VSampler 2 FAQ

Get the Tutorial "How to create a VSampler-instrument" from the download page of www.vsampler.com, it's available in english and german language, work through it step by step. It's a guide showing most of the editing functions of VSampler in action, covers many frequently asked questions and also demonstrates some less obvious functions. And I think for most users it's more helpful than the manual, which explains the technical features, but not how and when to use them.

As opposed to melody instruments, drumsets typically consist of a large number of separate sounds assigned to exactly one key each. This assignment (root-key and keyrange together at one key) can be performed by VSampler automatically when loading samples, just activate the checkbox "use next free key(s)" in the "load sample" dialog. Whenever you load a new sample now, it will automatically be assigned to the next free key. Also works for a multiselection in the load dialog, so you can load 50 WAV's at once and spread them through the keys of the keyboard with a single action. To edit the key-mapping afterwards go to the Zones page and drag the Zones other key positions to your liking.

If you want to directly place a sample on a certain key just drag'n'drop it from the windows explorer to the Splits bar (on top of the onscreen keyboard) to the respective position of the Splitbar above this key.

On top of everything is the soundbank, which can be saved and loaded as .VSB file. The soundbank is the complete VSampler content, all sounds and all bank settings. A VSampler soundbank consists of up to 128 programs x 64 (sub)banks, following the MIDI standard. That makes 128 x 64 = 8192 "instruments" (or "Presets" in VSampler slang) which can be loaded at once, that's why you see at VSampler's "Presets" page. The Preset is the actual instrument, also called "program" or "patch" on other synths. A Preset consists of one or multiple Splits. A Split is the container for the Sample (the waveform) plus dozens of additional properties assigned to this sample, such as the volume envelope, the root key, the key zone, the velocity zone, the filter settings, LFO settings, controller settings ... many things. Every Sample got it's own Split, that means, a Split contains exactly one Sample.

If you want to edit e.g. the volume envelope for a complete instrument (=Preset), be sure to select all Splits of this instrument first (upper right corner, set the Edit Group to "All Splits of Preset") and *then* do the editing, otherwise you will just change the setting for one of the many Splits your instrument might have.

The most simple soundbank could be created by loading a WAV file and save it as a VSampler bank (VSB file). This would be a soundbank which contains one Preset (=instrument), and the Preset would contain one Split.

Zone is just another word for Split. In VSampler 3 this will be "merged" and we'll talk of Zones only.

VSampler can't do that directly (per instrument yes, but not per sample), but here are two ways to do it, one of them should be easy depending on the way you layout your tracks:

Variant #1) Separate sequencer tracks:
Assign the drumkit to multiple MIDI channels (e.g. 10, 11, 12, 13 ...) and create separate sequencer tracks playing the respective drum: one track for kick, one for snare ...

Variant #2) Separate VSampler instruments:
Split the drumkit instrument into separate instruments for each drum and assign them to separate MIDI channels: Select the drumkit at VSamplers "Presets" page. Set VSamplers browser (right window) to "Splits" by clicking at the dropdown box next to the 3 Split up/down/delete buttons. Now the browser treeview shows the Splits of your current instrument. Select the Splits you want to have in a separate instrument and drag'n'drop (right mousekey) them to an empy Preset slot inside VSamplers Preset grid - done. Now you can assign this new instrument to another MIDI channel / mixer output at the "Multi" page.

It does, but it needs to be explained because it's probably one of the most misunderstood features of VSampler. In opposition to e.g. HALion or EXS24 we implement Split effects to integrate a typical drum-sampler function into a "generic" sampler and combine it with the other powerful features a dedicated drum sampler doesn't have. VSampler's Split-effects are NOT meant as global instrument-effect or as a replacement for a mixer insert effect!

In detail: VSampler allows to apply different effects to different Zones (Splits) of an instrument exactly as a dedicated drum sampler, obviously the main sense would be e.g. a percussion instrument, which has different samples assigned to different keys (or external drum pads) and you want to have different realtime effects at the different drum sounds. The important thing to know: VSamplers Split-effects are part of the sound, applied *before* the volume envelope. You want a longer release time of the effect tail? Raise the release time of the volume envelope. This makes sense for short percussion-type sounds only, of couse. But be careful, this is a potential CPU killer if used in a wrong way, if you play a chord with 3 voices the effect is calculated 3 times!

Do not use VSamplers Split-effects if ...

