# Now Available: The Sampling Handbook: Create Your Own Kontakt Sample Libraries (25% off)



## musicformedia (Jan 20, 2015)

The Sampling Handbook​
*A Step by Step Guide to Creating Custom Sample Libraries for Kontakt*​






Now available - The Sampling Handbook: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Custom Kontakt Sample Libraries. (€39)

http://www.thesamplinghandbook.com

The eBook has 150 pages of content on planning, recording, editing and scripting your own sample library for Kontakt. Learn about the following:


*Pre-Planning Phase *- Learn how to choose which instrument to record, how to best pre-plan your recording session, choose which microphones and pre-amps to use and how to get your recording environment set up correctly.
*Recording Session* - Learn about how best to set your recording levels, how to organise your session, tips for working with the session player, how to manage the instrument, how to keep tuning consistent and more.
*Editing Session* - Learn how best to use noise reduction on samples, pre-processing, pitch correction, session organisation, workflow, the waveform, chopping samples, transients, fades and fade types, naming structure, exporting your samples and more.
*Kontakt Scripting* - Learn the basics of Kontakt scripting, extending the key ranges, working with groups & round robins, using automap, adding effects, adding factory scripts, adding custom wallpapers, adding a custom impulse response, exporting your instrument and more!
Optional Extra Bundles​
We've also included two optional bundles too which have extra materials for those who want more including:

Developer Bundle:
- The Sampling Handbook
- Kontakt Script: A Beginners Guide
- Audiobook
- Kontakt Scripter Interview (Evil Dragon)

Premium Bundle:
- The Sampling Handbook
- Kontakt Script: A Beginners Guide
- Audiobook
- Kontakt Scripter Interview (Evil Dragon)
- Video series
- Sales & Marketing Manual
- Webhosting & eCommerce Guide
- Samples to practice with

Check out the eBook or get a free sample chapter at http://www.thesamplinghandbook.com (Use coupon code "kontakt" for 25% off the full price - coupon expires 2nd March 2016).


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## Pingu (Jan 20, 2015)

Will it be on Kindle? :lol:


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## musicformedia (Jan 20, 2015)

Pingu @ Tue Jan 20 said:


> Will it be on Kindle? :lol:



We were actually thinking of just PDF but Kindle is a good idea. We'll try make sure we have it available for Kindle when its released


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## d.healey (Jan 20, 2015)

Looks good


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## Pingu (Jan 20, 2015)

musicformedia @ Tue Jan 20 said:


> Pingu @ Tue Jan 20 said:
> 
> 
> > Will it be on Kindle? :lol:
> ...



:D :D :D :D :D :D :D 

That would be awesome. I'm fighting a battle to reclaim studio space from physical books, and I can only read PDFs on my laptop, which would mean a lot of tabbing between Kontakt and the book. 

Can't wait for it either way though.


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## musicformedia (Jan 26, 2015)

Pingu @ Tue Jan 20 said:


> musicformedia @ Tue Jan 20 said:
> 
> 
> > Pingu @ Tue Jan 20 said:
> ...



Yup that makes sense. We'll definitely look into the best way to convert it to Kindle format


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## Piano & Strings (Jan 26, 2015)

Sounds very interesting. I don't see anything about legato interval sampling and editing - will this be included, or perhaps covered in an upcoming book?


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## musicformedia (Jan 25, 2016)

Updated the thread with some info. We're launching next week!


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## EC2 (Jan 25, 2016)

Looks interesting. Who is the author? What are his/her/their credits?


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## musicformedia (Jan 25, 2016)

EC2 said:


> Looks interesting. Who is the author? What are his/her/their credits?


