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EXS-24 Wish List ?

There are some interesting wishes found in this thread you created about a year ago, but I would mostly like to see it stay just as it is. No need to make it fancy or more advanced. There are other samplers available that has all that extra stuff if needed. Simplicity is what makes EXS24 so powerful IMO.

Having that said I wouldn’t mind if they relocated some settings found in the edit window into the front panel instead. Then those settings would be easier and faster to access and it would be settings saved within the project instead of having to resave the patch with a different name. I often reverse samples and change loop points, sample start etc depending on the project I’m working on and that could be a bit clunky sometimes.

I would also like to have the option to navigate through the EXS instruments instead of channel strip settings in the library window found in Logic without having to click that tiny annoying blue triangle. The instrument hierarchy used to show up automatically in L9 but they changed that unfortunately.
 
What would you like to see if you had the Logic Team's ear ?

hopefully separate it from Mk1 and from alchemy.
as for features.. well just make it like kontakt but drag and drop modulaes instead of all that scripting :)
at least for simple type instruments.

and maybe have the separate program like redmatica to program stuff.

have an autosampler xl that has more features than the one in mainstage. maybe the one in redmatica's back in the day.
 
Tx for the reminder Fred. I'm getting old :mad:

I have heard it is being worked on. Not sure if they will keep Mk1 legacy or not. That should be a suggestion we all make.

There are some interesting wishes found in this thread you created about a year ago, but I would mostly like to see it stay just as it is. No need to make it fancy or more advanced. There are other samplers available that has all that extra stuff if needed. Simplicity is what makes EXS24 so powerful IMO.

Having that said I wouldn’t mind if they relocated some settings found in the edit window into the front panel instead. Then those settings would be easier and faster to access and it would be settings saved within the project instead of having to resave the patch with a different name. I often reverse samples and change loop points, sample start etc depending on the project I’m working on and that could be a bit clunky sometimes.

I would also like to have the option to navigate through the EXS instruments instead of channel strip settings in the library window found in Logic without having to click that tiny annoying blue triangle. The instrument hierarchy used to show up automatically in L9 but they changed that unfortunately.
 
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Tx for the reminder Fred. I;m getting old :mad:

I have heard MkII is being worked on. Not sure if they will keep Mk1 legacy or not. That should be a suggestion we all make.
I hate to be "that guy" - but when it comes to my beloved sampler..
We're already using Mark II (released with Logic 5.5!)
 
I'd love to see a more flexible and transparent file management. I use the Autosampler of Main Stage a lot but it always samples into the user folder of the system drive. I didn't find a way to tell Autosampler to sample to an external drive (where my sample library is located). And I would love to see the "show in finder" function for EXS samples in Logic to locate used samples for backups etc. And it's still confusing (to me) when and where EXS saves edits done on the GUI or just the edits of the EXS edit window.

When copying groups from one EXS to another the related samples are copied too (what is great!). But the group assignments like round robins or articulations get lost when copying. Would be cool if this would copy together with the groups. Especially when using the new articulation system it often makes sense to consolidate different EXS sound sets into one.
 
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And it's still confusing (to me) when and where EXS saves edits done on the GUI or just the edits of the EXS edit window.

- Every EXS Instrument can (but doesn't have to) have a single set of front-panel GUI settings stored into it. If an EXS Instrument does have settings stored into it, every time it's loaded these settings will get loaded into the front panel GUI settings.

Under the Options menu in the EXS front panel GUI, the first six commands are related to this functionality:

- "Recall Default EXS24 Settings" will wipe whatever's going on with the current front panel settings and replace them with a plain-jane set. This can be useful when dealing with Instruments converted via Chicken Systems Translator or imported from other sources (like SoundFonts or GigaSampler), which often results in garbled settings that produce no sound.

