Path of least resistance to a DK10 newbie

I recently gave my 17 year old son a DK10 (I had saved in storage for him) and am hoping to get him into something that will allow loading of samples to a hardware player and assigning them to different note numbers to be able to use with the KAT.

I retired from the music business over 10 years ago and am expert level in electronics/MIDI, but not in touch with what's out there today. In the old days - if you wanted to play samples with a hardware box - you had to have a sampler - period. Is that still the case?

I guess what I'm thinking there *should* be by now, is a simple box one can load WAV or similar into, and individually assign them to trigger on 0-127, in assignable banks of 128 at a time. 128x1 MIDI channel - or 128x16 MIDI channels to get fancier. Of course velocity sensitivity/curves, effects, and velocity switching would be even cooler, but then we're getting deeper into sampler territory.

I could just get him a drum machine - but that's so cookie cutter and closed ended. He barely was able to get the MIDI and audio connections straight. LOL But he's young and will learn.

Thoughts?

You surmise correctly. Midi is still midi. Sampling and 'samplers' have evolved - with processor evolution I suppose. Convenience is astronomical. Price too.

Hope Drums on this forum is a retailer and can help with product details. You might give Anderton or Anderton's forum a shot. He'd have the insight and details. Meanwhile just go visit Rolandus, Yamaha, Alesis, Korg, Akai, (Kurzweil and EMU are gone), and anywhere else that leads, it's all amazing.

Of course, you can also go the "it's more than a sampler" route with something expensive like a Muse Receptor -- a ruggedised computer that can load not only sampler software but synthesizers and effects too. If you check out the AlternateMode site, they have a little info. For more, see www.plugorama.com.