• ... you want the same effect for the whole instrument - add a track insert effect at your sequencers mixer instead
• ... the Split (and therefore the effect) will play at a high polyphony, your CPU won't survive that many effect instances - split up your instrument into different instruments (check previous question how to do that), assign them to different mixer channels (VSTi only) and add track insert effects at your sequencers mixer
• ... you want different effects at different Splits, but the effect type requires long tails (e.g. a reverb or delay) - split up your instrument into different instruments, assign them to different mixer channels and add track insert effects at your sequencers mixer
• ... when your Split is in Splitmode "Oneshot" - the voice will hang forever because the sample never ends because VSampler can't look into the code of your multitap delay and therefore can't foresee when the effect tail will end - add a track insert effect at your sequencers mixer instead

A total NO would be e.g. to use VSampler's Split-effects to add a reverb to a piano or a delay effect to a synth sound, it would kill your CPU in a second and you wouldn't hear the effect tails - add a track insert effect at your sequencers mixer instead.

Use VSamplers Split effects for a typical drum or percussion instrument only, i.e.:

• different samples are assigned to different keys and you want different effects for the different samples without "wasting" a complete instrument and sequencer mixer channel for a single drum sample
• each of those samples will play more or less monophonic
• the effect types don't require a toooo long effect tail, let's say your snare drum got a reverb with 3 seconds effect tail and you play it once a second, this means 3 active voices incl. 3 simultaneous reverb calculations - decide yourself whether it makes more sense to put the snare into a separate instrument and than add a track insert effect at your sequencers mixer instead

To those who think "what a stupid way to implement effects, why before the volume env and not after": insert effects as e.g. in the Cubase mixer are running non-stop, no matter whether there's any sound at this mixer channel or not, the effect is eating up CPU once it has been added. And this is required to hear effect tails of a reverb or delay - there is no other way. Why? Because Cubase or VSampler or any other program has no chance to know when the effect tail will end. Imagine a multi-tap delay. VSampler could check "when is the effected sound signal = 0", sure. But that wouldn't help, there could be dozens of taps follow - no chance to foresee that and have a look into the effects program code or parameters.

And we can't do the same with our Split-effects, this would mean everytime you hit a key we start another effect running non-stop, it would run and run and run and after a few seconds of a song when you played 50 notes you would have 50 effect instances running. So the only way is to do it like we did, you have to manually adjust the release time of the volume envelope to meet the character of your effect.

Btw, VSampler 3 will have instrument effects next to the Split-effects, they won't suffer from the same problem as the Split effects because exactly as the number of mixer channels inside the sequencer the number of active instruments in one VSampler instance is limited to 16 (the number of MIDI channels).

See the "What's the relation between soundbanks, presets, splits, zones, samples?" question above, VSampler can't load more than one soundbank because the soundbank is the complete VSampler content. I admit the words are a bit confusing because both contain the word "bank", but the colums "bank 0, 1 ..." at VSamplers Preset grid are not different VSampler soundbanks and they can not be loaded/saved separately. Following the MIDI standard those columns represent the MIDI (sub)bank numbers, typically used for variations of the same instrument, for instance at program 53 bank 0 is a mono version of SynthPad and at program 53 bank 1 is a stereo version.

If you want to load instruments (Presets) from different SF2's into VSampler do not use the "Load Bank" function but the "Import Preset" function, a grid will popup and you can (multi)select which of the instruments you want to import.

Imagine you convert a color image into grayscale - the colors are lost forever. And no, they won't come back by converting your image back into a color format. The same with converting a VSampler bank into an SF2. VSampler can do much more than the SB Live hardware and it's SF2 fileformat, which therefore can't store all of VSamplers settings. Both formats got their sense, and they can be converted into each other at any time, but not without loss. The SF2 format is limited to the technical features of the AWE / SB Live / Audigy family, which are great cards as a basic "hardware sampler", with a great interpolation quality, but the sampler part of the included EMU chip didn't change much since the origial AWE32 in 1994, that's why an SF2 file still got the following "natural" limitations:

• no way to store some sample settings, e.g. disc streaming on/off (the SB Live always loads all samples into RAM)
• no way to store some bank settings, e.g.
• no way to store 24 bit samples
• no way to store linked samples, they will always be embedded into the SF2 file
• no way to store the filter type, since the SB Live got just one filter, the 8 dB lowpass (same since 1994), no hipass or bandpass as VSampler
• no way to store the advanced filter settings, e.g. velocity controlled filter, filter-LFO
• no way to store the 2nd filter
• no way to store a 5 stage volume envelope with either linear or logarithmic envelope sections
• no way to store effects and to have different effect types and settings at different instruments or Splits
• no way to handle external VST plugins, assign them to Splits and store their settings
• no way to store the Multi settings, i.e. which MIDI channel maps to which sound
• no way to store the output device settings, i.e. which sound plays at which output device or mixer channel
• no way to store the content of the pattern sequencer
• no way to store VSampler's mixer settings
• no way to store groups and their polyphony
• no way to store all keyboard scaling data (how does the note number affect the single volume envelope parameters)
• no way to store the controller mapping and settings

Bottom line: always keep a backup of the VSampler bank as VSB file.

Yes, have fun: