Akai S900

[AK]

I hear people talk about their character a lot and wondered whether it might be worth picking one up to resample drum hits through?

Is it worth it or could I downsample ITB and get the same thing?

[steevio]

I hear people talk about their character a lot and wondered whether it might be worth picking one up to resample drum hits through?

Is it worth it or could I downsample ITB and get the same thing?

i dont know mate, for me akai samplers dont sound so good, i stopped using mine after only one year of buying it, because the sounds from it never quite fitted in with the rest of my palette.
they were the business back in the day, because there was virtually nothing else available, now i'd stick with software.

[hydrogen]

I hear people talk about their character a lot and wondered whether it might be worth picking one up to resample drum hits through?

Is it worth it or could I downsample ITB and get the same thing?

Check out time machine... its a nice resampler for this effect.

http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/audio_vst.htm

[AK]

I got that Time Machine plugin a while back but never having owned a real Akai s900 / 950, I have no idea what this 'character' sounds like.

Is it over rated then or what? On the net I hear people talk about how much punchier drums are, how the old Akai sound is sought after etc etc. I wouldn't want to part with even a small amount of cash of it's just pointless.

[hydrogen]

I got that Time Machine plugin a while back but never having owned a real Akai s900 / 950, I have no idea what this 'character' sounds like.

Is it over rated then or what? On the net I hear people talk about how much punchier drums are, how the old Akai sound is sought after etc etc. I wouldn't want to part with even a small amount of cash of it's just pointless.

well its a common in hiphop to downgrade the sample quality of snares and high hats to 8bit. It adds some nice effect... beefs them up, but don't forget to filter out some of the nasties... sometimes the low end can get quite excentuated and the high end needs some filtering... There really is no reason to buy a s900 to get the sound especially with samplers like kontact.

The only reason I could see using an s900 is if you wanted to use an ancient interface... or you were going for some authentic sound.

[AK]

I think I'll give it a miss then. It's use as an 'effect box' has limited appeal so it seems. The interface is definitely a thing I would rather avoid. I have a Roland JV1080 in my studio and I hate little screens and menu systems, there's a connection method available between Wavelab and certain hardware samplers, any editing would have been done there, the Akai would have been just to sample the hits through.

[kwality]

I wouldn't get a 900, but anything from the 950 up is great I think. I was struggling to get my kicks and snare right using battery and single hits. Then I started using my 950 for them and it's made a huge difference, especially for the basic channel kinda stuff I've been doing lately.

If you're after hyper clean hits don't bother, but if you're after some character/crunch/dirt they're great. The interface isn't too hard and some of the modulation possibilities are brilliant. Yeah there's a few plugins that can get you close, but there's nothing is like it, I promise you. When you see a .wav recorded from it you'll think it will be quiet until you play it back and it just sounds right. I barely even put effects on whatever I record

It's up to you of course, but adding a few key 'outside the box' pieces has helped my music so much it's crazy. If you can find one cheap I say go for it, they're great for textures and chords too.

[AK]

Cheers.

Thanks for the info.