- "Recall Settings From Instrument" will wipe whatever's going on with the current front panel settings and replace them with whatever settings are stored with the Instrument file. This is useful if you've wrecked your carefully adjusted mod matrix or whatever and need to go back to what the Instrument has stored with it. This is basically the same as selecting a different Instrument and then going back to the current Instrument.

- "Save Settings To Instrument" will wipe whatever settings (if any) have been previously saved into the Instrument and replace them with the current state of the front panel GUI settings.

- "Delete Settings From Instrument" will wipe whatever settings (if any) have been previously saved into the Instrument and leave that Instrument "settings-less". If you do this, the next time you load that Instrument the front panel settings will remain at the state they were in from the previously-loaded Instrument. This means that a "settings-less" Instrument will "inherit" the settings of whatever Instrument was previously loaded. This can be very useful when you want to copy and paste settings from one "template" Instrument to other Instruments - use "Delete Settings" to strip off the stored settings from the destination Instruments, then load the desired template Instrument, and then load a desired destination Instrument and hit "Save Settings To Instrument". Now the destination Instrument has inherited the settings from the template Instrument and that status has been saved so that the next time the destination Instrument is loaded it will come up with the template's settings. This can be a quick way to roll through a batch of newly created (or imported) Instruments and force them all to have the settings from a desired template. I do this all the time. Roll through a batch of newly imported Instruments that have garbled settings from Translator, Delete Settings from all of them, then load a desired template Instrument with all of my fancy mod matrix settings, then for each of the newly imported and stripped Instruments, load the Instrument and Save Settings for each one. Boom. Now all of those newly imported Instruments have my template settings stored into their front panel and will load that way every time.

- "Copy Settings" and "Paste Settings" operate as expected. This lets you copy and paste settings from one Instrument to another. You can use this in a similar manner to the paragraph above, where you copy the settings from a desired template Instrument, and then paste them to the destination Instruments, remembering to Save Settings To Instrument for each one - otherwise those pasted settings will only be in effect in the current song, and only until you load another Instrument into that slot.

Note that all changes you make to the front panel settings will be saved with the current Logic Project, even if you do not use the "Save Settings To Instrument". This lets you make "this instance only" changes and not worry about messing up the saved settings that will be recalled whenever that Instrument is loaded. You can even load the same Instrument into multiple instances in the same Project, and make different changes to each instance, and it will all work as expected, without any of the settings from those multiple instances messing up the settings that are saved to the Instrument, and without the settings from one instance messing up other instances.

In essence, all EXS front panel settings are treated like any other "plugin settings", in that they are automatically snap-shotted and stored into the Project file without any further user action - the same way you don't have to use "Save Plugin Settings" for each eq and compressor plugin while you work - the Project just remembers them all and they come back the next time the Project is loaded. This means you can make various tweaks to ADSR, filter, and even complex mod matrix settings without needing to "Save Settings" or do anything else really - and you can do it separately for multiple instances of the same EXS Instrument within a single Project. It's perfect!

There's also a couple of other commands in the front-panel Options menu - "Rename Instrument..." and "Save Instrument As...". These will operate as expected on the Instrument file, allowing you to rename the current Instrument or Save a duplicate copy under another name. Whatever settings were most recently saved into the Instrument will be the ones that get copied to the newly-saved Instrument.

When it comes to changes made within the EXS Editor window, that's a little different. Now we're dealing with the sample map itself, separately from any of the front-panel settings stuff. In the Editor window, under the Instrument menu, there are the following commands:

- "New" will create a new EXS Instrument with a garbage temporary name, usually something like "Instrument #636". This will also be "loaded" into the EXS front panel, so you'll be able to hear it while you work on it, and it will inherit whatever front-panel settings were in the previously-loaded Instrument (if any). This means you will be working on your new sample map "within" whatever fancy filter and mod matrix settings were previously on the EXS front panel. Nice.

- "Open" will allow you to navigate to and open an EXS Instrument file directly from disc. Basically the same as loading that Instrument from the browser or EXS front panel pop-up and then hitting the Edit button.

