Eurorack Samplers
Eurorack has come a long way in creating sounds similar to the classic modular synths. They consist of VCOs, VCFs, VCAs, EGs, and LFOs, Noise Generators, and maybe some logic and function generators. These days you will find so much more, like drum modules, wavetable synths, wave shapers and folders, effects, etc., and there seems to be an endless amount of them coming out from many manufacturers.
The sampler, in general, have been available, but not necessarily in the classic sense.
It can record audio (or read audio from memory), play the audio back, and you can adjust one of the following:
- Playback rate
- Sample rate
- Pitch
- Direction of playback (forward, backward) or Scrub
- Start of playback
- End of playback
- Slicing
- Looping
- Resampling
Many of them are out there today already:
- Ginko Synthese Sampleslicer – Never got our hands on one
- The Harvestman Tyme Sefari/Sefari 2 – Love the Sefari 2 but had to return it after one day
- Make Noise Phonogene – We had fun with this, but we had to return it after a couple of days
- QuBit Nebulæ – Definitely had a lot of fun with this one and using EG/function generators to make scratching/transforming sounds from the files on the SD card
- And many more…
The ones that are relatively new and interesting are:
- 1010 music BitBox – Looks like a great sequencer sampler similar to Ableton Live (and works with Ableton Live too)
- 4ms Dual Triggered Sampler – Haven’t played with this yet
- Rossum-Electro Assimil8or – Still waiting for Dave to release this
- SDS Digital Reflex Liveloop – Haven’t played with this yet
The great news is that the innovations on Eurorack modules coming out get better by the year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Roland released a module (not necessarily with Malekko, but on their own like the Aira line) that will have DSPs for ACB (analog circuit behavior) to emulate any VCO you want. That would be very interesting.
I wonder if we can build something like a sampler with VCO and DCO per voice, or a sampling drum machine with VCOs and samples?
We’ll keep you posted on the new samplers as we receive them and play with them in more detail.
