Moving away from the box

[steevio]

my experiences of sampling go back to the old Akai days, things have improved so much that i dont really have anything useful to add to the discussion, but if you consider your samples to be waveforms much in the way an oscillator produces waveforms, then it follows that if you start with good quality, this can be maintained down the chain if you process them with good quality filters etc..
if i was still sampling now, i would be looking at analogue filters as my first OTB purchases, and an analogue desk.

but the problem is that one or two filters may not get you very far. to get the best out of filters you need envelopes, and you need to be able to modulate them from your computer, which means you also need midi - CV convertors. so the costs start to climb.
if it was me going down this route i would build a simple filter / envelope bank with maybe four combos in modules, controllable from the computer, in other words send controller messages to creatively modulate the envelopes while still having manual control over the filters and envelopes for experession etc..
unfortuantely something like that isn't going to cost less than £1000, so there may be other bits of kit for less money that would get you started OTB.
but this is what i would do having experienced the joy of analogue filters and envelopes... the sound quality is astounding.

[JonasEdenbrandt]

I actually have two analogue filters (in a DJ-mixer) gonna start sampling through this instead and start using the filters and see what I can achive. Sadly though these ofcourse don't have any envelopes so to get this I still would have to do something along the ways of what steevio is saying or get the mashine AK talked about. Tha EMU really looks intresting been searching a bit on the web for it and must say I'm very intrigued. The way I see it maybe I could sell the 404 and get the EMU and start working with that. Takes some thinking.

Thanks for the tips of trying some software FX to see if I could use hardware versions of them.

Just to make it clear my idea of moving out of the box isn't limited to sampling. So far all the work I have done outside the box has been sample based since my only OTB equipment is a sampler. I'm hoping this thread can be a discussion about ways to move OTB and also the pros and cons of doing so.

What do you guys think about getting perhaps a synth (maybe the DX-7 or something similar ) versus the idea of getting the EMU that AK talked about (with or without the selling of the 404)?

PS. Been thinking about gettin a kit for one of these http://mutable-instruments.net/. I know some soldering so I think I would be able to put it together.

[steevio]

if your filters are the ones in the Xone92 or similar, its not really a good representation of what a filter can do. they are very limited.
its a hard one really because there are so many options to go OTB now that it must be confusing to anyone just venturing there.
i swear by modular gear because its easily the most flexible and generally of the highest quality, its nothing to be afraid of, its just bits of synths that you put together yourself really. you dont even need to build a whole synth, you can just build a filterbank to process your sounds, and if you want to go further you can easily expand in the future when you can afford it.

i'm not just saying this because i'm a modular nerd, it really is the most expansive and flexible option out there. if you buy a DX7 you going to have that well worn sound and nothing more, if you buy something like the little synths you posted, you might find them to be really limited after a while.

with modular gear the sky is the limit, and you can start with something very simple to get you going and add to it as you go along.