Hi EC2. Marcus Huyskens of Bad Cat Media (http://badcatsamples.com) has written The Sampling Handbook and made the video series. I have written the Sales & Marketing Guide (http://www.VSTBuzz.com), the Web Hosting & eCommerce Guide and Sam Windell from Frozen Plain (http://www.frozenplain.com) has written the Kontakt Script: A Beginner's Guide eBook


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## EC2 (Jan 25, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Hi EC2. Marcus Huyskens of Bad Cat Media (http://badcatsamples.com) has written The Sampling Handbook and made the video series. I have written the Sales & Marketing Guide (http://www.VSTBuzz.com), the Web Hosting & eCommerce Guide and Sam Windell from Frozen Plain (http://www.frozenplain.com) has written the Kontakt Script: A Beginner's Guide eBook



Hey there  Cool, thank you for the info.


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## benatural (Jan 25, 2016)

You got my attention.


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## tav.one (Jan 25, 2016)

The website just opens blank white page for me, tried on multiple browsers.


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## Mundano (Jan 25, 2016)

just what i needed! i will look forward to buy this bundle!


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## musicformedia (Jan 26, 2016)

itstav said:


> The website just opens blank white page for me, tried on multiple browsers.



Hey itstav, can you try again? Its loading fine on multiple browsers here?


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## tav.one (Jan 26, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Hey itstav, can you try again? Its loading fine on multiple browsers here?


Still the same, tried on iPad as well.


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## Manuel (Jan 26, 2016)

itstav said:


> Still the same, tried on iPad as well.



Same for me (Safari, OS El Capitan). Best regards.


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## d.healey (Jan 26, 2016)

Loading fine for me, Win10, IE11


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## EvilDragon (Jan 26, 2016)

I was really glad to be a part of this. For those who go along with the package that contains the audio interview with me, I hope you'll enjoy it!


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## Maestro77 (Jan 26, 2016)

Anything EvilDragon touches is pure gold.


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## micrologus (Jan 26, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Hey itstav, can you try again? Its loading fine on multiple browsers here?



I can see it on Firefox but not in Safari.


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## alanb (Jan 26, 2016)

Anyone seeing only a white screen has probably got a script (no pun intended) blocker (_e.g._, NoScript or Ghostery) preventing the page from loading.

I saw white until I whitelisted both *http://thesamplinghandbook.com/* and *launchrock.com* in NoScript...


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## musicformedia (Jan 27, 2016)

alanb said:


> Anyone seeing only a white screen has probably got a script (no pun intended) blocker (_e.g._, NoScript or Ghostery) preventing the page from loading.
> 
> I saw white until I whitelisted both *http://thesamplinghandbook.com/* and *launchrock.com* in NoScript...



Thanks Alanb. Could anyone having problems please try that? If you're still having issues, just PM me your email address and I'll make sure you get the coupon when we launch


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## tav.one (Jan 27, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Thanks Alanb. Could anyone having problems please try that? If you're still having issues, just PM me your email address and I'll make sure you get the coupon when we launch



Working now on Firefox (even with Adblock enabled), not working on Safari (even with Adblock disabled).


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## alanb (Jan 27, 2016)

itstav said:


> Working now on Firefox (even with Adblock enabled), not working on Safari (even with Adblock disabled).



AdBlock isn't a "script blocker" of the sort I was describing, above. You may have some other plugin that is interfering with the website.

Regardless, it is good that you can see the website in at least one browser...


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## tav.one (Jan 28, 2016)

alanb said:


> You may have some other plugin that is interfering with the website.



But thats the only plugin installed on my safari, no other. Yup I signed up on Firefox


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## Mundano (Feb 8, 2016)

"
*** Coming Soon: The Sampling Handbook -" how soon will it come?*


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## musicformedia (Feb 8, 2016)

Mundano said:


> "
> *** Coming Soon: The Sampling Handbook -" how soon will it come?*


Sorry for the delay - we're launching this week. I had a family bereavement which meant we couldn't launch last week.


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## Mundano (Feb 8, 2016)

sorry, my condolences. Looking forward to buy your books. I have signed up, will i have 25% off coupon at launch?


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## musicformedia (Feb 8, 2016)

Mundano said:


> sorry, my condolences. Looking forward to buy your books. I have signed up, will i have 25% off coupon at launch?



