[sdiy] Sampler with tape dump?

[Mattias Rickardsson]

Thanks all for the examples and discussion. I'm not much into old samplers
and never expected that quite a lot of instruments used this "detour
solution" after all! :-)

Since the tape dump of an audio snippet sample creates an audio snippet
that takes much MORE time than the original audio snippet, I find it
bizarre/amusing. The trivial alternative would of course be to save the
original audio snippet on audio tape instead, without going via the digital
data encoding. The tape dump method is of course much "better" since it's
lossless, and also might have needed less expensive/messy hardware
solutions back in the day.

All this is somewhat similar (but opposite!) to recording chiptune music or
even other MIDI-sequenced music where all the generative data is available
in a much much smaller amount of information than the resulting audio
recording... that we might even compress to mp3 etc. And it might have been
travelling via the analog realm and back along the way. Here it's the
opposite though: The extremely compact original generative
sequencer/synthesis data is the lossless way of encoding it, while the huge
audio recording is the lossy one.  :-)

Btw, the following additional 4 examples of tape-dump samplers appeared
off-list, it seems:

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 at 01:48, min struct <min.struct at gmail.com> wrote:

> E-mu SP12 memory's segments, songs and user sounds, and allows to save all
> the data to tape or disc.
> Cassette dump is reportedly very slow (data can also be saved to disc if
> one has a Commodore 64 computer with disc drive)
>
> Le jeu. 8 août 2024 à 01:42, min struct <min.struct at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>> CASIO RZ-1 covered Tape Load and Save for patterns and *samples*
>>
>> Le jeu. 8 août 2024 à 01:33, min struct <min.struct at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>>> RSF SD140 Sampling Drum Machine
>>>  offers 14 user sampling memories of various lengths, *sample
>>> dump-to-tape* (or via MIDI to a computer or other data recorder)
>>>
>>> Le jeu. 8 août 2024 à 01:29, min struct <min.struct at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> AKAI S1000 digital output was designed for backing up the memory (or
>>>> the hard disk) to DAT.
>>>> audio part of the sample was simply ... digital audio, and sample
>>>> parameters were coded like software on cassette by computers...
>>>>
>>>> Le mer. 7 août 2024 à 23:22, Mattias Rickardsson <mr at analogue.org> a
>>>> écrit :
>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>> After some cassette backup discussions, a silly idea came up.
>>>>>
>>>>> Old synths often had tape dump as a means of backing up sounds.
>>>>> Nowadays it's easier to use a sampler or computer than a cassette
>>>>> tape, since it's just audio.
>>>>> Sooo... turning this on its head:
>>>>>
>>>>> Were there ever any old sampler that would let you store sample data
>>>>> as a tape dump? (-:
>>>>>
>>>>> /mr
>>>>>
>>>>
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