Comments on: Decent Sampler Is A FREE Sampler That Reminds Us Music Is About Sharing

By: Tomislav Zlatic

Tomislav Zlatic — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 20:51:43 +0000

In reply to Yara. I thought about it, but moderating forums is a lot of work (because of spam, trolls, etc.) and I want to spend my time available for work on writing and publishing quality content. That said, the comments section is getting a significant upgrade soon, and if that works out, maybe I will build a small forum, too. First things first! :)

By: Yara

Yara — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:53:19 +0000

That’s a very decent initiative. And the community around BPB is super decent too. (sorry I can’t help the pun) Thinking of it, have you guys ever thought of setting up an online community forum for BPB? I love online Forums and I would hop on and get there to the point of addiction.

By: Michal Ochedowski

Michal Ochedowski — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 08:55:01 +0000

At first I was really hesitant. I didn’t want to add just another sample player to my collection. What at first seemed like an unnecessary hustle (only a player, nothing more), turned up to be the biggest advantage. The simplicity of the interface and the fact how little time it required to get started, really spoke to me. When I loaded first two libraries, that’s when I new it was worth checking out. After testing some other commercially available, also free but much bigger piano collections, I was surprised to find that the ones much smaller in size could sound so much better, to me that is. Straightforward and simple with quality sounds. Recommended.

By: MRG

MRG — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:47:13 +0000

In reply to Bill. I wasn't familiar with Sfizz, so I decided to give it a look. It does read .dspreset files, at least the one I tried. Yes, only one, Ghost Piano by Andrew Shaffer from Pianobook if you really need to know. Not sure how compatible it is, but it's a good start to have an open source alternative. :)

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 12:14:33 +0000

In reply to Bojan.

I feel you about SFZ. I have always loved SFZ since way back when Cakewalk was in its heyday, and I would promote it every chance I got. I even participated in getting it accepted on Pianobook when that community first started. SFZ has a lot going for it, However, it has two (fatal?) flaws:

1. The spec seems bloated and unwieldy for the casual sample developer. As I mentioned, attempts to get SFZ going at Pianobook mostly failed due to the spec being intimidating. Despite the big spec, simple things like random_robin are tricky to implement.

2. The format was always controlled by basically one company. SFZ has no UI information (other than an image tag which is not implemented by most players), so users are stuck with the ugly Sforzando UI. Plogue, the maker of Sforzando has a process you can go through to get a license to create a custom UI, and it is just not worth it for most people. Even installing the custom UI can be a point of failure.

With Sfizz, the open source SFZ player, the UI is still at the mercy of the player devs (they let you stick an image on the front in the latest iteration). With DecentSampler, you could spend 10 minutes and have a beautiful custom UI you could be proud of that would compliment your sample instrument. Then zip the whole thing into one file for distribution.

Simplicity and a beautiful customizable UI. Never underestimate the power of a pretty picture!

By: MRG

MRG — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 09:05:07 +0000

In reply to Bojan.

A good question indeed. While the format is documented and publicly available for anyone, nothing is clearly stated about the openness or not about it. Unless I missed it. It would be interesting to know if other samplers could support it legally. And what about modifying existing SFZ editors to export in this format? Or making translators.
IIRC TX16Wx is the same, an XML-based format, documented, but I never saw a clear statement about it being open. Is giving away publicly the format details makes it defacto open? I’m not a lawyer…
That said, SFZ is a mess of various incompatible extensions, so I understand why a dev would avoid it as a -main- format and has to make their own to support their sampler features.

By: Tomislav Zlatic

Tomislav Zlatic — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:13:11 +0000

In reply to James N. Well, here's a shout-out that out-shouts all other shout-outs!

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 13:20:33 +0000

Dave Hilowitz has created a true gem of a sampler in Decent Sampler and I really look forward to the future development of it. It has really become a fabulous alternative to those who can’t afford the full version of Kontakt. The only real Kontakt Player ‘sampler’ that I know of, is way less functional that Decent Sampler (no round robin and only sampling of C and F# keys) and also a paid product is Synthetic Materials (https://www.lootaudio.com/category/kontakt-instruments/waverley-instruments/synthetic-materials). Synthetic Materials is a good basic sampler for Kontakt Player, in addition to including a good number of instruments. Please comment if you know of any other Kontakt Player instruments that can also function as a sampler.

By: James N

James N — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:10:13 +0000

In reply to Tomislav Zlatic.

This could get messy…….Shout-out for your shout-out of his shout-out! :-D

By: Bojan

Bojan — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 19:52:11 +0000

if music is about sharing then what is wrong with SFZ format that not only has tons of implementations and a completely open specification.

What point is there in rallying people behind a new and niche format that a single company controls?

By: Tomislav Zlatic

Tomislav Zlatic — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 07:44:14 +0000

In reply to Darryl Lim. And here's a shout-out for your shout-out comment! :D

By: Darryl Lim

Darryl Lim — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 06:58:57 +0000

Dropping by just to give a shout-out for the Decent Sampler shout-out! :P