Ableton Forum

Hello, I've just picked up an Akai S3200 for £40. No manual and just a 'start up' floppy disk inserted.
I have no real idea about what it can do so I thought I'd ask you good people.

Basically I've been using Ableton for about a year now with varying degrees of success.

I've picked up this hardware sampler for a few reasons. 1) because I'm interested in using hardware stuff as a way for me to concentrate a bit more and get off the endless vst roundabout. And b) I have a medical issue with staring at a computer screen for too long so in trying to get my screen time down to a minimum.

Just wanted some friendly advice from people who have a similar setup or have used one.

Do I just sample vinyl on it? Is it best used with a keyboard? Can I get other floppy disks with sounds on them? Can I/should I plug it into anything else? My MacBook with ableton?

I also have an alesis 3630 and I'm in a similar situation with not knowing how best to use it.

I came across this video with a similar setup

Hyped Up - Akai S900, Alesis 3630 quickie - YouTube

Where are the drum sounds coming from? Is it all sampled from vinyl?
Just feels like a minefield tbh but I'd love to give some stuff a go if anyone has any experience?
Maybe it won't work out but I thought, for that amount of money, might be worth a shot right?

Also, please don't say "read the manual" because I haven't got one.

Thanks

chrisshennan wrote:Also, please don't say "read the manual" because I haven't got one.

Thanks

You do now!

http://www.platinumaudiolab.com/free_st ... manual.pdf

Thanks
Would still really appreciate some 'current set up '
Ideas though

I always like the Akai rack samplers, unfortunately I never owner one.

They're going for pretty cheap it seems. Maybe it's a good time to pick one up

Not try try to redirect you to somewhere else, but there is a dedicated Akai sampler forum full of experienced die-hards who would probably have better answers to all your questions.

Yeah just posted in some. Thanks man

chrisshennan wrote:Do I just sample vinyl on it? Is it best used with a keyboard? Can I get other floppy disks with sounds on them? Can I/should I plug it into anything else? My MacBook with ableton?

Hi

I have two Akai S series samplers (earlier models).

You're not restricted to sampling vinyl. You can sample just about any damn thing you like!

Yes, you can plug a keyboard into it and play it directly (assuming the keyboard has a 5 pin DIN output) or you could route MIDI out from Live to it (using a USB to MIDI cable or other suitable hardware). It can also play MIDI files from the floppy drive!

Floppy discs might be a bit hard to come by these days, but you could connect a CD-ROM drive or hard drive full of Akai format samples to the SCSI port on the rear. SCSI was a common connection method for computers before the days of USB, You should still be able to find a SCSI CD-ROM drive or hard drive somewhere. The S3200 is backwards compatible with a large number of earlier models so the sample library is huge.

Unfortunately the S3200 is one of the models that was around before Akai changed to using WAV format and including USB connectivity (S5000 onwards) so it's more awkward to interface it with modern computers.

I used to use a s3000xl with an atari back in the day.
I would NOT go back. Not for any amount of nostalgia.

Also i got an emu and that blew it away. But i still wouldnt even want to use that now. and i tried recently too! (i was bored)

It's (s3200) just way too tedious now what with no undo, loading time, saving time, no resampling, editing on tiny lcd, namimg with keypad, floppys, zips, etc etc. The payoff is likely to be very low compared to the time put in (esp compared to sitting in front of Live and doing it all ITB).
If you really wanted to learn how to actually use archaic akai OS, you would be entering a world of pain, basically.

Sorry im not helping.

edit: Have you tried Flux for your screen? https://justgetflux.com/

That's a crazy price, I think I paid like $1400 for my s3000xl plus another $400 for memory and SCSI card.

I'm sure there's some disk images of some older floppies online if you hunt around, might be finding some to use it as a generic sound module. If you don't mind loading sounds 1.44MB at a time. I don't miss those days at all

look up floppy emulators for your sampler. I was able to find one for my mpc 60

Does your 3200 have the internal effects board fitted? It has some unique sounds (the freq mod especially) and you can also use it as a real-time fx unit on any signal you send to the inputs.
I know the 3200XL came with the fx board as standard but not sure about the 3200...

if you're really going to go down that old road, get a SCSI Iomega Zip drive and a few disks off ebay.

Good call, that really speeds things up if you can stil find drives that work.

I have a couple akai samplers. I love the sound of the 3000 series, but workflow wise, they are kinda a pain in the ass these days. You can get a zip drive, but it's not as easy as loading the files on the zip and transferring them. You'll need software that reads the akai specific format and to edit the programs, etc, and there aren't too many options for modern setups (and I don't think any for mac).

You can always just sample some one shots and use those, but if you want to build more complex multi-sampled instruments, it gets real tedious.