TOP 11 LIST: BARGAIN AND INTERESTING HARDWARE SAMPLERS

A top 11 list of bargain and interesting samplers.
This list includes keyboard samplers and rackmount units from several decades and seven different manufacturers.
0:00 Intro
1:50 List begins
36:10 Closing

[@Gerald_Daniel]

Again, great work and research. I myself was just fascinated by samplers as a child, because of the price, but also the look of it. Fairlights gave the impression that they automatically stood above synths. 🎼 In 1983 there was a regular radio show in Austria with fairlight pioneer Klaus Prünster. He marketed his device simply as Erdenklang Computer ("earth sound computer"). 🤣 Radio listeners were asked to send sounds on tape. Selected ones had the "honor*" to be processed by the "earth sound computer" in a composition. I was always totally blown away.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Great story, thanks for sharing.

[@DanielJGonzales]

I had the EPS 16 and later the FZ-1 hooked up to an Atari ST w/ Cubase 3 running. That was my DAW in 1996....

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

That's cool. I have an episode on my set up back in 1986, which included an Atari 8bit computer. Back then, I wanted a 1040ST or a Mega ST. Thanks for sharing.

[@DanielJGonzales]

@@JeffreyScottPetro Thanks 2 U. I love that stuff. It was fun to make something like electronic music back in the day.

[@Shred_The_Weapon]

It’s great how you uploaded this video when you did, Jeffrey. I’ve been somewhat obsessed over the last few days since you uploaded it with how these samplers (and the “big daddy” they were rooted in, the Emulator II) were harnessed in the mid 80s. I play little trivia games with myself about synthesizer history. One of them is the course from hearing players like Mike Pinder, John Lennon, Rick Wakeman, Rick Wright, Tony Banks, (Neil Diamond’s) Alan Lindgren, John Paul Jones and others playing string tapes on the Mellatron which gave way to the string machines, then analog polyphonic synths, Yamaha-style additive synths and - samplers. The usage of the Emulator II (hardly a low-shelf sampler, I know) by Pet Shop Boys on the 1985 remake of “West End Girls” is like the pinnacle of how keyboards like it had succeeded the Mellatron. That’s most true of that string ensemble tone, their usage of it owing a deep debt to those musicians I mentioned above.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the comment.

[@RulgertGhostalker]

now a days....the best hardware sampler bang per buck is a percussion multi-pad. long ago, i got a used Emu Esi-32, Awesome sampler, but what killed it was the floppy disks or the SCSI ... you SCSI computer goes down, and your back to floppies.

[@macavree9464]

The Roland S-760 is beast and often overlooked. Dream list: Akai S5000 Yamaha A4000 Roland S-760 EMU ESI-2000 Ensoniq EPS-16

[@EUZRMUSIC]

I'll take my ultra-lightweight, 128 MB of non-volatile RAM Korg Kross 2 over all of them. Having a 16-track sequencer and being powered by batteries means you have an amazing studio anywhere you go. It puts the Ensoniq ASR-10 I had to CRYING shame. Great video though! I loved seeing the evolution and history. Thanks!

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Appreciate the comment.

[@renegadechoir]

I am starting to get super pumped when a new video drops. Quickly becoming one of my fav channels :)

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Thanks. They always be gems, but I'm glad you liked this one.

[@APMTenants]

Yes, S5000/6000 was the correct answer. The best rack samplers ever made, and very undervalued.

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

Mirage "thumb drive option"? You mean Gotek USB floppy drive emulator? The very first all-metal Mirage (with Pratt Reed keybed and square buttons) can DEFINITELY take a Gotek just perfectly; I installed a mod'ed Gotek (FlashFloppy/OLED/Rotary Pushbutton) in one I had couple years ago. Also, load time on Mirage is quite fast (only loading 64 or 128 kB, max), maybe 10-25 seconds. Also, floppy was originally only ≈400kB, SSDD, not 720kB. And nobody was "waiting" for tech to get better at Ensoniq; they developed the DOC chip at heart of Mirage/ESQ-1/SQ-80/Apple IIGS from scratch.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

I had read that the original Mirage keyboard couldn't take the floppy drive replacement. Thanks for the update.

[@SeverityOne]

You published it! I was looking forward to this video. Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Akai Z4/Z8? They're the follow-up to the A5000/A6000, although construction quality is reputedly less.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

They are both very nice. Very good specs, except for initial RAM, but they came out circa 2002, the same year as Kontakt and a lot of people started the move to software. Still, as hardware units they were desirable for those that weren't into software. Like you said, they were not as well-made as the S5000/S6000. I would have included them, but I set my stopping point at the year 2000, as I plan to do a post 2K episode...eventually. Thanks for the comment.

