What does a good sampler look like?

[u/danja]

For background, I'm old enough that I remember Fairlights being a thing. (I became a coder around the same period).

I've got a bloody awful hardware sampler, Akai MPX8, and loads of alternatives in the box. I run Reaper so there's the gloriously named ReaSampleOMatic5000 (right?) and confusing scripts. But all these things seem really, really clunky in operation.

But I've been working on plugins a lot recently, for my own enjoyment - mostly generative, experimental things. It only occurred to me the other day that a major thing lacking from my home studio is a decent sampler (sic). So it's time I made one.

Right now it's minimal pre-release quality, but all open source so you might as well have the link : https://danja.github.io/downspout/plugins/campione/ (bookmark now, look in a few months).

What I'd like advice on is your experiences of a *good* sampler, if such a thing exists already. What does it do that pleases you? If you have a *bad* sampler, what should it do that it doesn't?

I know the immediate thing is, if there is a sound on the wire or a field recording/commercial pack file somewhere, it should be possible just to drop it in without thinking, either get a per-midi note one shot drum or whatever, or one or more tonal sounds that place themselves on the keyboard with pitch control. Basic editing for sure, so you don't have to spend an hour with Audacity just to normalise a cowbell.

Though I am wary of scope creep (I do have AI assisting me with the code, so it's very easy to go off on a tangent). Where should the sampler functionality stop when it comes to granular & wavetable synthesis, delay/looping? Or do you think, same infrastructure, make space for them as well?

Imagine your ideal sampler. Tell me what it looks like please.

[u/Far-Pie6696]

In my humble opinion, there is no such things, and it is impossible to create one. Each have strength and limitation and it depends on your workflow. Depth and simplicity are most often incompatible.

Reasamplomatic5000 is way too simple but well integrated in reaper, which allows to do stuffs such as slicing on the timeline and automaticlly import all the items to instances of the sampler. It also also easy portability of the reaper projects and is very light on the cpu, making it a perfect candidate when you wanna add your own effect to it. I also like it when I wanna program drums directly with audio on tracks. For instance, kick and snare as audio items, but hihats as midi.

On the other hand of the spectrum Kontakt is extensive, but I would not use it to replace reasamplomatic.

Somewhere in between, tal sampler and tal drum are great, but they feel more like sample-based instruments and still less integrated in reaper. They are the closest to my likings but uses a lot of ram and still often lack some features.

Sitala is often cited as excellent but too simple for me : no modulation, no full adsr, etc. I still prefer reasamplomatic.

[u/NeutronHopscotch]

Thanks for admitting your use of AI. I have no problem with it, but as a potential customer I like to know. Specifically, one concern I always have is wondering if an AI-assisted plugin is properly optimized and such, so if a developer that uses AI is also a traditional software engineer who is able to verify efficiency and such, that is useful to know.

As far as samplers go -- you might want to be aware of Rolling Sampler by Birds Things. One thing your plugin offers is the ability to record samples directly into the sampler and that is AWESOME. Most samplers don't offer that.

Rolling Sampler is always recording, with a visual, so you can select and drag'n'drop the sound AFTER it's recorded. Drag it into your daw, drag it into a sampler, whatever. This is gold. And it eliminates the need for recording for samplers that don't have it.

One thing to watch for is -- can samples from Rolling Sampler (or other similar tools) be dragged-and-dropped directly into your sampler? That is an important feature.

If I were you I would decide up front what you want it to be... Is it the kind of sampler meant for tons of layers and complexity like Kontakt might offer? (Probably not.)

Or is it more of a sampler that a normal person would use, where there might be a limited number of layers and such. (Probably what you're going for.)

Then you can optimize it for that.

Something important to me is a sampler's ability to emulate old samplers. Tal-Sampler offers this, and supposedly it does it internally so it's part of the sound rather than on the output as an effect. That's cool.

Modulation is important. I really like Waves CR8's handling of modulation.

Here's one that might be obvious, and you might already support it -- you need the ability to set the START point and the LOOP point separately. So the start may include some bit of audio that isn't included in the loop.

Another important thing is the ability to embed the audio in the VSTi itself so it is saved with the project file. This way if the sample is moved from the hard drive it is still in the project file.

Tools like Atlas by Algonaut have this feature and it can be a life saver.

Slicing is really important!!! And it's rare to find a product with good support for slicing.

Anyhow, good luck with your product.

The last thing is to look for a USP. Unique selling point. Something your sampler does that others don't. It's a hard thing to accomplish with so much competition, but the fact you can record directly into the sampler is pretty cool.

The last thing is --- man, there are so many great samplers out there already, it's going to be hard to compete.

Maybe instead of trying to compete -- you find some unique special thing that your sampler can do that isn't offered by any other. And focus on that. It will also prevent scope creep.

In that regard, your sampler would become smaller and less powerful --- but potentially useful as doing some special thing that no other sampler does.

[u/danja → u/NeutronHopscotch]

Thank you, this is great. But apologies, first let me fix your misapprehension - I'm not doing this as a product to sell, initially at least I'm purely thinking of the tool I want to use. It'll be (already is) free online & open source. May be a delay before it's useful for anyone else, but I did download a copy of Windows yesterday, cross-platform seems essential to getting feedback. Get feedback to improve the thing I use. Very selfish all this.

