i thinking about getting one but the question is is it even better than the samplers in a daw and i want to know does this thing record in wav samples and send back into the daw

also does it support filtering thro control from midi keyboard

and if someone have experience with this sampler my question is is it better one?

 

Me personally i wouldn't waste £ on old hardware samplers! We have software that can replicate or better today ... try this if you like old sampler rate /time stretch/pitch etc..
https://potenzadsp.com/plugins/amigo/

 

I bought one of those in 1999 with the memory expanded to the max (? I don't want to put a number because I don't remember if it was 25MB) and it was necessary to use a magneto optical drive connected to the akai through the SCSI port.
Honestly, pretending to use one of those nowadays is comparable to insisting on using an hourglass for everyday use.
However, if you need to limit your possibilities in order to find inspiration, you are on the right track, as the quality of its audio inputs and filters is excellent.

 

Just a funny story, I had an Akai Sampler Keyboard and I had to put a disc in to load a 1 second Bassdrum and then take it out and turn it over to load another 1 second sample.
Oh and BTW I don't think you responded to your own Triton thread but hope you got sorted

 

I've got 5 outboard samplers and I rarely use them these days. You have to be quite technical and love old tech to use them, too, so I somehow feel it would be a waste of money for you. If it has SCSI>SD Card installed instead of a SCSI hard disk that might fail any time, it's easier and more reliable to transfer samples as you just take out the SD card and use it flash drive like. Gotta have an SD card reader on PC, too. Transferring samples over MIDI is so slow you could grow a beard in the mean time. Only short samples are worth transferring over MIDI.

Yes you can setup some MIDI CC controls for these. Take a look at the "MIDI Implementation chart" in the manual. AKAI can most certainly do it. I sometimes use Behringer BCR2000 to shape sounds since it's much easier than fiddling with controls on the sampler. BCR2000 is universally great MIDI controller for everything. Shame they don't sell it anymore.

Cheers!

p.s. I have Akai S3200XL, Roland S-760, Yamaha A3000, Yamaha A5000 racks and Kurzweil K2000 keyboard. 2 SCSI>SD writers/readers (100 quid each), external SCSI case (got it with A4000), 2 different SCSI cables DB50 pin and DB68 pin I got with samplers. Always ask for those and any additional things, especially SCSI related. You have to have all this stuff for relatively comfortable work with them.

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2024

WAV format - No, its proprietary.
'Send back to the DAW' - what does this even mean?

Why do you think you need a hardware sampler? Are you prepared to learn how to edit stuff 'the hard way'? A lot of folks nowadays wouldn't be able to hang with even looping and trimming on those things heh. Stick to the DAW. The S3000 isn't even close to one of the 'good' Akai's.

 

i have so many synths in software so i thought why NOT to try a little oldschool

 

Welcome to SCSI, Sample MIDI dumps (SDS), and a world of pain.

You can replace the floppy drive with USB emulation (Gotek does/did one, right?), but even then it's not exactly working at the speed of thought, aand the machine is limited to 32MB of RAM.

Yeah it sounds great, but it's a sampler so it will sound like your samples do. If you want that old ADC/DAC/timestretch sound there are way easier ways to achieve this.

So for samplers, get a MPC, a Digitakt or something that's easier to work with if you want "that" sound in hardware.

To me using old samplers makes only sense if you already know your way around them, and have a decent library (either own or purchased) to go along with it.

 

Probably most DAW include Sampler like with Cubase Sampler Track you can change the Quality (See bottom left of pic) and add Filter, Change Pitch, Change Loop Mode, Drag in Samples or Loops, Slice Loops (Automatically) which are assigned to certain Keys as well as you being able to add any other external effects in the 'inserts' like Saturation etc. to change the sound to what you want

 

I tell you this: I did use them back in the days because we had nothing else and it was best practice. Today I have my Akai S1000, my Akai S3000 XL and even my Akai S5000 standing right next to me here in my studio ready to use. I rarely use them anymore because it is rather complicated (even if you consider using modern tools like SCSI2SD or Gotek). Only the Akai S5000 would be easier to deal with because it uses WAV samples and you can interchange them quickly between your DAW and your sampler and it is equipped with the USB card. But why would you want to do that? Each and every DAW on the market has superb audio editing functions that beat those classic samplers by a mile. Imho using those classic samplers only make sense in an environment without DAW. If you're using an Atari ST with ya old Cubase or Notator you are good to go and it could be real fun to use them. Using them with modern DAWs is a pain in the ass and you definitely want to spend your precious time better than this.

