# SampleRobot, or Samplit or something else for sampling a guitar or piano ?



## ManicMiner (May 20, 2019)

I'm looking to sample a piano or guitar, and looking for software that will help me with workflow in creating a Kontakt instrument.

I see SampleRobot is pretty good at sampling VSTs, external MIDI keyboards and it looks pretty good.

But what about external instruments like guitars and pianos that don't have MIDI?
I think Samplit sends you a tone in your headphones and you play it back on your instrument.
But I don't know if SampleRobot can do that?

Also, velocity layers and having two mic positions are in the equation too.
Auto-trim, auto-looping are all in there as well. 

Or is there another program that will do a good job of sampling for me?


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## Tod (May 21, 2019)

I, along with a lot of other folks, use Reaper. There are so many ways you can automate it to not only make the editing faster, but to take much of the mundane out of it as well as reduce the risk for errors.


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## ManicMiner (May 21, 2019)

Tod said:


> I, along with a lot of other folks, use Reaper. There are so many ways you can automate it to not only make the editing faster, but to take much of the mundane out of it as well as reduce the risk for errors.


I use Reaper, but this is what I want:
* The program to prompt me to play a note on my external instrument
* The program to auto-trim, auto-find loops
* To export in .nki Kontakt format easily


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## Tod (May 21, 2019)

Ha ha, that's a tall order. 

However, I believe all those things can be done, just not in the order or way you might think.

I recently recorded pedal steel guitar samples and I recorded 4 variations of each note. I had it set up so that I could hit play, get a count-in to the 1st sample, where an action marker turned record on just before I played the 1st note for 20 seconds.

After 20 seconds another action marker turn record off, and another count-in started for the 2nd note. This time at the end of the count-in, the action marker turned record on, and also colored the prior sample to a selected color, then again recorded for 20 seconds.

This went on for all 4 samples and at the end of the 4th sample an action marker turned record off, colored the last sample, then moved the edit cursor to the 1st sample and selected it.

Then I had a toolbar action that moved all 4 samples to just after the last 4 samples, add a marker and set every thing up for editing the front of the 1st sample by placing the cursor 10ms ahead of the transient of the 1st sample. From there I used a shortcut key to split and delete the left part of the sample and then move to 10ms ahead of the next sample's transient. It took 5 to 10 seconds to edit the front of all 4 samples.

Then I had other actions set up to help edit the end of the samples. When that was done, the samples were all done and ready to save, which I didn't do until I had all the samples recorded for each string.

The most mundane and time consuming part of all this was just playing the samples.



> * The program to auto-trim, auto-find loops



There is an action called "Dynamic split items" that will basically cut out your samples all in one go.

As far as finding loops, there is nothing for that, at least not for multiple samples that I know of. There are programs out there that do a fair job at this, David Healey has one that seems to work well. There is a VI-Control Kontakt thread dedicated to this somewhere if you search for it.

Personally I have my own way of creating the loops. I looped all my Steel guitar Harmonics using the method shown in the video below, although it was quite different then what I show here. That method makes perfect seamless loops.


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## Lindon (May 22, 2019)

We use Extreme Sample Converter - it does what you want - its very old and Windows only.


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## ManicMiner (May 22, 2019)

Lindon said:


> We use Extreme Sample Converter - it does what you want - its very old and Windows only.


looks good. Although its says it only exports upto Kontakt version 3. How do you create a Kontakt ver 5 instrument with it - do you have to use another program ?


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## Lindon (May 22, 2019)

nope you just open your K3 instrument in K5 - Kontakt is (usually) backwards compatible.


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## ManicMiner (May 22, 2019)

Lindon said:


> nope you just open your K3 instrument in K5 - Kontakt is (usually) backwards compatible.


Cool. I might download the demo.
One thing that worries is that when Windows updates, this thing might eventually break down.
I'm also wondering how good the xfade auto-find looping is. That is a bottleneck for me sometimes.
I think it does auto-trim too, which will be another time saver.


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## Tod (May 22, 2019)

Here's a video tutorial on Reaper's Dynamic Split tool. I've used this many times for editing samples.



Here's another video I made about creating loops in Reaper. There's no narration but there's text explaining the moves.


