Specifications

Part 1 Introduction to Sampling
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Part 1 Introduction to Sampling
◊ The Birth and Evolution of Sampling
The Birth and Evolution of Sampling
A digital sampler is a general term for an electronic
musical instrument that uses digital audio technology to
produce all kinds of sounds using recordings of the
sounds themselves as the sound source.
The beginnings of sampling can be traced back to
musique concrete , in which simple tape recorders and
other electronic devices were used to alter live sounds
and simulate real musical instruments. But the
simulation of musical instruments lies not only in the
roots of samplers, but also in the development of
electronic instruments themselves. In any case,
electronic instruments evolved to be able to readily
reproduce sounds that were closer to the real thing.
When analog synthesizers first began to appear on the
market, they were touted as being able to simulate the
sounds of trumpets, violins, wind and waves, showing
that their expressive power as musical instruments was
infinite. However, the sounds that these synthesizers
produced were approximate simulations, and did not
sound exactly like the real thing.
In the early 1980’s, digital samplers made their debut.
Samplers are musical instruments that incorporate
digital audio technology and have the ability to play any
recorded sound in a musical scale.
Because samplers make “recordings” of real musical
instruments and play them back as the sound source,
simulating musical instruments has evolved from the
“like the real thing” of the analog synthesizer era to
“being the real thing.”
In the early 80’s, samplers were extremely expensive
machines, and thus were not in common use. But by the
mid-80’s, moderately priced samplers appeared, and
this new breed of electronic instrument became widely
recognized. At that time, wave memory was small and
expensive, so long sampling times were impossible.
Also, processing speeds were limited, so users had to
be content with low sampling rates and with quantiza-
tion resolution limited to 12 bits. (Considering that,
in the audio world, 44.1-kHz/16-bit CDs had already
appeared on the scene, the digital audio performance of
these samplers was relatively low.)
In addition, wave editing such as looping was
complicated and difficult, and making high-quality
samples of real instruments was extremely difficult for
the end user. The use of sample library disks provided
by manufacturers was common. By the end of the 80’s,
models capable of stereo sampling at 44.1 kHz and
16-bit resolution, the same as an audio CD, appeared,
and their basic performance had improved greatly.
Sampling had entered a new era.
When we entered the 90’s, lower prices for memory,
higher CPU speeds, and improvements in A/D and D/A
conversion technologies led to further improvements in
basic performance—such as increases in sample
length, sound quality, the number of onboard samples
and the number of notes that could be produced
simultaneously. In contrast to the very first samplers,
which had less than 1 MB of memory and could only
produce from 6 to 8 notes, present-day samplers have
made phenomenal progress, featuring 128 MB of
memory and up to 126 notes of polyphony (Yamaha
A5000). Filters and built-in effects have also come to
have performance on a par with (or even better than)
digital synthesizers. Thus, samplers have evolved from
samplers capable of playing back only samples from
sound libraries to samplers that can synthesize.
It can be said that samplers have almost perfected the
simulation of real instruments. However, they are still
limited in their ability to faithfully reproduce the dynamic
variations in tone that real musical instruments produce.
Today, the simulation of real musical instruments is
moving in the direction of DSP-based modeling
technology such as Yamaha’s VA (Virtual Acoustic)
synthesizers (see page 11).
“Sampling” refers to the conversion of sound to a digital signal; a “sampler” is the machine that does the sampling. Prior to the
advent of digital samplers, instruments such as the Chamberlin and the Mellotron existed, which played back sound recorded on
magnetic tape when a key was struck. These were, in a sense, analog samplers.
At the end of the 80’s, low-cost PCM synthesizers appeared. These synthesizers used sampling technology and contained a large
amount of samples in their read-only memory. These units were easy enough for anyone to create the sounds of real instruments
and analog synthesizers. Since then, PCM synthesizers have evolved into GM/XG tone generators, and have established themselves
as one type of electronic instrument.