Thank you. Yes absolutely - you'll get 25% off at launch!


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## Spip (Feb 8, 2016)

FYI, the site doesn't work with Safari. (white screen).


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## musicformedia (Feb 8, 2016)

Spip said:


> FYI, the site doesn't work with Safari. (white screen).



Can you try https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/21552/ instead?


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## Spip (Feb 8, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Can you try https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/21552/ instead?



Ok.


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## JamesIV (Feb 8, 2016)

Legato scripting?


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## musicformedia (Feb 17, 2016)

Hi guys, we've finally launched! Use coupon "kontakt" for 25% off!


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## stonzthro (Feb 17, 2016)

Or multiple mic faders?


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## musicformedia (Feb 17, 2016)

Hey guys here is the breakdown of each of the main eBooks:

The Sampling Handbook:


*Chapter 1*: The Tracking Session (17 pages) – choosing your instrument, pre-planing your recording session, choosing microphones and pre-amps, setting the correct recording levels, setting up your environment and more.
*Chapter 2*: Editing (46 pages) – noise reduction in samples, pre-processing, pitch correction, workflow, chopping samples, transients (responsive or even performance), fades, naming structure and more.
*Chapter 3*: Programming for Kontakt (67 pages) – getting started (the basics of Kontakt), extending key ranges, working with groups and round robins, using automap, adding effects, adding factory scripts, adding a custom wallpaper, adding custom impulse responses, exporting your instrument and more.
Kontakt Script: A Beginner's Guide:


*Chapter 1*: The Scripting Language (23 pages) – what is a script, learning the language, loading a script, how scripts are read, callbacks, user defined variables, user defined array variables, UI variables, variable persistence, built in variables, events, maths, conditional code, functions, PGS, good practices and more
*Chapter 2*: The KS Editor (13 pages) – the KS editor, installing the KS editor, sublime text 3, saving KSP to a text file, local variables, improved appearance, inlined functions, macros, properties, importing scripts and more
*Chapter 3*: Graphics (8 pages) – accompany text file, scripting an image to a UI control, different graphics types, controls that cannot be changed, how to make graphics for Kontakt, layering and more.


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## JamesIV (Feb 17, 2016)

Legato scripting?


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## d.healey (Feb 17, 2016)

JamesIV said:


> Legato scripting?


Not likely to find it in a guide for beginners.


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## Mundano (Feb 17, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Hi guys, we've finally launched! Use coupon "kontakt" for 25% off!


thanks a lot. A question, is there any printed version? or all is eBook?


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## musicformedia (Feb 17, 2016)

Mundano said:


> thanks a lot. A question, is there any printed version? or all is eBook?



Hey Mundano, there are no plans for printed versions at the moment.


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## d.healey (Feb 17, 2016)

What about a service like Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/


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## A3D2 (Feb 18, 2016)

I just bought the handbook as a kontakt5 programmer-newbie . Looking forward to reading it! I've just starting out converting 100's of my custom made sample libraries from EXS24 to kontakt5 and I just finished programming my first kontakt5 instrument, so I'm sure there is still a lot I can learn from your work. Thank you so much for writing this!


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## musicformedia (Feb 18, 2016)

d.healey said:


> What about a service like Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/



Thanks David, we'll check that out and look into it.


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## A3D2 (Feb 18, 2016)

I started reading and I love the Sampling Handbook . I was wondering maybe if it would be possible to buy 'Kontakt Script: A Beginners Guide eBook' separately as well? Would be great 
@musicformedia


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## stonzthro (Feb 18, 2016)

stonzthro said:


> Or multiple mic faders?



So I guess that is a 'No'.
Too bad - I would like to have seen more advanced features explained in a book that runs almost $45 USD. Maybe I'll look into the followup book.


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## musicformedia (Feb 18, 2016)

stonzthro said:


> So I guess that is a 'No'.
> Too bad - I would like to have seen more advanced features explained in a book that runs almost $45 USD. Maybe I'll look into the followup book.



