Developer Christian Halten let us know that SampleRobot Pro, an application designed to automate and streamline the creation of sample-based instruments, has been updated to version 6.6.
The update adds sample export support for the Waldorf Quantum and Iridium synthesizers.
Here’s what they have to say about SampleRobot 6.6 Pro:
“Working with large sample libraries can be challenging, especially when mapping samples with multiple velocity layers manually.
Quantum and Iridium users can respire now. SampleRobot Pro can do all the work – automatically. From recording and loop creation to multi-layer mapping and export, all steps are controlled automatically in one application, with projects that even offer a down-sampling and channel-remapping option on export.
It is possible to record high-end quality and export at a lower resolution, if there is need for more sampling space on the Quantum or Iridium. The results of SampleRobot’s advanced loop searching algorithms are written to the map file as well.
Sustained samples with inaudible loops – no problem. It’s easy to create and export complex multisamples in one go. SampleRobot even writes the whole Quantum and Iridium file structure to a USB or SD storage medium. Just unmount, insert and import – that’s it, designed for the fun of making samples for these creative machines.”
SampleRobot Pro Features:
- Sampling of MIDI instruments completely automatically, incl. multi-velocity and advanced MIDI CC control.
- Sampling of acoustic instruments and sounds in semi-automatic mode with countdown and tuning oscillator.
- Sampling of VST2 instruments completely automatically with the included Instrument Host featuring offline bouncing.
- WaveRobot – Large graphical loop and markers editor with freely scalable waveform view, stereo and loop area overlay.
- Instrument Copier – Sampling of a whole MIDI sound bank in one go.
- Advanced automatic loop detection algorithm, multiple loop modes and crossfade types.
- Multisample exports in various software and hardware formats incl. up-/downsampling and channel re-mapping options, loop and crossfade rendering.
- Project Wizard and Preset Manager for easy setup of sampling projects.
- Estimate time (to record) and size (on the drive) feature for all projects in the list.
- Automatic sample import-mapping based on embedded root keys or names.
- Various export naming options with widely flexible wildcards.
- MIDI Monitor for analysis of signals.
System Specifications:
MacOS 10.12 (Sierra) and higher, M1 compatible, Windows 11 / 10 / 8 / 7.
Pricing and Availability:
The update is free for current SampleRobot Pro 6 users. SampleRobot is available for 249 €.
I got a chance to give this a test run with SR, the Pro 3 and the Iridium Desktop.
It was not 100% smooth, but it probably saved me more than 15-30 minutes of noodling with the touch screen and soft-knobs, which I am VERY thankful for.
My first complaint is that the export process assumed that I wanted to write to an SD/USB card rather than my sample library on a regular storage drive.
I think this intended to help stupid people put their files in the right place, but it really just steals flexibility from people who know how to use file-systems, kind of like how Apple designs everything they do.
The other issue is that the map file did not load into the Iridium on the first attempt to add the sample set to the particle oscillator. This may be not be anything that the folks at SR have any control over. Automap picked up the set accurately.
Overall, very happy about this, and can easily work around the less flexible save dialog. Hoping that the mapping is less of an issue, and maybe some process error on my part.
I’ve been using SampleRobot for about six years now. Given that I was, at the time, working entirely within Windows, it was the best autosampling option at the time, and its improvements, enhancements and expanded capabilities over that time have been relatively slow to materialize, but I have been impressed by each of them.. I look forward to updating to this new version, given my substantial investment in Iridia.
Really missing the Kontakt 6/7 export…
Why? Kontakt has always been backward compatible, so really any Kontakt formatted keymap/sample set output to Kontakt 4 or 5 should work perfectly well in Kontakt 6 and 7. The added features in the latest versions of Kontakt really don’t have anything to do with the kind of data that SampleRobot outputs for Kontakt.
it’s not so simple, currently you must own Kontakt 5 in order to load kontakt exported SR files. Sadly I own only the v.6
I admit, I’ve never exported anything directly from SampleRobot to Kontakt, but knowing the information that SamplerRobot exports to several other formats, I don’t see what could possibly be incompatible. All SampleRobot does, to the best of my knowledge, is map the sample data to a keymap, it preserves some normal MIDI information like velocity (I think). If you could tell me what you are doing and what specifically doesn’t work, I could try to replicate your issues. I have Kontakt 4-6.
OK, I stand corrected. The problem, apparently, is in the .sxt formatted output that is created by SampleRobot and which is no longer supported since Kontakt 6 (for some reason, I was under the impression that SampleRobot directly output .nki files, the way Translator does). The workarounds are more tedious, but should work fine. The easiest way, by far, would be to pick up a copy of Chicken Systems Translator 7, and convert from a reliable SampleRobot format to an NI .nki file. Since SampleRobot doesn’t output a native Kurzweil format (although they tell me one is forthcoming soon), that’s what I had to do to get stuff from my Kronos to my Kurzweils. If you don’t want to spring for Translator, you could go the completely manual route and export from SampleRobot as a collection of AIFF files, and import those into Kontakt and build the keymap inside Kontakt (which is easier than it may sound). At least that way, all of the autosampling capabilities of SampleRobot can be used, and only the keymap needs to be manually built.
Anyway, your problem isn’t something Skylife (SampleRobot) has much control over. Unfortunately, Native Instruments has become a very unreasonable company to deal with. Their “We are the center of the musical universe, so screw you” attitude often pisses me off, and that’s why I’ll never upgrade my Komplete collection, ever again.
Thanks for the feedback.
I just checked the translator, which costs $150…. So the manual way remains the most viable ATM.
A welcome update, but the regular dialog box that prompts for storage location is not used. Instead you are more or less forced to use a storage device from the root upward. I get that some people will not understand how the sample map and samples folder positioning may work, but this makes managing a mounted disk library more difficult to navigate to. Second post attempt. So apologies if a double shows.
Can you explain in more detail what you mean by that? You CAN browse to all folders with a standard dialog box for the Quantum/Iridium export. SampleRobot 6.6 Pro just creates the samples and project folder inside the destination folder. It’s important to have that structure since all samples’ paths are referenced in the map file.
Hi, Christian.
I understand. I was wrong. The browse option precedes the folder designation step.
It’s that stage where you are making sure the named sample set is in the ‘samples’ directory.
But I still think it’s a shame that you had to work around the fact that the ‘samples’ root directory had to be part of every export. It seems like that would have been obvious to most users.
I also worked out that I just have to load the map after the sample set as a matter of process. Unless there’s a more streamlined way. Either way, I’m happy.
More trivial question… Why are the sample names starting with ‘-‘ ? Is there any levity for customizing a portion of the exported samples, even with a few characters?
Thank you.
Hi and thank you. We have received the official format description from Waldorf developer Rolf Woehrmann. It’s recommended to have that samples folder as a common base. It’s also used for other Quantum and Iridium libraries. The Prophet X for example uses a folder named ‘px’ for the root directory. It’s a way samples are organized on these instruments. You can still have your own folder and naming inside the samples folder. And if you like to change that as well you can easily adapt the map file with a text editor. To your question regarding the naming. If you name each key (double click on the name in the Samples list in SampleRobot) you will see those names after export followed by the multisample layer number and the dedicated midi note. If you leave the name fields empty exported samples will start with ‘-‘. Hope that helps.