Serato

Although generally thought of as a
purveyor of top notch DJ software,
New Zealand-based developer Serato’s earliest
success was actually in the studio arena, and
their debut product, Pitch ‘n Time, is still
regarded by many as the best pitchshifting and
timestretching plugin on the market. Now, the
company are once again setting their sights on
the producer dollar with Sample, a pad-based
sample player.
Making absolutely no pretence at being a
full-on sampler along the lines of Native
Instruments’ Kontakt or Steinberg’s HALion,
Sample (VST/AU) is instead tightly focused on
making the process of extracting phrases and
one-shot sounds out of full tracks and loops as
fast and easy as possible. Its worklow centres
on the creation of marker-deined “cues” – a
concept that will be immediately recognisable
to anyone familiar with Serato DJ, NI Traktor or
any other digital DJing application – and the
various ways in which they can be created and
played back.
Making waves
Dragging an audio ile (the major compressed
and uncompressed formats are supported) into
Sample sees it analysed by the Pitch ‘n Time
algorithm to establish its key and tempo, and
Serato
Sample $99
With Pitch ’n’ Time under the hood and an MPC-inspired worklow,
this streamlined plugin wants to take you back to the old school…
“Sample is tightly
focused on making the
process of extracting
phrases and one-shot
sounds fast and easy”
WAVEFORM OVERVIEW
Quickly navigate the
source track
CUE REGION
The section of
audio played
back by the
associated pad
CUE PLAY MODE
Choose latched or
gated triggering
PAD CONTROLS
A handful of
editable
parameters,
including more PnT
VOICE MODE
Switch to Poly
to play chords
PITCH…
Shift pitch up or down
from the detected key
AU TOSET
Sample can create
cues for you in four
different ways
PADS
Each of the 16
pads triggers its
own cue
KEYBOARD MODE
Pitch the selected cue up
and down the keyboard
…’N TIME
Sync to host or
timestretch freely
from 1 to 999bpm
rendered as a waveform in the main display,
with a fully zoomed-out overview above. With
the Sync button engaged, playback is locked
to host tempo; with Sync disengaged, the
detected tempo is used as a base, with PnT’s
incredibly high-quality timestretching enabling
it to be incrementally raised all the way up to
999bpm or down to 1bpm (the latter extreme
invariably yielding an awesome drone of some
kind). Key detection is good, too, and up to 24
semitones and 50 cents of shift is available in
either direction – although there’s no way to
rename the suggested key when the algorithm
gets it wrong.
Once you’ve found a sound that you
like within the source track or clip, zoom and
scroll the waveform using the mouse and/or
key commands (the mouse wheel is
supported, apparently, but our 2016 MacBook
Pro’s trackpad didn’t work) to position the
playhead at the start of it, then click one of the
92 / COMPUTER MUSIC / Autumn 2017
> reviews / serato sample
CMU248.rev_sample.indd 92 18/08/2017 15:23