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Mainstage Auto Sampler!! Why didn't I think of this before?

EscapeRocks

By EscapeRocks
in The Keyboard Corner

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EscapeRocks

EscapeRocks

Posted
Posted

After reading another thread about someone wanting to sample their slowly dying DW8000, the light bulb went off in my head. :hitt:

 

We are beginning to book some fly in gigs, and I am creating some concerts in Mainstage so I could travel with my laptop and not have to haul my FA-08 all over the country.

 

Most of the sounds I use are easy enough to recreate in the various VI's I have, but there are a few that I've made on my FA-08 that no matter how hard I try, just don't cut it.

 

Enter the light thru the stained glass window moment (Blues Brothers).

 

I check out a couple tutorials on setting up Auto Sampler.

 

BAM!!

 

So very easy to use, and I now have the very unique sounds I programmed in the FA-08 in Mainstage. I've tested them by playing them from other keys/controllers and I'm a happy camper.

 

Just another in the long list of things I love about KC. So many eye opening ideas get shared here. :thu:

 

 

I have a good friend who has a pristine OB-8 who is letting me come over with my laptop, etc., to sample some sounds.

 

If anything, I am having fun with this.

 

 

 

 

David

Gig Rig:Depends on the day :thu:

 

 

 

 

 

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Joe Muscara

Joe Muscara

Posted
Posted
We are beginning to book some fly in gigs
Really? That's awesome. Are these private events or should you be sharing them in Shameless Plugs so you can meet some KCers on the way?

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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EscapeRocks

EscapeRocks

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Curious how much detail you guys put in, or quick and dirty?

 

You make about 22 samples of a favorite patch and retune/stretch as you keymap across the 88 keys? Less or more? One velocity layer? 2? 4? Or it depends on the patch?

 

For my specific FA08 samples I ran 2 velocity layers, a 49 note section, and sampled every minor 3rd and let auto sampler do its thing. All based on some tutorials I followed. So far, so good.

 

The FA08 sounds that I wanted to bring in only needed these settings.

 

I'll let you know once I start experimenting sampling a few sounds from my friend's OB8.

David

Gig Rig:Depends on the day :thu:

 

 

 

 

 

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EscapeRocks

EscapeRocks

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We are beginning to book some fly in gigs
Really? That's awesome. Are these private events or should you be sharing them in Shameless Plugs so you can meet some KCers on the way?

 

Nothing to share yet but once things are solidified, will definitely look to meet some KC'ers on the road.

David

Gig Rig:Depends on the day :thu:

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr88s

Dr88s

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A little question about autosamplers:

 

Suppose on my hardware synth I create a program with a filter sweep. I hold down a chord, and the synth filter closes according to its envelope, modifying the sound of the chord. If I was to autosample, each individual note would be sampled with its own closing filter. If I play the resulting program in mainstage and sustain a chord, wouldn't all of the individual filters on each note interfere with each other?

 

How do you deal with sampling programs whose tones change over time?

Nord Stage 2 Compact, Yamaha MODX8

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burningbusch

burningbusch

Posted
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A little question about autosamplers:

 

Suppose on my hardware synth I create a program with a filter sweep. I hold down a chord, and the synth filter closes according to its envelope, modifying the sound of the chord. If I was to autosample, each individual note would be sampled with its own closing filter. If I play the resulting program in mainstage and sustain a chord, wouldn't all of the individual filters on each note interfere with each other?

 

How do you deal with sampling programs whose tones change over time?

 

With a polyphonic synth, e.g. 8-voices, if you play C followed .5 secs later by E and .5 seconds later G and the filter envelope is set to sweep the filter, each note would have its own sweep. Voices on a polyphonic synth have independent osc, EQs and filters. With a paraphonic synth the oscillators share the EGs and filter.

 

BUT, if you want a very precise sweep so that each note is identical, you would need to sample each note of the original instrument. If you stretch notes, the sweep will either be slower or faster than the original depending on placement.

 

Busch.

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Sven Golly

Sven Golly

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Curious how much detail you guys put in, or quick and dirty?

 

You make about 22 samples of a favorite patch and retune/stretch as you keymap across the 88 keys? Less or more? One velocity layer? 2? 4? Or it depends on the patch?

 

The highlighted, and thanks to Busch for saving me citing an example as to why there's no single rule for all things. ;):2thu:

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ElmerJFudd

ElmerJFudd

Posted
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Here's how you make an instrument from live audio on the NE5,

[video:youtube]

 

This guys is sampling Omnisphere into Nord format,

[video:youtube]

 

Here's the basics of using MainStage/Autosampler with your hardware synths.

[video:youtube]

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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burningbusch

burningbusch

Posted
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Some thoughts on these auto samplers.

 

There are three main products: Sample Robot (SR), Extreme Sample Converter (ESC), and SampleIt (Si). They all do much the same thing but there are some important differences.

