[LAU] samples/instruments/romplers etc..

[Leigh Dyer]

On 14/05/13 7:38 AM, James Stone wrote:
> What I would be interested in is:
>
> 1) Decent collections of samples (soundfonts or whatever) that are
> professional standard (i.e. up to the quality of Roland/Korg/Emu)
> covering a variety of "bread and butter" type sounds - orchestral,
> keyboard, piano, synth. I am happy to pay for them - but if the overall
> price goes over 100GBP, I think I am probably better off with the
> hardware option..

Julien mentioned some great options that I'd second the recommendation 
for (the Salamander Grand Piano and Drumkit, Sonatina for orchestral 
sounds, setBfree for organs); I'd add the jRhodes3 soundfont and (to a 
lesser extent) the MDA ePiano plugin to the list for electric piano.

I recently wrote up some thoughts on Sonatina after writing a short 
track with it here:

http://wootangent.net/2013/04/ludum-dare-26-anti-minimalist-music-and-sampled-orchestras/

If you're looking for synth samples, then I'd playfully suggest that 
you're Doing It Wrong :) If you want a good workhorse for typical synth 
sounds, TAL NoiseMaker is a great option -- it's easy to program, sounds 
great, and comes with a bunch of presets.

> 2) Thoughts - soundfonts vs. gigs vs. ? and what software to play them
> in Linux? Any samplers that also have synthesis options - resonant
> filters/ envelopes etc? I guess I know about things like linuxsampler
> and fluidsynth, but are there any other more complex options?

Definitely check out petri-foo (standalone app) and samplv1 (standalone 
and LV2 plugin) -- they both combine simple sampling with a more 
complete synthesis engine (envelopes, LFOs, resonant filters, etc.). 
Neither will let you create an instrument that uses a bunch of different 
samples, but they're very useful for turning a plain sample in to a more 
expressive instrument.

Thanks
Leigh