Different soundbanks for a sampler?

Xenox.AFL
Xenox.AFL Member Posts: 20 Member

I'm still working on my first sampler/sample player and the most things are working fine so far.. Now, i thought it would be great to have more then 128 samples in my project, is there a way to change the samplebanks in the player itself???

Frank

Comments

  • Studiowaves
    Studiowaves Member Posts: 451 Advisor

    Hi Frank, I'm sure you'll get an answer but Kontakt might be more geared up for what your doing. Some of those piano programs have 16 or more layers per note. Also if the sustain pedal is depressed they have another set of sample for that. It's not uncommon to have a lot of samples in Kontakt. It seems to be a dedicated sample player unlike Reaktor. There is a Kontakt forum, I believe you write scripts that describe a velocity area for each note among other things. Kontakt is very efficient and uses little cpu. It works exceptional well with ssd drives in your computer. Most likely you already have one but if not, keep it in mind as Kontakt can play 400 or more voices at one time. This usually happens on piano type of instruments with a sustain pedal. I've never written anything for Kontakt myself. In Reaktor, is it possible to duplicate a samplebank? If so, then you can have more samples. What does the owners manual say?

  • Xenox.AFL
    Xenox.AFL Member Posts: 20 Member

    Hi Studiowaves, thank you for your answer...


    Of course i know that it's possible to make it in Kontakt, too, i already made some instruments by myself and i did the same instrument for Kontakt, it's still working, but i thought it would be great to make a Reaktor Instrument, too...

    I already thought about making 4 different samples per layer so that i can switch between them, but i have then 16 sampler modules in the background and i'm still using only 4 at the same time, i don't know if the CPU power will be up... Hm...

    Frank

  • bolabo
    bolabo Member Posts: 97 Advisor

    The sample playback modules in Reaktor a very good. There's info about them in the manuals:

    You can load as many samples as you need into a single map, there's only 127 midi keys in a map but you can have as many velocity layers as you need, or use the table framework modules to map the samples yourself, more of a leaning curve there and needs knowledge of Reaktor Core, but there's not limit to the number of samples you can load with the table framework.

    You can also use multiple primary sampler modules and some kind of switch / crossfader for banks of samples or you can use snapshots also to store and recall banks for your instrument.

    There's negligible CPU used by these modules.

  • ANDREW221231
    ANDREW221231 Member Posts: 295 Advisor
    edited January 2023

    @Studiowaves his sampler is good, and very well served in reaktor! its like an infinity machine, press randomize button and it lands on the most bonkers sounds that you can save as snapshots. definitely an example of a sampling project better handled in reaktor, more of sound design tool than a conventional sampler


    @Xenox.AFL as bolabo says the table framework is a good option. more ambitious but not overly so. it allows more control not bound to the user interface, and better sampling quality if you want it


    one thing to note is that if you did use a switch and multiple instances to save CPU it would again trigger global initialization resets, which was what caused your mysterious randomization problems. there is a way to block re-init messages but that's not usually so fun if a lot is downstream, but replacing out the primary sampler modules for core equivalents using the table frameworks would be fairly simple, the main thing is understanding the special port connection from primary to core for providing the GUI (drag & drop etc...)" functionality

  • Studiowaves
    Studiowaves Member Posts: 451 Advisor
    edited January 2023

    Well Frank, you sort of answered your own question about excess cpu when you mentioned switching. It sounds like your after a round robin thing where each sample within the layer takes turns. Basically this won't affect cpu much because they are not all 4 running at the same time. All you need to do is change the index to the start of one of the four different samples. I'm not sure of the classic method of addressing samples in Reaktor. But there is a read only memory module you can use for a single sample. Basically you attach a ramp to the rom and run the ramp to pull out the samples. So you can visualize how one ramp runs instead of four ramps. It's really pretty simple in core once you get the hang of it. Luckily the read only memory modules can import text files. So getting a sample into them is pretty easy. The trick is to get the sample into a text file and strip off the header information. Once you learn to identify the header info it might end up being a fixed number of bytes. Say its a hundred; Then all you do is delete the first hundred bytes. Sometimes just looking at the text it becomes obvious where the start of the sample data is. So when your done the ROM or read only memory contains the sample and only the sample. There is one thing that may trip you up though. Core cells can only hold a certain amount of information. So you may have to divide the ROM up into a few more core cells. You'll get a popup message stating the core cell is full. It happened to me once but I had a whole lot of stuff in there. I think the address limit is 20 bits on the Rom's, They may have fixed the issue but I could not import as much info as they say you can. But that was a huge chuck of memory too and your sample may fit just fine. That's pretty much it. As long as you don't fill up you computer memory with samples you should be good to go. Now I may be wrong saying should but the point is your computer memory may be the limiting factor, not the cpu usage. I'm not sure if Reaktor can read direct from disk like Kontakt does. If it can then the Read only memory modules would stay located on the hard drives. I'm really not sure but we got deep into the Roms once before and the processor actually held a single rom in it's local cache. Colin figured it out and managed to get the data out of the local cache and proved our point that mathematical routines can be much faster the reading data from main memory. And we pretty much concluded that the Rom's do transfer their data directly into the computers man memory. I have a piano hammer sound in a rom in the FM12 I just uploaded thanking the guys in the forum for helping me with it. If you download it, I'll show you where it's at. It's all core code though. Here's the link for fm 12, https://us.v-cdn.net/6034896/uploads/RT50B40DP63G/fm12-rev-01-11-2023.ens

  • Studiowaves
    Studiowaves Member Posts: 451 Advisor

    Yeah, I dig, had no idea he was doing that. Thought it was a straight sample player.

  • Xenox.AFL
    Xenox.AFL Member Posts: 20 Member

    Thank you guys for the ideas...


    Yeah, as Andres al ready wrote, it's no convential sampler, the main idea for my project was to make a SFX construction kit or something like this, you have 4 layers and all the same things like filter, envelope and more and then press random or choose your own samples out of the internal bank, to make new SFX sounds...!

    It works very well so far, al the ideas i had in my mind were in the project and working, except some small things but i'm sure, i will manage it, the same project was scripted from me in the Kontakt sampler so i can release nearly the same project on 2 plattforms... I did a lot of cinematic sounds effects the last few years for my small company (www.particular-sound.de) and with this sampler, you can do a lot of new effects...

    Of course i had the idea of making 4 sample engines per layer in my mind, but i thought i asked before i will do that...

    Frank

Back To Top