reasonable amount of time. My Motif ES8 has USB 1.1. I loaded up some sounds from the disk that came with the ES8 from Yamaha. I wanted to play around with the S700 triple strike piano sound. I also found some interesting string sounds and a Rhodes sound that I thought I'd load up. When I save it to a flash drive, it took 12 minutes! There just isn't that kind of time to load something that large in a live gig situation if there's a power failure and I have to reload. So I reloaded the string sounds I liked, edited them, and loaded a lead synth sound I found on the ES Sound Library disk and put it in a user slot. It took less than 3 minutes to save, which is acceptable. The S700 piano sample was the biggest and taking the most amount of time, oh well. With the XS series, Yamaha put USB 2.0 I/O which is a lot quicker. The 1 GB sample capacity on my ES8 doesn't do me a lot of good with the slow load time, so I have to pick and choose what sounds are important. its still nice to have the sampling option.
Mike T.
_________________________
Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Suit case 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Mk III, Oberheim DMX, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist. Lots of Amps, mixers, PA speakers!
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#1964455 - 06/30/08 08:10 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Yoozer]
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DanS
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The Omnisphere videos show the art of sampling - you can make ethnic instruments with a wineglass and a cardboard tube, and it's not even rocket science to do so.
+1 on samplers being computers. Your computer is one giant sampler.
I may start sampling some household items once Omni comes out. It looks to be pretty powerful for creating sounds out of unlikely elements, and then blending them together.
Maybe I'll burn some of my kids old toys & see how it sounds....
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#1964462 - 06/30/08 08:29 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: learjeff]
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DonaldM
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Donald, good luck with your sampling efforts. If you're the least bit nerdy and willing to install Python (a scripting language like to Perl), you might find my soundfont tools very helpful to create a multisampled instrument. Used the simplest way, they create a ".sfz" format result, which you can play on your computer using the free sfz player, and convert to the format of your choice using various translation programs. Or generate a soundfont format file, which hopefully the Motif has software to convert from. Follow my Rhodes link above if you're interested, and definitely post back because I think I have improved it since the posted version.
Hey, thanks. I will take a look at this. I've got some stuff to learn first, though!! 
Note that the guitar is a particularly challenging instrument to sample well. I have a dream of doing mine someday. Tip: sample all notes stopped, rather than open. If you sample open strings, put them together in another octave below low E. There are better alternatives for handling guitar samples and the number of different places they can be stopped, but it gets real complicated and ... well, it's a HOBBY. (Plus I think you need a special guitar sample player program to take advantage of it.)
Start with the simplest and least dynamic instrument, and learn as you go.
thanks for the tip. I knew guitars wouldn't be easy. But I've got the time to learn...its not like I have a deadline to meet!!
For the guitars, I'm going to start by studying the samples of the guitars already in the Motif as preset waveforms. The nice thing about the Motif sample editor, is you can take any of the existing waveforms and edit them, which also means you can analyze them. My hope is that that will help me gain a better understanding of how to create my own guitar samples.
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#1964465 - 06/30/08 08:32 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: DanS]
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DonaldM
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The Omnisphere videos show the art of sampling - you can make ethnic instruments with a wineglass and a cardboard tube, and it's not even rocket science to do so.
+1 on samplers being computers. Your computer is one giant sampler. I may start sampling some household items once Omni comes out. It looks to be pretty powerful for creating sounds out of unlikely elements, and then blending them together. Maybe I'll burn some of my kids old toys & see how it sounds....
I didn't realize the Omni would let you create your own samples. I must have missed that part in the vids. One more reason to get it!!! (and, no, there will be no 'burning guitar' voice coming from me!!!) 
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Music is life...everything else is details!
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#1964526 - 06/30/08 11:01 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: DonaldM]
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Yoozer
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Registered: 07/12/04
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Loc: The Netherlands
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I didn't realize the Omni would let you create your own samples. I must have missed that part in the vids. One more reason to get it!!! (and, no, there will be no 'burning guitar' voice coming from me!!!)
No no, it doesn't :). It's not what I meant. What they show for instance in video 3 or 4 is sampling a lightbulb. The whole psychoacoustic stuff - I don't buy, sounds too much like marketese to me - but they have a powerful synth engine with a lot of options in there and a really nice effects section. What it's about is that he's sampling a lightbulb and warping that into something completely different.
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"Part of an instrument is what it can do, and part of it is what you do to it" - Suzanne Ciani, 197x.
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#1964547 - 06/30/08 12:19 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Yoozer]
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DonaldM
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Registered: 05/07/07
Posts: 273
Loc: Indiana
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I didn't realize the Omni would let you create your own samples. I must have missed that part in the vids. One more reason to get it!!! (and, no, there will be no 'burning guitar' voice coming from me!!!) No no, it doesn't :). It's not what I meant. What they show for instance in video 3 or 4 is sampling a lightbulb. The whole psychoacoustic stuff - I don't buy, sounds too much like marketese to me - but they have a powerful synth engine with a lot of options in there and a really nice effects section. What it's about is that he's sampling a lightbulb and warping that into something completely different.
Thanks for the clarificatin.
As for psychacoustics, it actually is a legimate researc field. At its most basic, p-a studies the psychological and phisiological responses to sound and/or music. A practical application would be the sound effects engineer for a film project. The better understanding of how different sounds create emotional response in the listener, then the better the sound effects choices will be, as they enhance the film experience. The same is true of musical scores.
Also, there is a growing field of interest in the therapuetic aspects of music. Still a lot of research to do, but I for one think there really is something to it and it isn't just mumbo-jumbo. Music elicits power emotional responses for a wide variety of reasons. Figuring that out and why that is so is all in the field of psychoacoustics.
What Spectrasonics has done is take some of the applications and attempted to tap into new sounds...sounds not often encountered in everyday experience...and apply them in musical ways in order to tap into that emotional experience. I think there's lot to it!!
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#1964759 - 06/30/08 11:12 PM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: DonaldM]
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Yoozer
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Well, yeah, I know it's a legitimate research field - it's just that I can't really see how it's applied to Omnisphere other than "well, using this word makes it sound interesting".
Psychoacoustics is about the Haas effect (first wavefront), mp3 encoding, sound localization etc.
While the lightbulb demo is great, it still doesn't make it really clear what the psychoacoustic part of it is.
Edited by Yoozer (06/30/08 11:21 PM)
_________________________
"Part of an instrument is what it can do, and part of it is what you do to it" - Suzanne Ciani, 197x.
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#1964962 - 07/01/08 10:10 AM
Re: Do You Ever Sample Anymore?
[Re: Yoozer]
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DonaldM
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Registered: 05/07/07
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Loc: Indiana
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Well, yeah, I know it's a legitimate research field - it's just that I can't really see how it's applied to Omnisphere other than "well, using this word makes it sound interesting".
Psychoacoustics is about the Haas effect (first wavefront), mp3 encoding, sound localization etc.
While the lightbulb demo is great, it still doesn't make it really clear what the psychoacoustic part of it is.
Well, I don't have a definitive answer for you, but to me its their attempt to take sounds not ordinarily heard or encountered and turn them into something that can be heard, especially in a musical context. The psychoacoustic part, I think, comes into play in deciding what sorts of sounds are going to elicit what sorts of responses and choosing from among many many possibilities those that seem to have the most promise for musical creation, and by extension, a pychoacoustic response. I think that is, in part at least, what Spectrasonics is driving at.
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