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## Lindon (May 22, 2019)

ManicMiner said:


> Cool. I might download the demo.
> One thing that worries is that when Windows updates, this thing might eventually break down.
> I'm also wondering how good the xfade auto-find looping is. That is a bottleneck for me sometimes.
> I think it does auto-trim too, which will be another time saver.


Frankly there is no tool out there to do x-fade or any other sort of looping effectively.... you are going to have to do this manually.


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## gsilbers (May 30, 2019)

Redmatica had a great auto loop feature. but it always depends on the material. pads is easier but rhythmic stuff was a miss. 

check out the old redmatica videos and if u like it youll need to get an old mac with el capitan OS. 

and this one tell you about what note to do

https://www.soundlib.com/samplit/


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## ManicMiner (May 30, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> https://www.soundlib.com/samplit/


With Samplit I am wondering if it has an auto-trim in semi-automatic mode?

Also, how recording velocity layers work in terms of exporting to Kontakt - will Kontakt be able to recognize automatically what velocity layers there are and appropriately order things?

It doesn't say on their website what version of Kontakt it exports to... I don't think that matters too much...
(I am on Windows not MAC)


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## Fredeke (May 30, 2019)

I have Samplerobot 3. It does what you want.

However it is an unsufferable bug bag. I waste a lot of time correcting its errors (mostly pertaining to exporting loops, so if you don't need that feature, things are a little bit better).

I've used both the Windows and Mac versions. The Mac one is just an infuriatingly lazy port of the Windows version (with, for example, display bugs on dual monitors that can become very problematic, and also frequent settings amnesia).

But Skylife told me SampleRobot 6 is now natively Mac (and Windows too, I suppose?). Hopefully it is better overall, but I don't know that for sure. I'm not spending one more penny by them, so...


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## MatFluor (May 30, 2019)

Well, I use Samplit in a Hacky way.
I like that it drives external MIDI-Hardware and autosamples that (was of use at times with my Minibrute). For for acoustical Instruments you can go the route they usually offer - you start the recording process, get a sine-tone on your ear and play that note.
What I did (for non-RR sampling) was just record the samples into a normal audio file, ordered by pitch so to speak. Then use that Audiofile as input for Samplit (little hacky, I would have to look up how I did it exactly, I think internal loopback), so my recorded Audiofile gets chopped and mapped - that way I have a quick and dirty Kontakt Instrument.

I admit, since I meanwhile use Reaper, I haven't used Samplit much, Reaper offers me enough control and flexibility without "re-recording audio". I tested Samplerobot but somehow didn't like it, I liked Samolits more modern approach far more


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## ManicMiner (May 31, 2019)

MatFluor said:


> I admit, since I meanwhile use Reaper, I haven't used Samplit much, Reaper offers me enough control and flexibility without "re-recording audio". I tested Samplerobot but somehow didn't like it, I liked Samolits more modern approach far more


Actually I do have Reaper and am quite familiar with it. I guess I could create a template with one track which prompts me to play a note on my acoustic instrument, and another track to record it, dividing that track for a region-export.

What I am looking for though is something that will speed up my workflow. Namely:

Auto-trim the recorded sample
Auto-loop the sample (if its a pad for example)
Automatically create velocity layers, and then auto export these to Kontakt
I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of Kontakt so I don't know how to create velocity layers.
Is it a pain, or is that a nice thing to have done automatically by Samplit or SampleRobot?
I guess I'm trying to avoid awkward, time-consuming steps in Kontakt basically (if there are any).

There is an auto-trim action in Reaper actually. I wonder if I can "snap to region start" just after its done the trim to line it up?

And auto-xfade-looping in Samplit/SRobot I heard wasn't 100% reliable and you have to manually look at it anyway(?)


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## Tod (May 31, 2019)

ManicMiner said:


> Also, how recording velocity layers work in terms of exporting to Kontakt - will Kontakt be able to recognize automatically what velocity layers there are and appropriately order things?





> I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of Kontakt so I don't know how to create velocity layers.
> Is it a pain, or is that a nice thing to have done automatically by Samplit or SampleRobot?



Layering samples based on velocity is something you do when you name the sample. What I do is name my samples with the right note name including it's number, then give it another number so that it will render into a folder with the top layer on top and the bottom layer on the bottom. 