 

the only one reason to use an old sampler would be for historical studies

The internal behavior is replicated and even perfected by milions of free samplers or stock VSTi. If you are an "audiophile lol" and want the "flavour of the old converters" just record the analog output from a 200 bucks sound card with the input of the same audiocard, that will sound as crap as those converters

At the end you will realise: I just wasted time and I am not faboy slim

 

as i said always interesting to try something new.. old school gear is very interesting

 

and thats the only one interesting reason, but I dont think it will work in a serious producing scenario or at least it wont work better than using a modern ITB sampler

PS: "trying something new" for someone that didnt use it in 2002 obv : ) I had 1000 and 950 at the time.

 

I, too, as a 30 year owner of an s2000, am in the camp of 'you really don't want to do that'

if you do however want the experience without being stuck with the gear I'd recommend:
1) installing https://www.kvraudio.com/product/emulator-x-by-e-mu as it has the same options as hardware samplers, but without menu diving with a knob. if you want the knob experience, setting a microwave every time you want to make changes to the samples would work

2) getting a usb floppy drive and a floppy disk and spend the 30-60 seconds to format a disk every time you want to load or save a sample. the soft rhythmic chunking of the floppy drive is great for meditation. if you're going for authenticity, do this on loop for the first afternoon to simulate the several hour experience of making an akai formatted system floppy on moderns OSs. I do computers for a job and it still sucks

3) make sure you randomly delete samples to simulate floppies dying/sample cds being scratched, and commit to a bi-yearly mass delete to simulate a scsi drive going bad

also, there's no such thing as integration with anything that doesn't happen over a midi cable, an audio cable, or a scsi cable. you're still stuck largely in the box as you need to sequence the thing over midi, the only difference is how annoying getting sounds in & out is

there are cases that can be made for something like an mpc that has a complete workflow and can influence how music sounds, but there's really no upside for hardware samplers at this point at all. I did buy an old kurzweil k2600x and installed every possible expansion a few years ago so I do understand the appeal of old systems & samples, but my s2000 hasn't been used in 20 years and never will be, unless I circuit bend it

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2024

The thing I suspect with samplers, how they were used in the 1990s, you could have a SCSI CD drive and, let's say, a Zip drive, you could save programs and samples on a Zip disk once you find the right sounds for your project, and that can include drum samples if you wish to build a drum program out of them.

 

if you dont use your s2000 can u give it to me?

 

It's true that old samplers are kinda boring and pita to work with. When they were new, samples and sampling was "in" and interesting. Now all they are useful for is "that sound".

However, what Yamahas A3000-A5000 are capable of doing, still sounds very interesting. Such lovely samplers. Crazy effects. Very experimental. My most used samplers. Got my A3000 for 100 euro. ;) A5000 was 250. Ridiculously cheap, 10 years ago. I wonder if they're still that cheap.

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2024

I had to work with hardware synths and samplers back in the 90s and I'm more than happy it's a thing of the past. For me, a major problem nearly no one is talking about was MIDI and timing when using it for drums, bass and other tight samples. MIDI is a slow serial protocol, so it's impossible to trigger let's say kick, snare, hihat and bass at the same time. Throw in some CC automation and it's a mess sounding different each time. Would never go back.

 

I used Sound Forge 3 / 4 in Win 3.11 to dump samples via MIDI (SDS) to SY99 an it was a fck pita.
Then I added an Adaptec SCSI card thinking to buy a SCSI sampler, but seen the marginal use I did of samples, I gave up.

Like ABC song: That was then but this is now.
Better now.

 

Nothing is still that cheap. Maybe you could get a broken "for parts" unit for that much.

I'll say this anyway. If you are the tiniest bit "lazy" do not get a hw sampler, because it is definitely more work than just opening a sampler in your DAW. But if you open up some very busy project that is almost done, fire up an external sampler on top of the stuff you made inside your DAW. All of a sudden the stuff in your 2024 project session is going to sound "different" to you certainly, and that doesn't matter much what make or model you get. Some more than others, especially if you are running them through a mixer and other hardware outboard effects.
It (any hardware) will cut right through your busy mix with almost no effort at all. Especially the AKAIs with drums.
They are just another external instrument and effects box.

I'm not saying you should buy one. But if you do, get one with the internal floppy drive already changed into an sd card reader, or at least SCSI port and FAT32 support. They are extra work no matter what, but you'd want some of the modern options for getting your samples into the unit.