Post
by theophilus » Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:03 pm
you could also try one of the free samplers, say, Alchemy Free (plays SFZ) or Sampletank (pain to get your own samples into, but it's possible). Though sampler will be more convenient & powerful than either of these for sound design, i would think. that's what sampler is best at.
for vocal bits, use clips.
for the odd world instrument... well, there's nothing out there in sampler format afaik, maybe puremagnetik has something for live but it won't require sampler to use. anyways when you are talking about existing instruments, you're talking about sound libraries, and most third party stuff is in kontakt format, which sampler can use, but not with kontakt advanced features - conversion is kind of hit and miss IMHO. example: sampletekk has a 50% off sale occasionally (60% for existing customers) where you can get one of their pianos (say, the close mic'd black grand, or the rain piano) for $25. you can import this into sampler (and I used it that way some) but it just works better in kontakt. (pretty good sounding piano btw).
cheapest way into this.. i won't say they are the best sounds, but some of them are decent. esoundz has a world instruments pack for sampletank (can be used with free version) for $11 right now, or you can get the infinite player (kontakt thing) + infinite player world instruments for $11 each right now. The world percussion especially is pretty decent for the $11. Wasn't too impressed by some of their other ones, the orchestra for instance (especially when you can get kirk hunter pop/rock strings for like $56 right now!) but some other ones are OK, decent pianos for instance.
kontakt is really the way to go for using existing libraries though...
