I have noticed that no one makes stand alone hardware samplers anymore. Actually no one has made any for a while. Not since E-mu released the EIV back in the late 90's. Samplers have now either been combined into a music workstaion or are in software form. Has the interst in standalone samplers lost there appeal to the masses?

That's funny!
Roland, E-mu and even AkAI have released hardware samples not all that
long ago.
I personally prefer soft samplers and samplecards. I've been using samplecell cards for like 10 years and nowadays I switched to using an EXS24 sampler.
Even though I always say that I hate mouse clicking; when it comes down to sample editing mouse clicking beats the hell out of doing SCSI, USB and MIDI sample dumps or having to deal with the front panel displays!

-ED-

What I meant to say was have keyboard samplers disappeared?

There never really were any similar amount of keys as there are rack versions. Kurzweil still makes them. Anyone ever tried the Akai S1000KB? That thing was gorgeous and expensive.

-tek

Okay I was just courious.

Oh yeh...Kurzwell.
For some reason I didn't think of those.
May be 'cause I hate the damn things.
I'm happy to say that I only have 1 kurzwell in my studio. Just for compatibility and some good sounds. I'll never use the damn thing as a sampler though. It's got enough issues as a synth.
AKAI S1000KB? I've heard of those, but never actually tried one..

I didn't mind E-mu's E4 (or whatever their last "tribute" to the Emulator was), but I think it was overpriced.
Why are you all for sudden interested in sampler keyboards Paul?
-ED-

Actually this isn't a sudden interest I have had a fascination with digital samplers for about as long as I have had for synthesizers. I owned an ensoniq Mirage DSK some years ago. Which was rather fun, even though you could only sample on either the upper or lower keyboard, but not accross the enitre keyboard. Plus the fact it was only an 8 bit machine and used a 2 segment LED display and used Hexadecimal for programing. It was fun sampleing the oddest things into it. Like feedback from a speaker. Made a rather cool sounding piano type sound. Even recording cheap toy casio keyboard sounded totaly different. I only got rid of it becuase I could not sample accross the entire keyboard. I wanted to try something different at the time, becasue I had gotten tired of FM synthesis, plus a store owner said it was fun. I also ran out of sounds to sample into the darn thing. Then I went back to synthesizers again after that for awhile. I almost thought about buying an Ensoniq ASR 88, but that was too expensive. So I gave that prospect up. The other reason why I like digital samplers is that they are sort of like computers. Where they need software in order to work.

I think what appeals to me about them was playing what ever sound I wanted.

Paul,

What you really need is a computer with music software. You can have all you want, a sampler, a softsynth, and a virtual analog synth, a softarranger. What is really nice to have is a sample playback keyboard with all the controllers like knobs, drawbars. You can do the sampling in the pc and then just load to a sample playback keyboard. That will solve your problem.

Dan

Thanks Dan! Any suggestions on a sample playback keyabord with knobs?

So it's sample playback keyboards now?
With knobs?
OK,
What kind of features/price range were you thnking?

-ED-