You’d think that with so much soundware available for every imaginable platform today that we’d all have our desires satiated, but we still get quite a few questions about the degree to which sampler X reads sampler Y formatted data. Obviously the answer is different for each pair of products in the X/Y equation, but one way to improve the odds and potentially get much better results in the end is to use one of the computer based SMDI sample transfer applications available today. Programs like Peak, Digital Performer, Alchemy, Transfer Station, and many more all offer excellent (and different) tools for accomplishing not only sample transfers, but varying degrees of editing and tweaking along the way.
(Disclaimer – Yes, we know there are plenty of other excellent programs for doing sample transfer and editing. You do not need to write in to tell us about the ones we didn’t mention. We recommend that anyone interested in this talk to one of our Sales Engineers before proceeding because they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.)
While these sample transfer utilities and programs are excellent tools they do have a few limitations you need to be aware of. First, you have to have the actual samplers themselves in order to do the transfer. Having the media alone will not work. The programs are designed to pull the sample data out of the hardware unit. Similarly, you can’t turn one type of media data (say, a floppy) into another (say, a CD-ROM). All you can do is move the data between each machine and the computer and then save it using the capabilities of the destination machine. While in the computer it is stored in the native format of the application in use, which is handy, but doesn’t help when you need to play the samples unless your destination sampler lives in your computer (as some do). Also, while it’s very handy to be able to move samples around this way it should be noted that you generally aren’t moving all of the program data associated with the sound in your keyboard. So in some respects instruments that will truly read the sound disks of others will still give better results more easily than doing this type of transfer. Of course the ability of any sampler to read the data of another is limited and some things can get lost in the transfer. In a Kurzweil, for example, a lot of what makes many of the patches sound the way they do is all of the VAST programming. Even if there were a way to transfer this information over SMDI it would be meaningless to the sampler on the other end. Sometimes you are actually better off starting with the raw samples and building the sound in the destination sampler.