suggestions for sampling and looping?

[Analogkid]

Ive been trying for a while to sample and loop a few snipits of songs but havent be able to get them seamless on my Alesis Fusion. I also have a K2000 but never tried to make a sample and load it. Any one have any suggestions on an affordable used sampler that will loop a selection of a song? Would my best bet be something like cake walk for my PC?

[Grey Loki]

Your best bet would be either the EXS24 sampler built into Logic's Apple, Native Instrument's Kontakt, or if you're looking for a hardware sampler, something like the AKAI S5000 (which comes with a PC/Mac editor and USB connectivity), or if you want the 80s/90s hiphop/pop sampler 'sound', something like the AKAI S900, which comes with a 3.5" floppy drive.

For someone who's new to sampling, I would also recommend you pick up a copy of 'Sound Synthesis and Sampling' by Martin Russ - it buffs you up on all the theory of sampling, and synthesis, surprisingly.

Furthermore on the 'new to sampling' aspect, you would probably find it easiest to 'get up and go' with Kontakt, which is actually a very sophisticated sampler, and does things that hardware synths would find difficult, very easily.

[Analogkid]

Your best bet would be either the EXS24 sampler built into Logic's Apple, Native Instrument's Kontakt, or if you're looking for a hardware sampler, something like the AKAI S5000 (which comes with a PC/Mac editor and USB connectivity), or if you want the 80s/90s hiphop/pop sampler 'sound', something like the AKAI S900, which comes with a 3.5" floppy drive.

For someone who's new to sampling, I would also recommend you pick up a copy of 'Sound Synthesis and Sampling' by Martin Russ - it buffs you up on all the theory of sampling, and synthesis, surprisingly.

Furthermore on the 'new to sampling' aspect, you would probably find it easiest to 'get up and go' with Kontakt, which is actually a very sophisticated sampler, and does things that hardware synths would find difficult, very easily.

Thanks a bunch Grey, Ill check em out

[Analogkid]

Grey,

Would my IBM Centrino laptop be enough to run kontact?

[Analogkid]

schweet! thanks!

[Grey Loki]

Taken from the Kontakt website

Windows XP or Windows Vista (32 bit), Pentium or Athlon 1.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM

300 MB free disc space, 34 GB for complete installation, DVD drive

Most modern laptops will meet that standard, though I would highly recommend:

1) Maxing out your RAM - since Kontakt is a sampler, it's a RAM hungry beast
2) Running Vista in a live (or studio) environment is just asking for trouble. It really is a shitty OS, and I personally will be sticking with XP for as long as it's supported, and probably longer still.
EDIT: 3) Buy an external drive, too (Something like the Maxtor 3200 series), so that you're not storing your samples on the same HDD as all your system stuff - that would get it bogged down, but if you have a HDD dedicated to storing samples, everything will run faster, especially in the long run.
Mentioning that brings up 4) Put everything on separate partitions - data separation is the key to not losing everything when your HDD dies. There are several tutorials for partitioning and general advice for the audio world - a quick google turns up several.

Hope this helps :)