Where is the sampler?

[Blackmusicaxe]

Hi all.

I have had this daw for little over a 4 months and decided to open it today for the first time. Being an Ableton power user, i'm familiar with how daws work i create beats for a living. I did some research and stumbled on this forum. I was going through some tutorials and reading some posts and I saw that it has a built in sampler player where the guy scrooge the vocal down and up.

Where can I find the sampler of the daw? I cant seem to find it. 

[Byron Dickens]

There isn't one.

[Will.]

I assume you're refereing to the video I made on how to do varispeed in Cakewalk using the "Loop Construction." 

This one: 

https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/topic/49641-fr-loop-construction/

The Loop Construction looks like a sampler, but it is far from one. You can access it by pressing Alt+7 to open it. There's not much to it though accept for doing pitch notes - and that's it.

Unfortunately, Cakewalk does not have a sampler. Assuming you have read the post - aka Feature Request as what it is you will notice that we're trying to move the LP (loop constructions) automation envelopes to the itself for more flexiblity on the pitch envelopes. 

Kindly be so kind to put a +1 as a vote in the above. That would help a lot and be much appreciated. 

Edited October 5, 2022 by Will.

[David Baay]

Well-known free ones; there may be others:

https://www.tx16wx.com/

https://www.magix.com/ca/music-editing/free-download/independence-free-sampler-software/

[Blackmusicaxe]

Correct on the link Will. 

So there isnt a sampler?  The DAW looks great, but without a sampler i dont think it will work for me. External things are great tools, but i feel its unnecessary to use in a DAW. Every music program should have its own. It makes for more convenient production and it does not burnout the cpu. 

[Byron Dickens]

Using 3rd party VSTis will not "burnout the CPU," whatever the hell that is.

 

There is, however, a longstanding feature request for such a thing . Perhaps you should add your voice to the choir.

Edited October 6, 2022 by bdickens

[user 905133]

3 hours ago, Blackmusicaxe said:

So there isnt a sampler?  The DAW looks great, but without a sampler i dont think it will work for me. External things are great tools, but i feel its unnecessary to use in a DAW.

That's one of the things I like about Cakewalk--if it doesn't meet someone's needs for any reason at all, they don't have to use it.

3 hours ago, Blackmusicaxe said:

Every music program should have its own.

If this is your reason, feel free not to use it.

Personally, I like that I can use plug-ins, but I can understand that some people find them problematic. 

[Will.]

Yeah. The "sampler discussion" has become a real sensitive topic over the years. 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Will.

[David Baay]

Pardon my ignorance but aren't most 'included' samplers implemented as plugins?

[user 905133]

7 hours ago, David Baay said:

Pardon my ignorance but aren't most 'included' samplers implemented as plugins?

If I remember correctly, the hard core advocates have made a case for an integrated sampler.  My take-away from feature requests I read over the years is that the goal in part is to have built-in menus and assignable short-cuts that enable such things as highlighting of audio, selection of clips, etc. that cause various sample manipulation techniques to happen while doing normal editing within Cakewalk. 

To me, in many ways it is the audio equivalent of requests to integrate some CAL-like functions.  For example, highlight a group of notes, right click, select "retrograde inversion," (or use a shortcut key assigned to retrograde inversion) and the notes get changed from within Cakewalk itself.   

I know I am not being comprehensive based on the feature requests I have read; this is just a summary of how I understand what has been meant by integration as opposed to using a plug-in.

ADDENDUM: Here is just one of several threads that have posts that describe what an integrated sampler might look like:

As abacab notes, different people have different ideas on what they mean by a sampler.  However, some of the posts in that thread give insights on sampler integration (as opposed to using a sampler as a plug-in).

Edited October 7, 2022 by User 905133
(2) ADDENDUM (with link added); (1) added missing words ("as," "feature"); added reference to using a shortcut in the RI example

[Will.]

1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

If I remember correctly, the hard core advocates have made a case for an integrated sampler. 

This is true.

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I know I am not being comprehensive based on the feature requests I have read; this is just a summary of how I understand what has been meant by integration as opposed to using a plug-in.

Interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the lesson, and for taking the time to enlighten me. I'm largely ignorant in this area because I'm an old-skool imrpvovisor/composer.

[Starship Krupa]

On 10/6/2022 at 9:16 AM, Blackmusicaxe said:

So there isnt a sampler?  The DAW looks great, but without a sampler i dont think it will work for me.

You can either drop Cakewalk, crack your wallet, and get a DAW that comes with a sampler or do what the rest of us who want an integrated sampler are doing: pick Sitala or TX16wx and wait for the Cakewalk devs to implement it (and crossing our fingers that they do it in such a way that we find it useful). To me, the rest of Cakewalk's features balance the fact that for now I have to bolt on a sampler. I have a reasonable expectation that this highly-requested feature will eventually be delivered.

If it's a simple phrase sampler with some built-in editing that you want, Sitala works pretty well. You can drag Cakewalk clips directly on to pads from the timeline and/or drag and drop samples from Cakewalk's Browser.

As long as you don't stew about "oh noes, mys DAW haz no samplur" it'll work.

On 10/6/2022 at 9:16 AM, Blackmusicaxe said:

Every music program should have its own. It makes for more convenient production and it does not burnout the cpu. 

I agree with the first half of your statement but there are no guarantees about the level of impact a sampler will have on CPU resources, whether it ships with the DAW or not.

[Will.]

55 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

I agree with the first half of your statement but there are no guarantees about the level of impact a sampler will have on CPU resources, whether it ships with the DAW or not.

In fact: Some does. These ones are nomally bundled with a lot of preset libraries. 

ADSR sample manager, Big Fish Audio Momentum - even the TX16. When you have multiple inserts open - yeah they do. At least my desktop 6th Gen i7, 16 GB does. Have not tried this on the new system. One thing in sound design you should always remember is not yo commut to your audio yet and sitala is far from a sampler its more like a player than an actual sampler I have it too.

I'll go as far as to say: between it and our very own LC (loop construction) theres not much difference between it except the pads and that you can trigger it via midi keyboard - otherwise theres nothing. I'm actually in the process of creating a video that demonstrates something - so keep an eye out for this in the tutorial section. 

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I have a reasonable expectation that this highly-requested feature will eventually be delivered.

And I have a feelling, a hint was given a day or two ago right here on the forum. I might be wrong. ?

[Syphus]

Although a small point - by using a third-party sampler (as a VST plug-in) , you have a varied choice of what you can use for any given situation.

Sometimes you may only need a simple one (FX) or maybe a complex one (for beat generation).

By NOT having one integrated into the DAW, there is no compromises happening.  Bakers do not have to keep developing the application for user demands, and less chance of application problems.  This is just my opinion and doesn't mean I would not welcome a built in sampler . . .   Just an observation.

Syphus

[Starship Krupa]

On 10/8/2022 at 4:25 AM, pwalpwal said:

the whole premise of this thread is wrong because every modern daw is more of "a sampler" than any sentimental idea of "a sampler" if you ever used "a sampler" in the 80s....

Dawg, chill. ?

While you apparently weren't looking (as I wasn't for a while, the 80's? Really?), there started to be a thing called "soft samplers." Sonar at one point even included one.

While some emulate those old Akai or whatever hardware ones, there are others that are much simpler samplers, they use features that can only be available on a computer.

The idea behind these soft samplers is that rather than copying and pasting your hi hat sample 100X, you can trigger the sound with a MIDI note. Or in another case, rather than trying to stack samples of different pitches to make chords, you can spread them out on the keyboard. These allow you to even play in real time where you want the sample to sound.

Yes, if you have an audio event that only repeats once or twice (see the dialog samples in "Sensation" from the link in my sig), it's easier to just drop them on the timeline where you want them. But if I were using a rhythmic element like someone shouting "yeah!" 10X in the song, maybe stuttering it, it's much easier to just assign it to a soft sampler slot and trigger it with a MIDI note at the appropriate times.

Bottom line, most (if not every) other major DAWs include a soft sampler instrument of some kind. Why would they do that if the "premise" were "wrong?" It's a popular workflow. Sometimes us auld fahrts gotta get used to these things.

Different features for different creatures.