SampleTank 4 on the way

[glokraw]

The interface is really good,

I'd like to have a handy global volume slider
on every page, especially when auditioning
the many sounds, and then to aid processing
various real life distractions

[zzz00m]

I'd like to have a handy global volume slider
on every page, especially when auditioning
the many sounds

I wish that all virtual instruments had that feature!

[Burillo]

just thought i'd post this here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GN0Dr_ ... z1UNn/view

it's a bit long (upwards of 30 minutes), but this is a recording of one of our jams, so everything is played live. drums are one of Microtonic factory presets, bass and synths are all SampleTank 4 (or, to be more precise, basses are from SampleTank 4 while synths are Syntronik, but played with SampleTank 4). layering/looping via Audio Damage Enso. the e-guitar is a real guitar (played be me as well), and there were also some sounds from SampleTank 3 library, and there's another dude, i don't know what he was using.

[ShawnMH]

just thought i'd post this here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GN0Dr_ ... z1UNn/view

it's a bit long (upwards of 30 minutes), but this is a recording of one of our jams, so everything is played live. drums are one of Microtonic factory presets, bass and synths are all SampleTank 4 (or, to be more precise, basses are from SampleTank 4 while synths are Syntronik, but played with SampleTank 4). layering/looping via Audio Damage Enso. the e-guitar is a real guitar (played be me as well), and there were also some sounds from SampleTank 3 library, and there's another dude, i don't know what he was using.

This is sounding good!

As a guitarist, I gotta ask what you are using for the guitar rig? Loved the extended guitar solo, sounds like some David Gilmour influence there?

You had me fooled - thinking that there wasn't going to be a solo, since most of the guitar is laid back and sparse at times. And by the way, those parts sounded great (tone and playing) too.

[Burillo]

This is sounding good!

As a guitarist, I gotta ask what you are using for the guitar rig? Loved the extended guitar solo, sounds like some David Gilmour influence there?

thanks! i like to think my biggest influence is Brian May, but in this particular track it's probably more Gilmour meets "i only know two minor pentatonic boxes"

i like to keep it simple, so the rig is very barebones - there's a pinch overdrive (SD-1 mode in Audified MultiDrive Pro), but otherwise the tone is just straight up Mercuriall ReAxis (there are two presets plus changes in pickups and volume/tone knobs). the delay is McDSP EC-300, and i don't think there's anything else there aside from HP/LP. well, it's a live online jam so everything is compressed to shit on broadcast, and since there's like 2 more hours of this, i didn't exactly spend much time mixing, so it's compressed to shit and gain-leveled on mixing stage as well.

You had me fooled - thinking that there wasn't going to be a solo, since most of the guitar is laid back and sparse at times. And by the way, those parts sounded great (tone and playing) too.

if you're referring to the noodling in the right stereo channel, those parts aren't guitar - they're an e-piano played by the other guy

[AdvancedFollower]

Testing in Studio One 4, I noticed the Red Strat idling at around 45% CPU when nothing was being played. If I emptied that part, ST4 dropped down to 4% CPU. If I only emptied the FX rack for the Red Strat, then ST4 dropped down to 33% CPU. It is really not playable, as it quickly shoots up into the 60-70%+ CPU range when played.

The Black LP is also hungry, but a bit less than that, with the CPU usage at 26% when idle, and 20% with no FX. So this one can be played with out getting the crackles.

That is on an Intel i3, with ASIO buffer set at 256.

Same here unfortunately. Even when it's not playing anything or generating any sound, ST4 sits at 30 - 40% of a single CPU core. I don't know why a ROMpler would use such a ridiculous amount of CPU, especially when the FX are turned off and it isn't generating any sound.

I have an 8-core Ryzen, so I have CPU cycles to spare, but if I were to use more than a few instances of ST4 in a project, it would quickly overload even such a system.

[zzz00m]

Testing in Studio One 4, I noticed the Red Strat idling at around 45% CPU when nothing was being played. If I emptied that part, ST4 dropped down to 4% CPU. If I only emptied the FX rack for the Red Strat, then ST4 dropped down to 33% CPU. It is really not playable, as it quickly shoots up into the 60-70%+ CPU range when played.

The Black LP is also hungry, but a bit less than that, with the CPU usage at 26% when idle, and 20% with no FX. So this one can be played with out getting the crackles.

That is on an Intel i3, with ASIO buffer set at 256.

Same here unfortunately. Even when it's not playing anything or generating any sound, ST4 sits at 30 - 40% of a single CPU core. I don't know why a ROMpler would use such a ridiculous amount of CPU, especially when the FX are turned off and it isn't generating any sound.

I have an 8-core Ryzen, so I have CPU cycles to spare, but if I were to use more than a few instances of ST4 in a project, it would quickly overload even such a system.