Then it's just a matter of selecting all the samples, grabbing the top sample, and drag/drop them into Kontakt from the folder. Before you let go of the samples in Kontakt you have an option to stack them either vertically or horizontally.

I've used Reaper now for 9 years and I can't imagine anything better for editing samples. To get the most out of Reaper, it's best to learn when and how to create macros or custom actions.

As far as automatically slicing the samples, I added a video tutorial up above that shows you how to use "Dynamic Split" to automatically cut up your samples. There's also actions that can automatically sort the samples based on their amplitude levels. 

There is no way that I know of to completely take the human element out of creating Kontakt instruments.


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## ManicMiner (May 31, 2019)

Tod said:


> As far as automatically slicing the samples, I added a video tutorial up above that shows you how to use "Dynamic Split" to automatically cut up your samples. There's also actions that can automatically sort the samples based on their amplitude levels.


Good to know that there are actions that look a velocity (volume).
I know how to auto-trim with an action in Reaper now, but is it possible to snap the trimmed sample to the region markers. E.g. in the image below, to snap the bass sample to the beginning of the region marker for the *start *of F#4.


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## Tod (May 31, 2019)

One thing I do is first disable the "Grid lines", then enable "Snap to grid". When moving selected item(s), this allows items to snap to the edit cursor, markers, regions, or other items. This only happens on the left side of the selected item.

I see your region is larger then you sample item, is there a reason for that? Are you aware that there is an action that will create the regions form the selected items.


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## MatFluor (May 31, 2019)

Auto-trim per se not, but Reaper has of course Tap to transient. You could automate that, go through and cut at all transients. Then select all and make the items smaller, and go through for individual adjustments in lengths. Then you can script or automate with ReaTune to automatically detect pitch and give the item that pitch name (or name as Item note), and then create region from items, name based on item notes
and boom. ok - sounds more complex than it actually is 

See XtremeRyam - he has some cool scripts for Sampling he made especially for D Healey (but they cost a bit).


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## ManicMiner (May 31, 2019)

Tod said:


> Are you aware that there is an action that will create the regions form the selected items.


I wanted to *name* the regions myself because when I export it automatically saves the region out with $region as a filename so the filename has the note identifier in it.

@MatFluor


> See XtremeRyam - he has some cool scripts for Sampling he made especially for D Healey (but they cost a bit).


I guess you mean these:
https://www.extremraym.com/en/downloads/reascripts-render-region-matrix/
I'll have to look at them.
At first glance, it doens't look that'll save me a ton of time, I think all I am missing is the _snap trimmed sample back to region start_, but I'll dig deeper.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 1, 2019)

I think I've decided that _Reaper _can do a better job of automatic and semi-automatic sampling than probably SampleRobot, Samplit etc.

I just now am probably looking for the best program to help me in terms of workflow getting it into Kontakt, i.e. velocity layering, auto-looping, and anything else that is tedious in Kontakt that could be automated.


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## d.healey (Jun 1, 2019)

Loop Auditioneer is good for "auto-looping" - there is no truly automated looping, you still have to check and adjust.

For velocity layers you need to use Reaper's batch naming tools, the exact tool you use will depend on your workflow, I tend to use the item label tool (can't remember it's exact name) in the SWF extensions combined with wildcards/tokens in the Reaper render window. Kontakt has some auto-mapping capabilities based on the sample file names.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 1, 2019)

d.healey said:


> Kontakt has some auto-mapping capabilities based on the sample file names.


...so in theory I could have four separate Reaper projects if I am doing four velocity layers, and just name the region with the note I am exporting (like I did in the screenshot on page 1 of this thread), and then in the Reaper render window I could simply batch export the name as mysamplename_vel01_$region.wav, and that might give me , e.g. Bass_vel01_C3.wav

...and Kontakt would pick that up and sort them samples into velocity layers automatically (I've written vel01, I don't know yet what string Kontakt looks for in the filename.)


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## d.healey (Jun 1, 2019)

Just use one Reaper project for all articulations, dynamics, etc. I use 1 project per instrument.

I did a livestream a while back about my sample editing approach in Reaper which you might find useful.


The naming system in Kontakt is quite specific, it's explained in the user manual so read it and then name some samples manually and test out the auto-mapping so that you know what you're aiming for before you start naming in Reaper.


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