Worst sampler you have owned?

E

ego killer

New member
post the worst sampler you have owned.
i have had a sampletrak, sp-303, sp-505, microsampler, mpc 500, and mpc 1000.

the worst was the mpc 500. i love the 1000 but the 500 every little thing was a process due to the tiny screen. INSANE menu dives. that said i made some dope **** on it but never ever touched it again after i got other samplers. it was my first sampler.
 
Menu dives don't seem that bad to me.
I have owned mpc2000, mpc500, s900, zoom sampletrak, casio sk-1, and sk-5.
None of them were bad really. I have even made good use of my sk-5 in beats before.
 
Worst sampler I've ever used? Probably the Ensoniq Mirage. I like it's ultra-gritty 8-bit sound, but it's such a pain in the ass to use and has shit specs.
 
Good question. Around 2004, I was so enthused about finding a Korg DSS-1 for next to nothing, but the OS and interface killed it for me. The slow disk drive too. It was relatively simple to synthesize some digital waveforms and make a synth patch. Then you put it in unison mode with detune and it could sound amazing. But when it came time to save your work, the OS and drive tended to make me shrug my shoulders and click off the power. It was just easier to start from scratch next time. There was also its bulk. It was bigger than most 61 key keyboards in their flight cases. I put it on my 3-tier keyboard stand and the whole thing swayed and creaked and generally was not happy about having to hold up this keyboard. What a shame. It had potential. The samples were really gritty and weird sounding, not quite like any of the other samplers from that era.

My friend had a Roland S-10 that was kind of a piece of shit. In the late 90's, he was the first person in our circle of friends to get a sampler. At the time, it was pretty amazing to be able to load it up with four short samples AND save them after the power was turned off! (our only previous sampling experience was with Casio SK1's and Yamaha VSS30's. Much better machines in retrospect.) Unfortunately, that saving was done on Quickdisks. One sample per side, so to save your patch you needed two disks, and had to flip each one for the next sample. It was slow as shit. The interface and general capability as a synthesizer was not great. We mostly sampled loops from drum machines or synths on the lowest sample resolution, pitched them up or down, recorded a track, and then flipped it off again.

Not all old samplers were horrible. In school, they had an original Ensoniq EPS which I used quite a bit. Great, intuitive interface, lots of interesting and useful synthesis options, really good built in sequencer, a disk drive that was semi decent. That may not be the fairest of comparisons, as the EPS was a couple of years younger than the other two, and a couple of years is a while in technology.
 
Ive pretty much had them all minus fairlights. My first one was a casio, it really sucked. only good for sampling farts and playing joke samba patterns as far as i could tell, but obviously it is a toy. Pretty much like the rest of them. I like the asr-x. I find it highly underrated.
 
Yeah my first sampler was a Casio SK-1, I remember wiring up a big usable potentiometer up to the tiny tuning one on the bottom, it wasn't soldered in or anything and I stuck it onto the side with brown packing tape just so I could adjust the BPM of a loop......sure it might be a piece of shit in comparison to proper sampler (such as Casio's FZ-1 for example) but it was quite good value for a kid who couldn't afford a proper sampler.
 
ego killer said:
post the worst sampler you have owned.
i have had a sampletrak, sp-303, sp-505, microsampler, mpc 500, and mpc 1000.

the worst was the mpc 500. i love the 1000 but the 500 every little thing was a process due to the tiny screen. INSANE menu dives. that said i made some dope **** on it but never ever touched it again after i got other samplers. it was my first sampler.
Click to expand...

mpc500 was the worst, but it's just because I've been an owner of an SP1200, MPC2000 and now Maschine. Hence the mpc500 though a decent sampler in it's own right, doesnt stand a chance when placed next to more prolific samplers.
 
SUPERBANANABOMB said:
Worst sampler I've ever used? Probably the Ensoniq Mirage. I like it's ultra-gritty 8-bit sound, but it's such a pain in the ass to use and has shit specs.
Click to expand...

Definitely a good vote, but back when the Mirage was an actual product it wasn't as bad to use since you didn't have a lot of great samplers to compare it too.

My vote would go to the Roland DJ70mkI, it's the only sampler i have met in all my years who I just couldn't get along with.:berzerk:
 
Ive owned the SP1200, MPC60, MPC2000, S950, S900, and at the moment i own a MPC3000 and a Emax1 rack. They're all good in their own way so i wouldnt say worst, they all have their pros n cons.
 
Most frustrating:

Another vote here for the MPC 500.

In terms of features is a dope little machine but I agree that the menu diving was a huge turn off.

Most enjoyable:

One of my favorites was the sp 505.

Current solution:

Impc Pro [on the ipad] <-- definitely try it out if you haven't yet.
 
I owned SU200, MPC1000, Fantom XR with sampling expansion tools, used Kontakt, Samplitude and Renoise, now I have MPC5000. One vote for SU200 was the worst I ever met. Fantom XR was very frustrating because I couldn't preview a sample before importing it from wav, so forget the browse-and-load what you want.
 
I'd ad the AKAI x7000 keyboard. I got it at such a good deal for it be ing in pristine condition but the shitty Quick Disk floppy drive was busted and i had to tear it down and fix it. Not much info on internet about the Keyboard so you have to RTFM or just jump in there and figure it out.
 
I have had mpc500, then mpc1000 and then maschine... Mpc 500 is so bad - crushing with no reason, screen so small - work on it was real nightmare. 1000 is excellent device but maschine's pads are the best!!!
 
If my future mashine studio can offer me more than beatthang then beatthang. It crashes, pads assighnments start vanishing when you start filling alot of banks and doing detailed stuff. List goes on. Too bad . It Sure is built like a tank. Just to find a good engine.
 
Wow, no love for the MPC500? There's hardly any menu diving, big screen samplers spoiled you all.

Anyway, the worst for me was the Yamaha DJXII. Every time I hit sample, there was a 2 second delay before it actually sampled, so you missed a chunk of material. I tried to sample larger chunks but you can't adjust the start and end points either. It sucked.
 
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