Buggy Whips [was]Re: [sdiy] Should I repair my Fostex, or should I go HD recording?

[Kenneth Elhardt]

JH writes:
>>My Fostex R8 analogue 8-track is broken again.<<

Is that model number correct or is it the A8 ?  I still own my Fostex A8.
The best thing about it is the smell and the way all those meters light up.
Other than that, using real tape vs computer recording is like using a
typewriter vs a word processor.  The latter is much for flexible.

>>You mean they really have 127 velocity layers ? Then it's *really* for me,
because my main problem with ROMpler stuff was the usual 2 or 3 velocity
layers (terrible).<<

I think the person was saying that Gigasampler can support that many layers.
But you can't buy any sample libraries that were recorded at 127 velocity
levels.  I think the highest I've heard was 8 layers for some of the Giga
pianos.  No human is accurate enough to play an acoustic instrument at 127
different levels.

And as far as WeAreAs1's comments about hardware samplers vs software he is
just writing down a one-sided biased view.  There are good and bad points
about each.  The reason to go with a computer is to break the memory and
storage limit.  128MB of hardware sampler memory is very limiting for many
things.  Giga is becoming the new standard.  All the new high quality stuff
will be off limits if you go with a hardware sampler.  And nobody likes
editting hundreds of parameters through a little LCD display if you need to.
And there are bugs in hardward samplers.  I have them in my Emu VI.  And
there are unpredictable memory incompatibilities when trying to upgrade.
The Akia 2000/3000 series was so bad when it came out, it drove me away from
buying one.  Processing of sounds is slow compared to on a computer.  Trying
to transfer sounds to a computer for editting and then back again is slow
and painful.  And as you might have noticed, companies seem to be moving
away from making dedicated hardware samplers anymore.  The choice is easy,
and it's software sampler.

Quothe Ingo Debus writes:
>>The Fostex R8 is so quiet that it can be run in the same room where the
microphone is - I wish this was true for the Mac<<

Look on page 85 of Sound On Sound magazine.  It's a Mac G5 in a sound proof
cabinet.  At $1100 though I'd rather build my own.

Note that laptop computers are silent if you're overly fussy about that sort
of thing.

JH writes:
>>but I'd love to find out what massive amount of memory can do to typical
ROMpler applications like (unlooped) Grand Pianos or Church Organs.<<

Richard Wentk writes:
>Not much. Much of the acoustic character of these sounds comes from
>resonances that aren't copied by one-note-at-a-time sampling. None of the
>gigasampled pianos I've heard have come close to the real thing.

This doesn't make any sense.  When you record a piano note you get what you
hear whether it's in a sample or a direct piano performance.  That includes
simpathetic resonances, piano noises, and anything else.  Gigasampler gets
rid of looping, gives you full sets of chromatically sampled sounds, and
more velocity levels than a hardware sampler.  The result is a very
realistic sampled piano.  And when it comes to Church organs, you can now
get all stops sampled individually and then mix them together as you would
on a real pipe organ.  See the Post Baroque Organ for that capability.
Again, only available for a software sampler.

-Elhardt