From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Mon May 20 13:56:04 2002
Subject:Re: Inside the Nord Electro

Cai,

>The classic Emu Vintage Keys (ca. 1994) had 8MB Sample Rom, the expanded version had 16MB and covered a huge variety of sounds. I think the samples are not bad there, although the sound is quite bright and digital. More than 4MB for only one instrument is quite a lot. I think the more important part is the way the instrument is sampled.

The one exception is sampled acoustic (grand) piano. It's not unreasonable to dedicate 8-12MB, or more, to a single sampled piano sound, in order to include the more subtle nuances of a real grand piano. Is it really necessary? Not for pounding out a rhythm part in the middle of a song, but if you want to play intros -- or a solo piano gig -- it's mandatory. Unlike sax, strings, or even Rhodes piano, the waveform of a grand piano never really reaches a steady-state tone, so tricks like sampling the attack and a sustained section, then cross-fading them, don't cut it with piano. You really need to sample the whole note, from hammer hit to silence, or very nearly so.

My Alesis SampledGrand card devotes 16MB to sampled piano. While it arguably has 2-3 sampled pianos in there, the main one takes up more than half of that memory. Even with all that memory, I can still hear places where the result is a bit artificial.

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
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