Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

RE:
> Also, I saw an article where you could a minidisk recorder as 
a sampler. I'm going to get one of these too so when it's time I 
can learn how to some sampling. I'd rather by a hundred dollar 
minidisk that will work just as fine instead of spending mad 
loot on a real sampler. Interesting huh?<

There's a lot more to a sampler than just recording and playing 
back sounds.  Samplers transpose the samples over the 
keyboard, loop the samples so you can sustain sounds, allow 
you to adjust the pitch in case your sample isn't in tune with 
other gear and a WHOLE lot more.  If you want to do sampling 
- a minidisc is NOT the way I would go.  You could use it to 
GET samples for your sampler, but not AS a sampler. 
	The better the sampler, the more you can do with it 
and the better the quality of everything it does will be. Still, you 
can get very good results with the older (now cheap on the 
used market) samplers, though upgrading them can be a 
nightmare and they don't have as much memory as the new 
ones.  For my money, I'd wait and get a real sampler when you 
can find one at a good price.  You will be very glad you did.  
Some things are worth waiting for.   Or you could always go 
with a software sampler... Or if you really need something 
cheap and right now, check out the Yamaha SU10 or whatever 
their latest model is, I think it is the SU200.  
	For sampling, a minidisc is going to be very frustrating 
and ultimately probably completely useless.  It's not made for 
that.  Samplers aren't cheap, but there's a reason for it - they 
are very complex machines.  An E-mu sampler is essentially a 
command station (minus the quality sequencer) which can 
import anything and mix it and resample and tweak the living 
hell out of it.  You're not going to do that with a minidisc 
recorder. No way.
	However, as to the sound quality with minidiscs,  I read 
that the degradation of the sound quality has been greatly 
exaggerated by the purists.  The problem with recording to 
minidisc is if you make multiple copies in series from the 
original master.  The sound is degraded some minute amount 
each time you record ( I think it was like .3% - that was a while 
back, though, so I could easily be wrong).  So, if you made an 
original and then made a copy of the original to minidisc and 
then somebody else made a copy of your copy it will show the 
degradation a lot more.  But, supposedly, the first recording is 
close enough to CD quality that most pros can't tell the 
difference without doing a sound analysis of it.  I never did get 
one as the market was so marginal at the time I worried about 
them just disappearing from lack of interest.  That  plus the fact 
the data minidiscs were way overpriced and they don't hold a 
lot when you use them for multi track recording, which was 
what I was thinking about at the time... From my research, 
though, the sound quality didn't look bad enough to dismiss the 
technology.  Of course, now the new thing is 32 bits... It won't 
do that, but I'm not sure that isn't a scam of roughly the same 
type of weird logic used in reverse.  "Hey, we can sell them a 
.3% increase in fidelity they won't be able to hear, but they'll 
pay twice as much for it - beauty!"  Cd's still sound pretty good 
to me and they're 16 bit...  (I run my system through a BBE, 
though - best $100 I ever spent.) But hey, I'm getting older so 
maybe my hearing is going.  I don't know.  Maybe all that loud 
music for years and years... 
	FWIW,
			Flibfree ^=.=^


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