[@SeverityOne]

@@JeffreyScottPetro You mentioned the Triton... I feel a workstation episode coming up. 🙂 I got myself a Yamaha EX5 when they were getting dumped at relatively low prices. Mine has 64 MB of memory and 16 MB of flash, but as you said, hardware samplers aren't as convenient as Kontakt. The EX5, while a wonderful synth, is a somewhat troubled workstation. One reason why I was looking forward to this episode is because samplers are the big omission in my hardware synth collection. But you confirmed what I already knew: Kontakt is simpler, and doesn't have all the restrictions of vintage hardware.

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

​​@@SeverityOneYour EX5 IS a hardware sampler, like you said, "large" (for OG hardware era) RAM, plus your sample flash ROM, plus standard SCSI, so you can just get cheap BlueSCSI SCSI emulator ($40 shipped) and try it. Yes, Yamaha's infamous slow loading, and complicated OS, and underpowered for its "specs", but very capable to play with samples. You can later use BlueSCSI with most any other sampler if you get one.

[@MSM5500]

@@JeffreyScottPetro _"they were not as well-made as..."_ what do you mean when saying _"Z8 is not well made"_ ? Z8 has got the same guts as MPC4000 which is one of the best MPC ever built. My Z8 is 20 years old but it still works like a charm and it's a piece of cake to operate. Moreover it's got a nice piece of software called ak.sys. that's very helpful when building/editing programs. Z8 has got a proper USB2.0 both USB Type A and USB Type B interfaces which are host and device ones respectively. You can attach any PC keyboard to that.

[@bushmann9272]

love the way my E5000 Ultra colors the sound of anything i sample into it, mine has a 20gig internal hard drive and i want to use it to track my bass through it just for the warmth and then dump the wav file into Ableton. i also want to convert it to USB and take out the floppy drive. wish i had the FX card.

[@GeneralDead1978]

and where is about kurzweil k2500? It is the most powerful sampler with synthesis.

[@reidhauke3389]

I'd argue the DSS-1 is a polysynth with flexible sound sources.

[@lassel1644]

The EPS16 was a gamechanger for the hiphop and rap music movement in Sweden in the late 80´s

[@lassel1644]

I worked with the DSM-1 sampling backup vocals in 1989 it sounded pretty good. The TX16W i was the responsible salesman for in the musicstore. Do i need to point out i had issues getting my head around the workflow ? 😄 Sounded good though, 16 voices was a bit cool.

[@maltekrug9110]

The optical Ins and Outs of the A5000's expansionboard are S/PDIF only, no ADAT. BTW, I installed more silent fan and an SSDdrive into my Emu4XT ultra to make it super quiet.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Sounds like a cool mod. Thanks for the comment.

[@sK3LeTvM1]

The Akai S5/6K are simply the best sounding HW samplers available. Even Kontakt with current Apogee DA's doesn't come near in sound quality.

[@MSM5500]

It sounds pretty subjective yet very questionable.

[@TheTMontgomery]

Thoroughly enjoyed this.Can you do an analysis top 11 of hardware recording units e.g. Roland VS2400CD Tascam Yamaha Zoom etc and even an 11 of reel based recorders (last of the dinosaurs) Best wishes

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

I have a lot of episodes in production, but I'll see what I can do.

[@BCThunderthud]

I have three of these, the Mirage, S550 and S900, and my other hardware sampler is a Kurzweil K2500RS which is kind of a remarkable value relative to its price when it was new. I'm not sure top-quality converters, lots of memory and multitimbrality are as valuable as they were, now most things are better done in-the-box and hardware samplers utility is in their unique sounds. My first sampler was a Digidesign Samplecell card and that was pretty incredible at the time but wouldn't make a lot of sense today, it's basically a plugin that requires you to have an old Mac running OMS [shudder].

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

I use Kontakt a lot, but I do miss my S-550s a little. Thanks for sharing.

[@jameshancox1]

I can't believe you did not include the EMU ESI32/2000/4000 still available at low prices, works with SCSI2SD, great OS, up to 128mb ram, loads of library and reads E1/E2/E3/E4 and also Akai, loads of different filters including Z plane

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Those are good units, but the 6400 series is superior in many ways and pretty close in price.

[@jameshancox1]

@@JeffreyScottPetro I agree but you can still pick up a 4000 for well under $300 and the esi32 for less The 6400 is double the price. SCSI2sd is a game changer

[@rgeraldc80s]

There has definitely been some deals if you catch them, i got an E4XT for less than $700 but it is missing the rack ears, and a S5000 that looked like it had the expansions and it turned out to have the effect card, voice expansion and output expansion, but a broken data encoder that was a simple fix if you can solder. Now it just take patience learning these older tools. Both needed updates to the OS.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Sounds like you scored a great deal.