- "Save" will save the current state of the maps within the EXS Editor back into the stored Instrument file on disc. I use this command so often that I have assigned a Key Command to it. If you close the EXS Editor window without using this command (or "Save As..." or "Export"), any changes you've made to your sample map will be lost when another Instrument is loaded into that instance. I think (but I haven't verified) that any new edits are lost at the moment the Editor window is closed without Saving, but those edits may persist until another Instrument is loaded into that instance. So, if you're editing your sample map and you mess everything up, just close the Editor window and flick to another Instrument, and then back to your desired Instrument, and it will revert to the earlier saved state. Note that this "Save" command only Saves the Instrument file itself - it does not save, export, copy, or move any of the samples which that Instrument uses.

- "Rename" probably operates as expected - but I've never actually used it so I can't really say. I always duplicate and rename Instrument files directly in the Finder.

- "Export Sampler Instrument and Sample Files" is the big one. As expected, this will export the current edited state of the map displayed in the Editor window and all of the samples that are referenced by that Instrument's current state to a new user-specified location. This will create a new folder with the same name as the Instrument and the samples will be put into that folder, and it will create another folder called "Sampler Instruments" that contains only that Instrument. Now you've got to move them to the correct locations manually. This is a bit of a hassle, since you've got to do some manual clean-up in the Finder to move things to their correct locations, but is useful because it is sort of like a "consolidate" function in that it copies only the samples which are actually referenced by the current Instrument. This is useful if you're creating an Instrument that uses a bunch of samples from a source folder, but not all of those samples, and you want to automatically copy only the used samples to a new location. Note that the referenced samples are copied, not moved, from the original location, and that the source samples and source folder remain exactly as they were before.

It's all clear as mud, right? The only thing I'm not totally sure of is whether an Instrument that's Saved or Exported from within the Editor window inherits the current state (and possibly edited from the saved state) of the front panel settings, or whether it uses the previously-saved settings. But you can figure that one out in ten seconds.

I really wish you could assign key commands to the Recall / Save / Delete / Copy / Paste Settings commands in the front-panel Options menu - it gets a little tiring to constantly pull down that menu and precisely navigate to the correct command when I'm jacking around with 173 newly-imported Instruments and trying to give them all the same front panel settings. So I guess that would be one "feature request" I'd have.
 
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Another quick point - Note that many of the EXS Editor window operations will cause Logic to re-scan the EXS Library folder after they're enacted - this is so the Browser and the Instrument Selector pop-up on the EXS front panel will show any newly-created Instruments. This is not something you can turn off, but it's the same thing that happens when Logic is launched, and which can be manually forced using the "Refresh Menu" command under the front-panel EXS Instrument Selector pop-up, or by Control-Clicking in the EXS Instrument Browser at the left of the Main Window. If your re-scan seems like it takes forever, make sure you have stored only EXS Instruments within that directory - if you're sloppy and leave tons of sample files inside the Sampler Instruments directories, the re-scan process will take forever as Logic looks at each and every sample and tries to determine if it's an EXS Instrument.

That's why I have a separate folder for all of the samples that are used in my EXS Instruments - this folder contains a set of sub folders that are identical to the layout of my Instruments folder, and each set of samples gets a folder with the same name as the Instrument to which those samples "belong", and that folder contains all, and only, the samples referenced by that identically-named EXS Instrument. I actually append " Samples" to the end of these folder names for clarity, but you don't have to - it's perfectly okay to have a folder named "Drum Kit 01" that contains the samples referenced by an EXS Instrument named "Drum Kit 01", and since the EXS Instrument file has a suffix of ".exs" the folder and Instrument file can live next to each other if they need to and the names won't conflict.
 
I like the EXS as is really. Alchemy is always on standby if you want to go further.
I'd wish for a GUI update, but keeping the same basic layout and colours. (Yes, green!)
The only thing I'd really want to add is autosampler abilities but I guess that would be part of the wider Logic app anyway.
 
