Do you consider ROMplers synths?

[TheNobleNemesis]

Are ROMplers synthesizers, or sample editors?
Discuss.

[kb420]

Personally, I feel as though it really depends on how much flexibility the rompler has in tweaking samples.

[Schmidi]

If they have an amp envelope, filter, and LFO then yes. Just another sound tool at your disposal!

[kevwestbeats]

As long as it makes cool noises I don't care lol

[Khazul]

Are ROMplers synthesizers, or sample editors?
Discuss.

They are not sample editors if you cant edit the samples - and many are not, they might let you pick which bit of the sample(s) are played in a sound, and maybe only from factory or pack provided prepared sample patches and not even your own.

If I can load or select and sample in it and you can load or select the same sample and yet we can both come up with vastly different resulting sounds, then its a synth as far as I am concerned. Most romplers are basically multi-osc VA synths with the oscs replaced by sample players, but still have the usual VA voice stages - filter with env, amp env, perhaps some LFO and spare envelopes to affect volume, pitch, filter and and other voice processing etc.

[doghouse]

Yes, of course they are.

[reeloy]

....well, no, they're not....

but you can find some good instruments here anyway....

i would not go for any actual stuff.....but old gear is pretty cheap to find and can still do a godd job....

like the old emu rack romplers....really great tools....

[jlgrimes]

Are ROMplers synthesizers, or sample editors?
Discuss.

I would say that most hardware keyboard workstation ROMplers such as the Triton, Roland Fantoms are synthesizers.


Even those comes with the basic synth waves (even though they are samples, usually), and have the same basic editing functions as most typical subtractive synths. Some ROMPLERS were very extensive.

The Kurzweil K2000 series does some things that even some modern softsynths can't do.



The only exceptions IMO would be your "Sound Canvas" type modules mainly designed for General Midi playback or some entry level sample playback synths but even a lot of the sample playback synths were pretty editable.


The biggest things came down to horrible GUI's. Most people wouldn't get inside of a small LCD to edit a sound and then add to that most ROMPLERS lacked many knobs and sliders.

A big exception was the JD-800. It is pretty much the definition of a ROMPLER but it was so editable, most people would agree it is a synth (Many people would argue even that it isn't a ROMPLER because it was so editable).


Most basic Samplers are synths as well. It is entirely possible to create many new sounds using Kontakt or even Ableton Sampler (or even Simpler).

In my book if you have oscillators whether sampled, or generated, filters, envelopes, lfos and a decent way to control in realtime those parameters you have a synthesizer. (Although not maybe a good one).

[doghouse]

....well, no, they're not....

Wow, glad you cleared that one up for me

[TheNobleNemesis]

Even Sampler/Simpler? But they're samplers! Aren't samplers different from synthesizers?

[TomViolenz]

Even Sampler/Simpler? But they're samplers! Aren't samplers different from synthesizers?

Sampler is my main go to synth. The sound design capabilities are basically endless!

What I like about it?
If you set it up as a 128 with single cycle waveforms (free ones are available everywhere, but if you get serious about it, I would suggest to look into the Galbanum Architecture waves), it turns into a FM/AM synth with 128 x 21 (from its own oscillator section) waveforms to choose from.

The Envelope sections are quite detailed, moreso than in some softssynth I had.

The filters are quite good and especially the Morrph filters are something you don't find all that often. Especially the SVF one - that one can sing!

The Modulation section has three very detailed LFOs that go up to 30hz (Unfourtunately you can not load your own waveforms as LFOs - that would be rad), and a Aux envelope, which you can use for crazy stuff, because the standard stuff all has its own enevelopes.

The layout is just very straight forward, learning synthesis with it is made easier by this.

If you have Push and the community map for the devices, then all its controls are already assigned and locigally layed out in 25 banks, with bank names!

If you want to go crazy: Load the result from the first sound design into Sampler again as a Sample and use its Osc section for awesome resynthesis!