[@kaevskiv]

Without EMU samplers? This mean that you didn't sense the hype of owning EMU sampler in the 80s.

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

I lusted after an Emulator in the 80s, alas, I only had pennies, and an Emulator was dollars.

[@kaevskiv]

@@JeffreyScottPetro Emax SE was my weapon of choice.

[@NoisyMaff]

I can't agree with the review of the Yamaha A5000. I reviewed the 4000 variant of it when it came out and subsequently bought one, despite already owning an Akai and using Logic Audio for digital recording. It carried its weight spec-wise for other machines at the same price point when released, but it was way more useful as an instrument thanks to the edit capabilities. It almost became a full synth with waveforms you can supply yourself. But where it really shone was the filters. There was noting out at the time that had anywhere near the creative possibilities that the filters on this machine had. I used to take drum loops and turn them into industrial-sounding acid basslines and melodies. A beast of a sampler.

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

A4/5k are cool samplers, but really lost most of their price/performance ratio at/soon after release because Emu E4-series price reductions and S5000 getting mature (bug-free) OS updates, with comparable synthesis capabilities, but MUCH faster loading, easier (for most people) OS, big native libraries (not to mention cheaper prices on established K2000, although lower polyphony). This not including defective Yamaha rotary encoders (but those took a few years to fail - inevitably). File handling also problematic. Cool piece, but definitely flawed. If they fixed the above, and included bigger A4/5k LCD in A3000 in 1997 (still late in the game), it could have been a contender. But, yeah, this guy making vid is JUST PLAIN WRONG ON SPECS on A5000, re RAM, display, and totally overlooks one of their biggest selling points - 6 fx processors, 96 algos each, free serial/parallel routing, fx resampling, 2-audio-in external fx processing - he's clearly just reading incorrect specs sheets/Wiki/maybe old synth sites, and clearly not personally knowledgeable or insightful - nice effort, but he's often patently just off, and conclusory without basis.

[@cnfuzz]

The tx16w wasn't that hard to use , once you had setup a multi program and saved to floppy you just had to fly in new samples from the edit buffer and resave as a new copy of your multi

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

Interesting, thanks for the comment.

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

Ha, it was SOOOO bad, frustrated (and dedicated!) third-party literally rewrote OS and improved it substantially; Typhoon OS, officially free today. Also had strange filter system. Yamaha made some very odd, repeated errors trying to create samplers...

[@0richbike]

There were quite a lot of bargain models from emu (before they got binned to Creative...curse their name ) ESI32, ESI4000. and let's not forget the akai s2000. Actually...let's;-)

[@JeffreyScottPetro]

LOL. Thanks for the comment.

[@vjrei]

A sampler with more than 16MB of ram is useless. You do not need to sample anything is a recorder.

[@cnfuzz]

The dss1 was a real stinker though , heavy lugger, raspy metallic quite thin soundquality that had to be beefed up using its filters , a very very slow diskdrive and the synthesis fuctions ( like sync for sampleoscs) for samples sounded better on paper than in use

[@BigHairyCrank]

where are the hot chicks playing keyboards in your thumbnail?

[@paulsavio6846]

grubby ads

[@matthewgaines10]

In this case, I’d say skip the vintage hardware and get yourself an Akai MPC, Maschine plus, Roland MV-1, or Roland SP404 II for under 1k. If hardware is your thing, those will get you further down the road than vintage gear. The vintage gear is for personal enjoyment or if you have experience with them. Otherwise, they have been superseded.

[@rgeraldc80s]

The later Akai and Emu Samplers do a lot that no new samplers do. They don't have close to the amount of filters, or polyphony. I'd say mix old and new for the most flexibility and character.

[@matthewgaines10]

@@rgeraldc80s Are you sure about that. Akais have more than enough polyphony for my purposes.

[@rgeraldc80s]

@@matthewgaines10 yeah I am. The older samplers have guaranteed polyphony, and the new ones are mini computers that run out based on CPU usage and RAM. I'd like to see an MPC one do 128 polyphony with effects enabled.

[@donnydarko7624]

@@matthewgaines10 Also the new Akai's OS is overbloated and buggy. Every update you don't know if the MPC will continue to work well with the interface that you bought so you could have more I/O or if it will start having problems, or how about the fact that the ability to record in external midi sequences possibly has never worked, and the audio track recording doesn't work either. sure you record in samples or into the looper but anyone buying it thinking that it's going to be their multi track sequencer for all their gear is going to be sorely disappointed? The effects are fine, but the virtual instruments for the most part are really low quality, So that in no way makes up for the Audio tracks being useless and the external midi sequencing also being unusable. The MPC 1000 has more dedicated audio output than the mpc one, and the mpc 2500 has 2 5 pin midi inputs, 4 5 pin midi outs, 8 assignable outs, the analog master out and spdif in and out.