 

Platforms

ESC is Windows only. Si is cross-platform. SR is both but runs on OSX as an XQuartz app so it's pure Windows app in functionality. There are times when this is a small issue, but finding the keyboard equivalent usually is all that's needed. But, I've used SR a lot on the Mac and it's a very stable product, on both platforms.

 

I don't know that ESC is being actively updated, the other two are though.

 

Velocity/Key Mapping

SR and ESC allow up to 127 velocity layers. Si is apparently limited to 16, but all allow you to precisely set the layers top velocity, an important feature . SR requires the layer to be uniform for all notes while ESC and Si allow you to have one note with six layers and the next note to have 12 for example. ESC allows independent hold and release times for each zone. SR has a nice feature where you can set the the hold time of the lowest note and then a different value for the highest. Very useful in recording pianos or other string instruments where the decay time is faster as you proceed up the scale (no need to record C7 for 25 seconds). Si has a brilliant feature which will end recording once the input falls below a certain dB, so no wasted audio and it seems to work well (they all should have this).

 

So SR and ESC have the most flexibility but Si will work well for most situations.

 

Autolooping

Finding the best loop points is a PITA especially with more complex source material. The guy glosses over manually finding the loops in the Nord/Omnisphere example but it really can do challenging. All three products offer auto-looping which sets out to automatically find the best loop points. It is very basic in Si and if it can't locate one it just sets it to no loop. SR and ESC have sophisticated algorithms and editors for tuning or choosing alt loops. I have brought WAVs into SR and done batch auto-looping on them and it works very well. It seems ESCs looping editor offers the most options. (As a side it's becoming more difficult to find good sample looping software so these products are a blessing even though they aren't meant to be full blown editors).

 

Do you have to loop? Not really. The lazy person could just go through sampling a pad on an analog synth, sampling for example 25 seconds, knowing they will never hold the chord for longer. Yes it wastes disk space but it's being pragmatic about the whole thing. Also with APs and EPs, just sample for full duration of the decay and don't worry about loops and creating the right decay envelopes.

 

VSTis and Hardware Sampling

ESC and Si allow you to sample VSTis directly (the application hosts the VSTi). ESC allows real-time or off-line while Si allows only real-time. How well this works has been hit and miss for me. It could be that I have so damn many VSTis (hundreds) and there are challenges getting them to play nicely with all these different products. But, there's an easy solution which is to route MIDI and audio to/from the auto sampling software and the software instrument running either standalone or in a DAW. This is pretty foolproof. It will be real-time of course but it's solid. All three products allow for this as well as sampling of external MIDI hardware. Si and ESC provide for manually start/stopping of the sampling process which would allow you to use these products for non-MIDI hardware.

 

In the end, they all can get the job done.

 

Conversion

ESC has the most number of conversions though some are pretty obscure. One could use ESC as an alternative to Chicken Systems Translator, though I personally have little experience with this.

 

ESC: Akai, Creamware, GigaSampler/Studio, Ensoniq, Halion, Kontakt, Renoise, SFZ, SF2 and some others.

SR: SFZ, .sxt and SF2 mainly. It claims some others but these are really just using SFZ/SF2 and then relying on the destination sampler to do the conversion. It claims to do Kronos but I've had little success with this, opting for SF2 instead (which works well).

Si: Giga, Kontakt, Halion, Reason, EXs and SF2.

 

Note: It's hard for these small developers to keep up with all the changes in sample formats from companies like NI and others. I ESC is limited to importing Kontakt 4 for example and there might be others where you need old versions to use it as a straight up convertor.

 

http://www.samplerobot.com/

 

https://www.soundlib.com/samplit/

 

http://www.extranslator.com/

 

[video:youtube]

 

[video:youtube]

 

Busch.

 

 

 

 

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dalpozlead

dalpozlead

Posted
Posted
Awesome summary!, the price difference (SR vs. Si) is huge, I`m not sure Si is capable of converting to WAV so we have a reliable format to then convert to other formats if needed in future for me, just trying to sample simple lead tones, Si seems to be the best cost choice
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  • 6 months later...
AnotherScott

AnotherScott

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Posted
Is it possible to use the Mainstage Auto Sampler to get sounds into the Kronos (probably via SF2)? Do I need some other app to be the go-between... Chicken Systems Translator maybe? Or, if my final destination is Kronos, am I better off just using SamplIt or SampleRobot in the first place? (As you can probably guess, I'd like to do this from a Mac.)

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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LennyTunes

LennyTunes

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Posted
Some thoughts on these auto samplers.

 

There are three main products: Sample Robot (SR), Extreme Sample Converter (ESC), and SampleIt (Si). They all do much the same thing but there are some important differences.

 

 

Really great summary of these tools from Busch. Just wondering if MS Auto Sampler is not as robust, thus why is was not included. With the recent update of Mainstage 3.3 last week, I wonder how it would compare now.

Lenny
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