how good is home sampling?

[Arush]

yes its a little silly to ask that because it hugely depends on what u got, i know..
but lets consider i got this sony stereo ECM-ms907 microphone and i got it hooked to my, lets say, just regular soundblaster 128bit, and record a some jazz chords on my guitar...

how good can this be, i mean i\'m not planning to pay a fortune to those 300$ samples with the same price of a considrable audio hardware facility, no?

well, just a thought

[nicholash]

Hi Arush,

With reasonably good microphones, and a lot of care and patience, you should be able to get surprisingly good results. Unless you are after a special effect, try not to pitch shift/transpose a sample by more than a few semitones from its original note. Also, I\'ve found it helpful to take several samples at various dynamic levels for each note. To get really professional sounding results, however, takes really good mics and equipment, and more time and effort than most people are prepared to put into such a project.

Best regards
Nicholas

[Arush]

ok so the bottom line is for the best quality this software can offer it pays to pay for samples?

because it sounds to me that if u buy a couple of instruments samples, say 4, each 300$ and in that price you could get yourself some damn good mics, i dont know much about prices, but it sounds wicked paying big bucks for every new sample when you can, in the same price(more or less?) get them equipment and get all the samples u can grab.

hope that clears that issue better,
tchau

[nicholash]

Hi again Arush,

To get some idea, having extensively sampled a piano myself, I know that it takes a lot of effort to get professional sounding results. (In the following, GBP is English money i.e. pounds sterling).

With the upright piano that myself and a friend sampled:
- the piano cost over 2000 GBP secondhand
- the microphones to record it cost a little under 2000 GBP
- the mic. preamplifier cost about 1000 GBP
- the A/D converter cost roughly 2000 GBP
- the recorder cost over 2000 GBP
- admittedly we could have hired that lot for significantly less ! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif
Come to think of it, why didn\'t we hire instead of buy ?!!! (hindsight I suppose)
- luckily for us, \'studio\' time was free
- we produced about 8 hours of recordings which needed to be very carefully undertaken and listened to for unwanted extraneous noises (which would audibly have built up when sustaining lots of notes at once)
- trimming the samples took many hours as did programming the Akai for good results
- the Akai version of my piano only has one normal dynamic layer of samples. This was time consuming enough to get right, so much so that I haven\'t yet got the motivation to produce a multi-layer version even though we have plenty of samples for it.

I hope this helps.
Best regards
Nicholas

[Arush]

damn nicolsh, thanx for this huge listing...it shows me just with whom i\'m dealing.
well, i guess you\'re right -it is cheaper and probably better quality, because whoever made the sample has a buisness in doing this.
we\'re just the users, i got it.

(but its so expansive!)
ahhh, good night nicosh

[nicholash]

Hi Arush,

Please don\'t let me put you off trying to make your own sampled instruments. However, it takes much time and patience to get really good results.

I know that sample libraries can be expensive. In fact, I\'ve spent more than $10,000 on them already. It is a pity for me that I have nearly lost all my life savings recently, so I\'ll probably have to spend more time sampling instruments myself.

Best regards
Nicholas

[Arush]

actually i just wanted to become a \"member\" fast so i just posted alot of stuff


....(10k$!! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/shocked.gif )

that is why i\'m going to be an engineer and not a musician to have money for all of this crazy stuff

[This message has been edited by Arush (edited 09-12-2001).]

[nicholash]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Arush:
actually i just wanted to become a \"member\" fast so i just posted alot of stuff


....(10k$!! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/shocked.gif )

that is why i\'m going to be an engineer and not a musician to have money for all of this crazy stuff

[This message has been edited by Arush (edited 09-12-2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good point, Arush.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Don\'t forget that certain instruments are easily sampled to amazing effect. After all, in a pop setting, some of the most classic sounds and tracks you\'ve ever heard were captured with a $150 Shure SM57 onto hissy analog tape.

[nicholash]

Very true Bruce!

Best regards
Nicholas

[pantonality]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR><snip> just regular soundblaster 128bit, and record a some jazz chords on my guitar...

how good can this be, i mean i\'m not planning to pay a fortune to those 300$ samples with the same price of a considrable audio hardware facility, no?

well, just a thought[/B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Arush,

I\'m no newbie and I\'m still discovering gotchas in this field. I\'ve discovered that I should limit my digital audio recording of non-MIDI instruments to ones I play well. That will include guitar through a J-station and perhaps piano. I\'ve discovered that I don\'t play flute nearly as well as I thought, either I have mediocre mics or my tone just sucks (or both). The point I\'m making is that it takes years of doing this to really know what works.

For example, the Sound Blaster is not an optimal A/D interface. This is a prosumer level product, i.e. it sucks, it only samples natively at 48K and sample rate coverts on the fly to anything else (yuck). You\'ll note, Nicolash told us that their converters were 2,000 GBP. The mfact is there is opportunity for noise to get into recordings at every stage and the one way to avoid that is to use professionally produced samples. I\'ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of many samples (I\'ve also been disappointed). Using top quality samples really makes a difference, the sad part is $300 is not a lot to spend on a really good sample library. I\'ve found experience has taught me the limitations of my capabilities.

Steve www.mp3.com/stevechandler (\"http://www.mp3.com/stevechandler\") www.mp3.com/ettienne (\"http://www.mp3.com/ettienne\")