Hardware samplers?

[b3maniac]

Open Labs had some nice keyboard work stations running Win XP and designed for software instruments. They were expensive.

 

[anotherscott]

I want to be able to use my Native Instruments Kontakt sounds live without having to bring my computer on stage. Is there a hardware sampler that could help me with this? I understand if there aren't any hardware samplers that can read Kontakt files, but maybe i could take the WAV files and map them out over the keyboard myself. I use very large sounds, like grand pianos where every key is sampled at multiple velocity levels.

There are programs like SampleRobot (PC/Mac), Samplit (PC/Mac), Extreme Sample Converter (PC), and the autosampler in Mainstage (Mac) which automate the process of sampling a sound you have and converting it to another format you can use. Chicken Systems also makes some stuff. If your original sample set is quite large, and you need to fit it into a space that is much smaller, of course, you'll lose a lot, in some respect or another. You'll either end up sampling fewer notes (and stretching), sampling fewer velocity levels, or sampling shorter lengths (and looping), or some combination. You'll also lose any scripting or other options that Kontakt may provide (being able to alter mic locations, etc.), and likely other things related to things like string resonance and different behaviors for pedal up vs. pedal down. Piano is one of the trickiest instruments to resample. If you don't want to travel with Kontakt, I'd suggest picking a keyboard that has a piano sound you like, there's a good chance it will be better than any version of a Kontakt piano that you could easily create and could well be "good enough" for the gigs. There are also some pretty decent piano sounds you can get from iPad apps. Maybe not Kontakt quality, but it's another source to consider if you can't find a suitable piano sound in a keyboard that you'd consider buying, and don't want to bring along a laptop.

Do you already have a keyboard you hope to use? If so, what is it?

If you want a keyboard you can load a decent amount of sample data into, check out Yamaha MODX (1GB) or Montage (1.5 GB), Dexibell (up to 1.5 GB), Kurzweil PC4 (up to 2 GB) or Forte (3.3. GB), Korg Kronos (streams from SSD).

 

[Jazzmatte]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I was looking at an Akai MPC One. Reasonably priced, and it seems like you can load 2GB of sample data into it. It has 128 voices, and you can use 4 velocity layers. Anybody have any experience with it?

 

[b3maniac]

Muse Research isn't quite out of business quite yet. They are apparently shopping around for a financial angel so that they can go into production again.

I just wish they (Muse) would support the hardware/software they already sold. I was running Kontack samples on my Receptor but a user can't upload sample directly into their OS with having the Muse "uploader". Mine is collecting dust . Don