I really hope they don’t mess with it too much, or try and turn it into something Kontakt-ish. We have Kontakt for that and the beauty of EXS is its simplicity and incredible efficiency. I can run over a hundred instances of it on a laptop no problem whereas the same amount of just EMPTY Kontakt instances cripples it. It’s nice to have a light sampler for when you don’t need fancy legato scripting, and in a way it’s limitations force me to be creative when I sample stuff. Starve yourself of resources, and you become more resourceful, as a well known EXS power user likes to mention. I think EXS is fine as it is. Sure, some workflow improvements would be nice, but only if it doesn’t affect its efficiency. Otherwise leave it alone.

Edit: You know what would be nice, given how light it is on resources? If I could run it on my iPad Pro, and move my created instruments back to logic.
 
I guess I should wish for EXS to include more (most? all?) of the features from Redmatica's KeyMap software. Auto-Map by Pitch Detection, Note Name Embedded in File Name, and Velocity Range Embedded in File Name are pretty crucial to me and I still use KeyMap all the time. The built-in automatic mapping in the EXS Editor doesn't work.... at all. KeyMap is so confusing and cluttered, but it's got a few amazing features that let me build EXS Instruments so quickly.... sigh.
 
I guess I should wish for EXS to include more (most? all?) of the features from Redmatica's KeyMap software. Auto-Map by Pitch Detection, Note Name Embedded in File Name, and Velocity Range Embedded in File Name are pretty crucial to me and I still use KeyMap all the time. The built-in automatic mapping in the EXS Editor doesn't work.... at all. KeyMap is so confusing and cluttered, but it's got a few amazing features that let me build EXS Instruments so quickly.... sigh.

Keymap has this one feature- like a melodyne re-pitch thing, where you can create a wider sample set from a limited sample set. Like say you want to extend a sample a few notes lower, but just extending the note range gets you that slowed down playback. This re-synthesis pitch thing does a good job so you end up with new samples for the extended range, and they sound more natural, well at least to me. Not that I’m using keymap all that much anymore.

I was always interested in using keymap to create 5.1 instruments, it looked promising for that- and then I just never seemed to need to do that... (shrugging shoulders)
 
Another quick point - Note that many of the EXS Editor window operations will cause Logic to re-scan the EXS Library folder after they're enacted - this is so the Browser and the Instrument Selector pop-up on the EXS front panel will show any newly-created Instruments. This is not something you can turn off, but it's the same thing that happens when Logic is launched, and which can be manually forced using the "Refresh Menu" command under the front-panel EXS Instrument Selector pop-up, or by Control-Clicking in the EXS Instrument Browser at the left of the Main Window. If your re-scan seems like it takes forever, make sure you have stored only EXS Instruments within that directory - if you're sloppy and leave tons of sample files inside the Sampler Instruments directories, the re-scan process will take forever as Logic looks at each and every sample and tries to determine if it's an EXS Instrument.

That's why I have a separate folder for all of the samples that are used in my EXS Instruments - this folder contains a set of sub folders that are identical to the layout of my Instruments folder, and each set of samples gets a folder with the same name as the Instrument to which those samples "belong", and that folder contains all, and only, the samples referenced by that identically-named EXS Instrument. I actually append " Samples" to the end of these folder names for clarity, but you don't have to - it's perfectly okay to have a folder named "Drum Kit 01" that contains the samples referenced by an EXS Instrument named "Drum Kit 01", and since the EXS Instrument file has a suffix of ".exs" the folder and Instrument file can live next to each other if they need to and the names won't conflict.

And that’s why I liked the feature to do monolithic exs files. But not sure if the monolithic file can stream from disk. ? I like the monolithic file structure because all the samples are embedded along with the exs instrument.

-edit-

ok, so now I’m not even sure if you can save out as monolithic from the Logic exs menus, or is that just a keymap thing?
 
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