Sample Quality

[The Pezman]

How does one make the judgment on the quality of one's samples? How do you know when it sounds "good enough?" Are the samples from Logic head and shoulders above the ones from Garageband? What about the ones from more specialized sample packages? How do you evaluate things like these?

[Yoozer]

How do you evaluate things like these?

For single samples/loops/effects:

Are they usable for your project? If so, good.

If not, are they usable for another project? If so, good.

If not, can you manipulate them (using effects, EQ, compression, etc) in such a way that they become usable for your project? If so, good.

If not, are parts of them usable for your project (e.g. cut out a kick-ass snare out of a weak-ass loop)? If so, good.

If not, can the sample be spiced up with effects? If so, good.

If not, you're probably not using effects enough; then again, if you have to pipe everything through a horrible modular mess of effects to get anything useful out of it, you may ask yourself if the sample is of any use, or if it's just your effects chain being awesome.

The more effort you have to put in it, the less attractive it becomes to use the sample, unless you're doing sounddesign instead of composition. Even then, raw material is important; you can't polish a turd.

For entire libraries of loops/effects/percussion:

Is there enough variation, or is 01_c3_kick_001.wav very similar to 01_c3_kick_135.wav? (unless intended; for instance, a TR909 has several settings for the kick drum, and per-knob settings/combinations give you the entire range. Even then, looking into a modeling solution is an option). Do the loops blend properly - e.g., if they're meant to sound like a whole, do they?

For entire libraries of instruments:

For "natural" instruments - have all velocity layers been recorded properly and have they been programmed properly? For piano, do you notice the velocity switching or zone switching? Are there loop points, and are they noticeable?

Velocity switching: a noticeable or steep difference in volume or character when you play with a velocity that's only a bit higher.

Zone switching: when you have a sampled acoustic piano which consists of only a few samples that are transposed up or down the keyboard, adjacent notes may have a noticeably different character. This has a jarring effect; it should be smooth and not noticeable.

For "synthetic" instruments - are there noticeable loop points when you play a note? Does the sound suddenly lose its liveliness and animation when you hold it for a while? Do you hear a clicking sound or a dip/peak in volume because someone did a sloppy job on programming/normalizing the loop? (rather unforgivable unless you're using it deliberately as an effect).

For hard-to-sample sounds like FM, ringmodulation, PWM, oscillator detune and oscillator sync, it's often a better choice to just use a modeled instrument, since it can do those effects - and won't take up as much space, plus that it won't trouble you with loop points. Due to CPU constraints, they may not sound as good, though.

On the other hand, for those aforementioned sounds, sampling can be a solution if the original machine doesn't offer zone/velocity switching - you could sample a non-velocity sensitive Moog with different sync levels so you'd suddenly have a velocity-sensitive patch.

[Rozovian]

How does one make the judgment on the quality of one's samples? How do you know when it sounds "good enough?" Are the samples from Logic head and shoulders above the ones from Garageband? What about the ones from more specialized sample packages? How do you evaluate things like these?

Logic, both Express and the big badass Pro version comes with EXS24 where you can load multi-sampled instruments and manipulate them far more than the virtual instrument settings in GB. You can also load one or several samples and map them any way you want - I did that recently with a sfark drum kit that wouldn't work. sf2 works in EXS24 tho.

With LE and LP, you also get Ultrabeat, a drum synth, basically a customizeable drum kit with all kinds of cool effects; and samples for it. There's a bunch of samples that come with Logic Express, but if you get Logic Pro you get all the Jam Packs (not ewqlso but not bad). They're dry, but Logic Pro also comes with convolution reverb and a bunch of other good effects that can give you a natural-sounding reverb.

Get Pro. LE will be a big step up from GB, but you'll soon want more samples, better effects, etc.. Get Pro. Big awesome samples in little GarageBand isn't such a good idea either.

As for evaluating samples, it's just a practice/experience thing. You need to know both bad samples and good ones to tell the difference, but most can be made to sound passable with the right processing. See Yoozer's post.

[OceansAndrew]

Garageband actually has some good samples if you can figure out how to best highlight them. Every one of my mixes on the site has at least 1 Garageband instrument in it, and usually all you need to put on them is a stereo delay or a little bit of reverb. Hit me up with a pm if you want specifics.

Usually you can tell a bad sample from a good one by the amount of character it has, and what kind of minuscule flaws it contains. A good sample will have all kinds of inaudible but perceivable flaws that make it sound more interesting. A lot of the "natural" Garageband instruments like brass and woodwinds don't really have these, but you can add them with effects, or just use them in layers to make the sound more interesting.

Some of the Garageband samples that are really good, IMO:

*Electric Piano has surprisingly good velocity levels and gets a nice and warm distortion at really high velocities.

*Pretty much every analogue synth kicks ass, though that might just be my own bias. :3

*Steel string guitar is pretty good if you keep the velocity low and don't go too high up in the octaves.

*The various drum kits are pretty weak, but can be good if layered. I use a ton of the misc percussion from here though.

*The piano isn't very good, but if you don't have anything better (like me), layer it with the equally not-good strings and it creates a pretty nice sound.

The real improvement with Logic over Garageband is the effect plugins, really. Even the basics, like reverb and delay are 100x better, even with the cheapy version of Logic.

[po!]

if it sounds good then it sounds good.. pretty simple really. everybody is going to have different opinions on what sounds good. it also depends on what type of samples and what you are using them for. violin samples might sound good individually but horrible when you put them together in a phrase.. and it would be judged on how close it sounds to the real thing. synth samples on the other hand.. anything goes.. it all depends on how you use it

[dannthr]

Samples of any calibre also require a measure of assembling, scripting, programming, mixing, and mastering that is highly dependent upon the user's skill.

Crappy samples in the hands of a capable user can sound great, amazing samples in the hands of an inept user can sound higly mediocre.

It's something you're going to have to work on. It's more important that you learn how to stretch the limits of the samples/gear you already have before upgrading to more advanced gear. The process is educational and you will be better off when you have the attitude of getting the most bang for your buck.

There is no real upper limit to how much money you can spend on samples.

So just make the most of the resources you have and carefully pick your upgrades based on absolute need.