Keyboard question

[Heroin Puppy]

Alright, is there anyway I could use a Xboard to control audio samples? Like, say I had a sound clip or something on my computer, I could a computer program or some other means to assign that clip to a certain key or something?

[DZComposer]

It's called a sampler. Many people here, myself included, use them. Many (probably most) studios have at least one.

There are many out there.

There are the big ones, such as Gigastudio, Kontakt (what I use), HALion, sampletank, and others. (expect to spend more than $400 for each of those unless you qualify for crossgrades)

There are free ones, such as the many free creative soundfont (SF2) format players out there. If you have a SoundBlaster Live, Audigy (1, 2, or 4), or X-Fi card then you already have a sampler as they ship with soundfont players. To create soundfonts, you need a sound font creator (unlike most samplers where you can create sample sets out of the box). If you have one of the cards mentioned earlier, you can download Vienna from Creative for free. Else, you'll have to buy anohter editor.

There are hardware samplers.

Some sequencers, such as Fruity Loops, have built-in samplers.