Ableton Forum

Hi everybody,

I'm in the middle of a dilemma concerning the use of samples and VST. VSTs are very rich but often complex to master. and they are often very (too much?) expensive.
Samples are more accessible but difficult to manipulate (tone, tempo, cutting, etc.) and to integrate into a track. I should point out that I have ABLETON 12 INTRO which does not allow me to transform an audio track into a MIDI track.
How would you feel if you had to choose one solution over the other?
thank you for giving me your opinion.

The answer is......it depends. As you say, samples are just recordings of things. They're fairly fixed. You can manipulate them to a certain degree (filter, chop up, add FX etc) but that's it.

On the other hand a VST plugin (or VSTi if it's an instrument) will usually have a vast amount of presets and have loads of tweakable parameters.

They needn't be expensive either. There are plenty of free and cheap ones.

Some VST plugins also use samples though, internally. Kind of like an internal mini sample bank.

I'd try and learn the stock devices well, and eventually add some VSTs.

I put together a video a while back on choosing VST's, which may provide some ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Tf70Mv-q4&t=3s

Thanks

Brian