Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Keyboard sampler or rack hardware sampler for piano?

(In the Physis piano thread, questions about the limits of other hardware came up. I mentioned using a hardware sampler instead of one of the modern synth\rompler combinations. I'm starting this new thread to avoid watering down the focus in the Physis thread.)

The question of using the Roland Integra-7 as a hardware sampler for pianos came up.

I don't know if can be used as a sampler. The Roland site says that you can plug their 2 gig flash memory stick into the Integra-7, but I'm not sure what that holds. It could be just for holding recorded songs and midi, since flash memory is what a standard usb stick uses, even though it is also used for loading samples on older samplers. But can you map samples on the Integra-7 and apply envelopes, etc? I'm not so sure.

If the major companies have decided that a good keyboard sampler or rack sampler is just too much of a threat, I guess we just won't see one from them unless we are willing to pay 4K for something like the Korg Karma. (A very nice instrument, but I just want to load my own samples into a keyboard.)

Which makes me wish that someone else would step in. Casio, now that they're taking music seriously? Behringer? (I know what people may say there...)

Of course the argument against a hardware sampler is always close by: use a laptop with Kontakt. And that may be the best way to go. Still, there's something appealing about having a keyboard with a sampler, or just one box with a preamp and all of the sounds loaded sitting on top of a keyboard.

I guess the closest thing to what you want at the moment would be a Receptor.

The Integra-7 does not do sample playback, btw.

roland g motif receptor kronos?

There are a number of solutions, they are not fast or terribly convenient(except the receptor) compared to a laptop

The problem is partly the expense, and I already have a keyboard. I think of the Roland G and the Motif as synths that allow the user to load samples. The Receptor is more of a vsti host, isn't it? The Kronos looks good, but the 88 key version is about $4K.

I was thinking of something like a faster, smaller Akai S series rack but with much more RAM and the ability to use whatever hard drive one wanted. The user could load 50 gigs of samples, if need be, and dial up the instrument as wanted. Knobs to control the envelopes. Ideally, sliders for an 8 band EQ. Map the samples using Linuxsampler on a pc (the software is called LinuxSampler, but there is a PC version). And use Linux as the operating system, built into the ROM?

Could I create this? No,since programming the ROM and knowing what chips to use would lose me immediately. But surely someone with a good grasp of both sampling and building a system is out there. Feasible?

Something like a Mac Mini would probably give you more capability, for less money.

Do we have any Linux programmers around here (besides me)? I think I will resurrect a box I have in the corner with a recent Linux install, and see if I can read midi data from the USB connection tonight. [Linux machine revived and installed. Read up on linux + midi + usb + alsa + real-time/low latency. Will connect the two tomorrow and see what I can whip up wrt midi-in audio-out.]