Hey @stonzthro, the eBook is actually around $32 at the moment when using the 25% off coupon, not $45  Multiple mic faders is a bit more advanced than needed for a basic Kontakt library. We'll certainly look into covering it in future editions if we decide to do a more advanced version


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## musicformedia (Feb 18, 2016)

A3D2 said:


> I started reading and I love the Sampling Handbook . I was wondering maybe if it would be possible to buy 'Kontakt Script: A Beginners Guide eBook' separately as well? Would be great
> @musicformedia



Hey @ad32, glad to hear you're enjoying it! The Kontakt Script eBook is only available as part of the developer + premium bundle, but you can upgrade from the solo edition either of those bundles in your account area for a reduced price


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## MisteR (Feb 18, 2016)

musicformedia said:


> Hey @ad32, glad to hear you're enjoying it! The Kontakt Script eBook is only available as part of the developer + premium bundle, but you can upgrade from the solo edition either of those bundles in your account area for a reduced price


That's good to hear. Does that also mean you can upgrade later from developer bundle to premium bundle?


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## musicformedia (Feb 18, 2016)

Mark Rigby said:


> That's good to hear. Does that also mean you can upgrade later from developer bundle to premium bundle?



Yup absolutely! The options are in your account area to upgrade from solo to developer or premium or developer to premium


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## Mundano (Feb 18, 2016)

how long will this coupon 25% be in offer? t.i.a.


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## musicformedia (Feb 19, 2016)

Mundano said:


> how long will this coupon 25% be in offer? t.i.a.



Hi @Mundano, the 25% off coupon expires on the 2nd March


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## A3D2 (Feb 19, 2016)

Hi @musicformedia! I almost read the entire book and I did learn some very useful extra things about kontakt, very valuable , thanks! I still had some questions though: mainly about scripting, there isn't a lot about this in the book. I would love to see an expansion of the book featuring how to implement functions (ADSR, reverb,...) with custom gui knobs or faders on your instrument and perhaps multiple mic positions as mentioned by others: how does one organize RR and multiple mic samples in groups for example? 
These things aside, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, thanks a lot!


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## EvilDragon (Feb 19, 2016)

@A3D2, most of those questions have already been answered in various threads, both at NI forums and here... Forum search is your guide.


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## A3D2 (Feb 19, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> @A3D2, most of those questions have already been answered in various threads, both at NI forums and here... Forum search is your guide.


Thanks! Good to know.  I'll search some more on the forums then until I figure these things out.


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## Anders Wall (Feb 19, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> @A3D2, most of those questions have already been answered in various threads, both at NI forums and here... Forum search is your guide.


Sure, but I for one would love (and pay for) if someone would sum it up in book-form.
Just saying.
/Anders


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## EvilDragon (Feb 19, 2016)

In other words, take freely available information that took us (me and other KSP scripters) years of replying and charge for it? The least one can do is take a few minutes and search what's already there, compared to our years of effort, you know?


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## Anders Wall (Feb 19, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> In other words, take freely available information that took us (me and other KSP scripters) years of replying and charge for it? The least one can do is take a few minutes and search what's already there, compared to our years of effort, you know?


Sure, but isn't the whole idea with tutorials is to get years of knowledge in a more condensted form?
/Anders


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## EvilDragon (Feb 19, 2016)

True, but tutorials cannot cover each and every thing one might want to do, whereas you might stumble on a very similar (if not the same) thing you wanted if you took a bit of time and searched VI-C and NI forums. Tutorials usually cover the basics, and from there on, one needs to employ some lateral thinking into the process (that's what programming is all about).


And you can always pay to get a custom script done, too.


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## Anders Wall (Feb 19, 2016)

+1 on order custom scripts, that's what I do, don't have the brain to do my own.

All I'm saying is, if it's so wrong to ask for a book in more advanced scripting then why is it OK with a book in basic scripting?

I guess you could find answers to basic questions in forums like this? If you just search for it.

Best,
/Anders


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## FrozenPlain (Feb 20, 2016)

Hi, I'm the author of Kontakt Script Beginners Guide which is part of the developer and premium bundles. This book contains the basics of creating custom scripts for Kontakt, and adding your own graphics. Topics like using variables and what are the available callbacks are covered, the sort of stuff that is the backbone of what a Kontakt script is. While there aren't specific headings like 'how to make custom ADSR controls', it offers a broader knowledge, which I'm confident you can use to make simple scripts yourselves (such as ADSR, reverb or volume sliders). Throughout the book are also working examples that you can copy paste into Kontakt to see how the scripts work.


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## Mundano (Feb 20, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> And you can always pay to get a custom script done, too.


for the sake of curiosity, how much would cost a "custom script done" when i would need it and order it?


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## EvilDragon (Feb 20, 2016)

Depends on who you ask. I have my own minimum one-time fee for any kind of scripting job, some other scripter might ask something else entirely. I am not willing to put up any pricings out in the open, as I think that's bad form (plus, anybody else might see it and offer less, and then the value of what we do gets horribly devauled). If I wanted to do that, I'd already have my website with the pricing outlined and everything, but I don't think that's the way to go with KSP scripting, since there's a lot of factors that can add up in writing a script, so I approach it on a case-by-case basis. However, I never go below my minimum fee, no matter how simple the ask might be.

Well, at least that was before I started working for http://umlautaudio.com/ (Umlaut Audio) under a contract. Now everything goes through them, if you want a script done by me. This presents additional pricing overheads, naturally.


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## Mundano (Feb 20, 2016)

EvilDragon said:


> Depends on who you ask. I have my own minimum one-time fee for any kind of scripting job, some other scripter might ask something else entirely. I am not willing to put up any pricings out in the open, as I think that's bad form (plus, anybody else might see it and offer less, and then the value of what we do gets horribly devauled). If I wanted to do that, I'd already have my website with the pricing outlined and everything, but I don't think that's the way to go with KSP scripting, since there's a lot of factors that can add up in writing a script, so I approach it on a case-by-case basis. However, I never go below my minimum fee, no matter how simple the ask might be.


Thanks for answering. I would think is a little like when somebody ask me for a musical arrangement or a composition,... i have a minimum and it depends on the situation, complexity, client and aim... But because i don't know anything about it i have asked you friendly, and thought it would be a standard tariff or at least an average.


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## jononotbono (Feb 20, 2016)

Can't wait to buy this but it won't be for a while. I'm not "there" yet with creating Sample Libraries. Far too busy learning how to write with current one's first. A few things at a time...


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## d.healey (Feb 20, 2016)

I finished reading it last night:

It's an excellent book for beginners and those just starting to produce their own libraries. The sections about building the instrument in Kontakt, creating groups, and using a resource container are all great, and will really help someone who is unfamiliar with this side of Kontakt. Personally the sections I found most informative were those concerned with recording session management and editing workflow, the author uses quite a different approach to the one I use and I will definitely be incorporating some of the ideas suggested in my own work. Considering the rarity of books on this subject, especially with this kind of good quality information, and the limited audience that such books appeal to, I think that for the price this is a very good deal. Definitely more a buy for a newcomer than an experienced developer but there are some useful nuggets of knowledge in there for everyone.


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## A3D2 (Feb 21, 2016)

Yes, I also think the book is great @musicformedia . I've read it twice as I am eager to learn and I've learned a lot from it. I really didn't want to offend anyone by asking for a book-version of those more advanced features: I did some searching online for those topics and often did find some related questions on forums, but they were not always completely applicable to what I wanted to do, which is why it was sometimes difficult to understand as a newbie whereas the sampling handbook is very understandable. But I will just read some more on the forums, check out @d.healey 's tutorials and buy additional books. I'll get there . As The Sampling Handbook says: before you want to run, you need to learn how to walk. Need to keep that in mind


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