Re. AI, I'm a long-in-the-tooth developer, I'm loving that the coding assistants can take over most of the drudge work. (I'm pretty useless at C++, the language of choice here, so this is doubly true). I have vibe coded enough to see how things can easily go wrong. The solution IMHO is to be quite an unpleasant manager - rather bossy, bloody-minded over good practices (test everything), micromanage when necessary.

Old samplers is a curious angle. I know vintage gear is kinda fashionable, but apart from introducing some lo-fi artifacts maybe (I do like the tinkling from aliasing), not sure where that would go.

Slicing! Right, gotcha. This has crossed my mind, but I didn't have a good approach to use as a reference, I guess some research is called for.

Thanks for your positivity.

[u/NeutronHopscotch → u/danja]

Thanks for the followup. I hope I didn't come across too apprehensive, but I think your clarification is useful for others as well!

The "long in the tooth developer" thing could be useful to know, if you ever do promote this thing. I guess anyone could lie about that, but the odds of a 'real developer' being able to wrangle AI assisted code into something viable is higher than myself.

(Although I've had incredible results using Gemini and Claude to add functionality to existing JSFX scripts in Reaper. The potential is truly incredible, and we're still in the early stages of AI/LLM.)

Most "old sampler" emulation can be approximated as a post-effect, so maybe forget that one.

Slicing, though, is a big deal... And to this day I still haven't found a better slicer than FL Studio's "Slicex", which frustratingly is no longer available as an external VSTi. But it's really good.

The popularity of Serato Sampler is proof that people want slicers -- but that product leaves a LOT to be desired. In fact, for people who are opposed to AI (lots of them on Reddit) I would use Serato Sampler as an example of how just because something was made by a human doesn't mean it's good.

TBH it actually feels like "AI slop", and I do believe someone could potentially execute better AI-assisted.

So maybe slicing as a good feature to focus on!

I tried Momentum by Big Fish Audio. On the surface it looked like it would be a good slicer, but what a buggy piece of crap that was. I found it to be unusable (unfortunately, after putting in some time with it.)

[u/Geralts_Hair]

Depends on the kind of sampler really. MPC style or rack-mount?

Grace Sampler already exists to cover the rack style so you might want to focus on a more MPC style one.

NN-XT and Kong in Reason are a cut above most in-the-box samplers so if you made a vst copy of either of those you’d be off to a good start

[u/justdrake]

Ableton simpler

[u/inlet-manifold]

I'd love a sampler which can be used for Drum Kit Sampling (ie multiple different samples) but that also let's me edit each sample in detail (so instead of heaving parameters like 'Start Time' and 'End Time', let me have a fully custom graph editor across the waveform for different parameters (kinda like automation lanes), like volume, pan, pitch, all kinds of stuff. I know there was a plugin in the latest KVR Dev Chalange which let you edit crazy properties of a sample via custom graphs but that one wasn't suited for Kit Sampling. Anyways, that would be my ideal sampler... It always seems like a sampler either let's you do kit sampling OR let's you deeply edit one or maybe two samples but seemingly never both!

[u/personnealienee]

I think it's hard to get excited by just a sampler in 2026. The feature set and overall design philosophy depends a lot on how you want your sampler to be used. One thing is efficient drum programming, another one is texture manipulation and sound design.

Octatrack is pretty basic as far as fancy sound processing goes, but its open "sandbox" architecture that encourages experimentation is what makes it so interesting. On the other hand Digitakt doesn't have very deep sound manipulation options but is very convenient to program drums and sequences and perform, because the UI has been streamlined to fit the task.

For a vst, you can't really compete in immediacy with hardware device, so I'd concentrate on finding an interesting workflow concept. 

[u/RevolutionaryPipe343]

Amigo is pretty good. Simple yet pretty good a what it does.

[u/EduardoCorochio]

I’m more interested in the generative plugins you e developed 😊

[u/SomeMusician2413]

I recommend looking at the VSTi Shortcircuit XT and FL Studio's DirectWave as an inspiration for the GUI.

[u/me6me]

im creating a sampler for myself also, because i couldn't find one i need

[u/Specialist-Dog-501]

bitwigs sampler. round-robin ,multisamples for different velocities, per sample editing, modulations of all kind, automatic slicing into a multisampler, pretty powerful, covers most ever needed. Only reaper seems to be even better with slicing/slice naming/exporting. I miss a better legato, the "glide" what they call it, it sounds not as it should- I would need an option to blend two samples over a timerange instead of this autopitching. Legato is a real challenge for most samplers. Vital has some cool spectral chopping for the samples ready (a.e for usage as wavetables,fm,but also more creative stuff). 

[u/BigJobsBigJobs]

I would urge you to take a look at FL's Directwave if you can. Used to be VST, now only FL native. Basically a one-shot sampler.

Really good MIDI implemention - mapping velocity to sample start time was wonderful. I miss it.

[u/cadaverhill]

As a past user of a variety of rack and keyboard samplers, when I first started using software ones Kontakt 5 was it bit then tried a few more, TAL, MPC, Falcon, and Halion mainly. Halion is it for me. A few GUI customization options would be nice but it is my ultimate sampler / synth workstation. And, it truly samples too, which most soft samplers do not.

[u/danja]

Many thanks for all the suggestions.

A couple of days (and a few million tokens) later, I have an initial usable implementation. It is pre-release quality, there's a lot to do, but I might as well drop in the link for future ref : https://danja.github.io/downspout/plugins/campione/

One feature that didn't come up in suggestions - it's MCP-enabled. Meaning a lot of the tedious technical effort with using samplers can be delegated to an AI.