Getting the 12 bit sound. Loading or resampling?ling?

S

skiroy

New member
I recent have fallen in love with the vintage samplers sound on drums and was looking to get a MPC 60 and s2800. But I heard someone say that you dont get the"the sound" by just putting your drums from the PC on a floppy and loading them up on the MPC 60. They said you have to actually record them into the MPC 60 them chop em.

Is this true,cause thats is a lot of work to do that for all my drums sounds?
 
You can get that sound on the pc.
What are you using now for beats, an mpc?
You can add lo-fi effects in at the mixing stage.

If you want to go the hardware route, I suggest a Zoom sampletrak, Boss sp202, or Ensoniq eps/eps16
Don't pay much for them though. Go bargain hunting.

There are of course other hardware options, but they usually carry a premium vintage price tag.

TBH the vintage Akai in my experience has a somewhat overrated sound.
I preferred the sound of my Sampletrak to the s900 for lo-fi work.
 
Didn't you just get an 2000XL?
IMO you should first learn making beats on that machine before filling your apartment with gear. You know that there is a resample function on your machine?

Or like Mattman 04 said, you can add lo-fi effects on the mixing stage, when you have tracked out your beat to a daw for mixing.

I personally edit my drum sounds before I start making the beat. One good vsti for getting that lo-fi is the SD1200 (it's free). Try loading it in your daw (you got a daw, right?), load your drums there, make a short song with only one drum sound on it at a time and save it. There you got some crunchy lo-fi drums.
 
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Lofi fx vs a sampler just having a sound are 2 very different things. I own the EPS classic which is a 13 bit machine it sounds nothing like any of these lofi fx that you can get for your pc. Its not supposed to. If you want a 12 bit sound cool grab an EPS classic, a Roland W30, an EMU Emaxx or if you have the dough an EMU SP1200. The mpc series as a whole and most akai samplers are fairly clean sounding vs the other samplers I mentioned which are very dirty gritty with a little distortion. Why work harder to get that sound you know. Thats the reason why even though I love my EPS I would never sell it even though I am using Record these days.
 
I have a eps 16+ as well and love the sound but I find my yamaha su700 to be my fav when it comes to getting drums crunchy, set it to 12 bit and damn. Plus the filters and effects on it are top notch. I do most my work in a mv8800 (pretty clean) and ableton live but when I have the time I try to not use fx and go with classic gear.
 
skiroy said:
I recent have fallen in love with the vintage samplers sound on drums and was looking to get a MPC 60 and s2800. But I heard someone say that you dont get the"the sound" by just putting your drums from the PC on a floppy and loading them up on the MPC 60. They said you have to actually record them into the MPC 60 them chop em.

Is this true,cause thats is a lot of work to do that for all my drums sounds?
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If you bypass the amps, filters and AD converters then you will not have that initial circuit shape the sound of the sample, you will however have the digital signal processing shape the sound as well as the DA converters, filters and amps on the way out.
 
jyri said:
IMO you should first learn making beats on that machine before filling your apartment with gear. You know that there is a resample function on your machine?
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Yea the mpc 60 does got a lo-fi sound but its nothing you can't get in your 2000xl and some tweaking. Also the trick is usually outboard gear, not just the mpc or sampler, get a good effects processor, and an aural exciter, preferably hardware, but if you got a good interface the software stuff is pretty good also.

Also don't get gear crazy, its bad for your mind, and health.(Joking but I hope you get the point.)

Gotta remember these are just tools, and trust me no one really outgrows gear, they get tired of it (usually because they're stuck in the same workflow or compose using the same methods/process, which eventually kills creativity). They get frustrated (usually cause they can't understand it completely), or they see new gear with more features and immediately think they'd sound better if they buy.

Don't let this be you. Learn your gear.
Also, google is your best friend, do the research, don't really trust in from others.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
Filters will give you the same "vintage sound" without compromising quality. An 8-12bit mixdown will factually sound bad in 2010.
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when you say an 8-12bit mixdown what do you mean? I have had songs that were done on my EPS that sound great still. I think in todays market the clear digital sound is what sells but people still like that vintage 12 bit sound sometimes. Especially on drums
 
^^^You're not purposely downsampling for the sound. You won't get that sound downsampling. And you have filters and effects on that EPS dedicated to making those 12bit sounds sound good. It's like a workstation keyboard, those 16bit looped millisecond long audio samples in a 74mb bank on a Triton are processed to the point they arguably sound better than 60gb 24bit stereo sample libraries like Kontakt.

It's not the "12bit sound" as much as the processing and filters. All I'm saying is if you want that "warm vintage sound" it's gonna be more about filtering than bit depths and samplerates.
 
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deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
^^^You're not purposely downsampling for the sound. You won't get that sound downsampling. And you have filters and effects on that EPS dedicated to making those 12bit sounds sound good. It's like a workstation keyboard, those 16bit looped millisecond long audio samples in a 74mb bank on a Triton are processed to the point they arguably sound better than 60gb 24bit stereo sample libraries like Kontakt.

It's not the "12bit sound" as much as the processing and filters. All I'm saying is if you want that "warm vintage sound" it's gonna be more about filtering than bit depths and samplerates.
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it sounds mad warm before I even touch the filters. Usually the filters if anything muffle the sound more. Or are you talking circuitry and stuff. Not arguing just trying to see what you are getting at. Why does a mpc 60 not sound all that warm at least not to me.
 
^^^My Avalon M5 sounds "Mad warm" before I touch the knob that says "filter". lol. Don't overread, I'm just saying the key is not in the bit depth. A good vst vintage compressor, vintage EQ/trackboard emulator, filters, ect will give you that missing sound. Downsampling will sound like crap unless done manually with pres, filters and converters that most of us don't have sitting around unless we own vintage gear.

The best way to get what I'm saying is to downsample a song to 12bit on your computer, and compare it to a song you've filtered/compressed using vintage fx on computer. Then compare both to the sound of your EPS.
 
the legendary "MPC sound" is mostly a myth based on the fact that so many good records were made using the machines. people falsely associate some sort of special and warm sound with it. obviously if you're recording from a hardware sampler into your DAW you will have a different sound but i think some people over-exaggerate the sound.

a lot of factors contribute to that "sound". such as the fact that people were mostly sampling records for their drums and samples as opposed to using sample packs. i personally wouldn't write home about the MPC sound at all. akai marketed them as being clear samplers, ie. you got out what you put in.

i'm more impressed by the EPS because it was 13-bit. more samplers should have had odd bit depths.

i myself just use a combination of effects in software and i sometimes run things through my sp404. it has a great vinyl compression effect that makes everything sound warm and fuzzy.
 
I use an emu e6400 ultra slaved to my mv-8000, I barely have to use any effects for that "warm sound". I usually sample into my 8000, run that out to the emu then straight back into the 8000, or sometimes effects first then 8000. I don't do this for vinyl or tapes just for library stuff.

Does it make a difference? Yea somewhat, but this could be done with any sampler, and my idea of warm or punchy is different from the next guys.

Why buy a sampler just to try to get the same sound as someone else?
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
^^^My Avalon M5 sounds "Mad warm" before I touch the knob that says "filter". lol. Don't overread, I'm just saying the key is not in the bit depth. A good vst vintage compressor, vintage EQ/trackboard emulator, filters, ect will give you that missing sound. Downsampling will sound like crap unless done manually with pres, filters and converters that most of us don't have sitting around unless we own vintage gear.

The best way to get what I'm saying is to downsample a song to 12bit on your computer, and compare it to a song you've filtered/compressed using vintage fx on computer. Then compare both to the sound of your EPS.
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any suggestions on what plugs to try? i dont have any on my pc but I still have Sonar around to try this out and my EPS is sitting next to me stil

---------- Post added at 05:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------
LogicalReasons45 said:
I use an emu e6400 ultra slaved to my mv-8000, I barely have to use any effects for that "warm sound". I usually sample into my 8000, run that out to the emu then straight back into the 8000, or sometimes effects first then 8000. I don't do this for vinyl or tapes just for library stuff.

Does it make a difference? Yea somewhat, but this could be done with any sampler, and my idea of warm or punchy is different from the next guys.

Why buy a sampler just to try to get the same sound as someone else?
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why try to sound like someone else at all? we have a generation of kids who think biting is the shit
 
well there are many ways to get that "warm" sound, of many factors that combined will result on "warm" sound.

Prob here is that warm has different meanings for different people.

12 bit downsample has a particular sound. Maybe warm means "not so brilliant"?

Some of the tracks of 15-20 years ago, will have a peculiar sound like the one described, due to the participation of multiple factors and features of the instruments and techniques involved on its creation.

Drums, small beat loops and rythmical sequences, sound quite good at 12 bits. But there are many sounds, that need of a high fidelity bit recording to express its best peculiarities inside a track

I mean, if you need 12 bit samples, there are many machines that can sample at that rate. Not necesarily to adquire an old Akai sampler with a tiny sampling memory to achieve your intentions.
 
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