Motif ES as sampler (vs Emu)

[Deki]

What do you think about Motif ES keyboard as sampler vs sampler like Emu E4? I listen E4 and I found it very punchy and good sounding for every type of sounds (drums, analog synths, bass etc). Can I get this sound quality on my Motif ES. I can't try that now because I don't have RAM memory installed.

 

Thanks!

 

Deki

[Meatball Fulton]

I can't comment on sound vs. E4 because I don't own one.

 

The ES sampling sounds very good to me. but I look at the sampling features as icing on the cake...I bought the ES primarily for it's sequencer and the ROMpler synth engine.

 

The sampler is very well integrated with the sequencer, the ES architecture allows you to attach samples to the sequence that uses them, it automatically creates the MIDI events to trigger them at the appropriate point. You can even record live audio tracks to play alongside the sequence (it's like having a simple built-in multitrack). There is also a "slicer" that can adjust the tempo of loops without pitch shifting.

 

Editing samples on the ES is a bit messy but Yamaha provides a free computer based editor that you can use instead to do all your truncating, looping, etc. I really use my ES as a sample player, loading samples that I tweaked in the editor software.

 

The biggest drawback to the sampler is that it's slow to load (having never owned a sampler before I don't know how this compares to an E4). One benchmark I can give you is some mellotron samples I've been using. I have three 7 second long samples per key mapped across 37 keys. That adds up to 13 minutes of samples and it takes about 4 minutes to load. So if I was to have two hours of samples to load, I can see it would take about 45 minutes to load all the RAM!!!!