It might be helpful if you shared your feedback about CPU usage in the active thread about CPU optimization for ST4 over at the official IK forum:

CPU Optimization?

https://cgi.ikmultimedia.com/ikforum/vi ... 12&t=21239

[AdvancedFollower]

Will do.

Here's what it looks like in my current project while playing

"Sampletank 4 2" is the Black LP Space Mod preset. As you can see, it uses nearly a third more CPU than a polyphonic Repro 5 patch at the High Quality setting, which is quite an impressive feat, but not necessarily in a good way

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

The devs are definitely looking at future optimizations, so please do report your findings if you are seeing anything out of the ordinary. Thank you for that.

Also, here's a very impressive user demo of the grand piano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LJnUxhvzl4

[In The Mix]

I just installed SampleTank 4 recently. Never used ST before, so it's all new to me. So far I've played through some of the Acoustic pianos and they're actually good for a multi purpose instrument. I don't know about other instruments just yet, but Pianos load pretty fast on my PC. I've recorded 2 short demos so far:

Acoustic Pianos - Part 1:

https://youtu.be/3LJnUxhvzl4


Acoustic Pianos - Part 2:

https://youtu.be/94-HYBMif5E


1973 Stage EP:

https://youtu.be/gLrPXvouZ90

[dmbaer]

Well, it's clear that things have quieted *way* down complaint-wise, so either the initial troubles scared everybody away or all the campers are now happy campers.

I wonder if there's any news, however, about the ST4 download assistant we've been told is under development. Installation of ST4 took *way* more time than any other plugin I've ever installed. Furthermore, of the several hundred separate manual steps required, I missed one and that caused the majority of the ST4 content to remain hidden until I managed to pinpoint which was the skipped step.

So, I have some mixed feelings about ST4, but most of them positive. However, I would not recommend that anyone jump into this until the install assistant becomes available. Thus the question (mostly to Peter): any status to report on that?

[Spin Boyz]

I was told that a library update was coming about a month ago. I won’t hold my breath. I’m still having crash issues with certain patches.

[Bruceferraudi]

Finally installed my Sampletank 4 Max upgrade from 3 and I must say I'm impressed so far.

After waiting nearly 2 months after the USB boxed version came to install on a fresh i5 laptop and had absolutely zero issues. In fact, it only took about 30-45 minutes at most to register and download 4.04 from the website and then the sound content of ST4 and ST3 simultaneously.

After auditioning some of the pianos, guitars, chromatic percussion and synth basses I came away feeling good about the purchase despite having doubting it heavily for several weeks after reading all the issues here and having my own previous issues with ST3 crashing. So far with just an hour of noodling around in standalone haven't had any crashes, dropouts or latency issues and that includes heavy gb pianos, black lp guitar, etc. And the the new effects and gui both look and sound fantastic.

Next up will be demoing/testing in Studio One DAW. Hopefully it works as smoothly as standalone. I'm sure having a current generation i5 quad core helps along with the optane memory but even still with a 5400 rpm hard drive and 8gb ram things are working well so with luck that'll continue as I start filling up the 16 slots, stacking and layering and adding effects.

Just waiting on that multi-core support now IK and you'll have a pretty outstanding overall product!

[Elektronisch]

Ok, so i have got Sampletank 4. Played with it, tested it and here is a small review.

First of all, i was using latest version that came out last month. When i opened Sampletank 4 my first impression was its not slower then Sampletank 3 (usualy newer versions tend to be slower), thats great! It looks gorgeous, thats great! Its resizable, thats ah and great and not, i realized that the default size is a bit too big, i would like to size it down actually even tho i use 1440p screen (in wich its still a bit too big for me, but im ok with that), but trust me, on laptop with 13 inch screen at 720p, this does not fit at all (hopefuly someone at IKM reads this). If its resizable why not to go all the way there...well nevertheless not a biggie.

Browser: great, its improved, i like it! But there is one annoying thing that definatly should be improved. Please add function to ST4 to remember what kind of view mode is selected, All libraries, authorised, unauthorised. I dont have all libraries so it would be useful if ST 4 would remember that.

Loaded few instruments, loading time for me is good, but im using SSD drive, so if 400mb file takes almost a second to load and 6.9gb guitar patch 3-4 seconds thats probably what is expected, so yeah no complaints, actually the opposite, thats amazing, some kontakt libraries with same size takes longer.

Ok first i played Sampletank 3 library, whooray!! they actually play as they should play! I could have not been more happier! and those patches sound gooooood!!! Previously on Sampletank 3 i had huge issue with patches (mind you the exactly same ones), most of time they sounded atrocious, but not because of the patches themself, but there was something wrong with sampletank 3 engine, the sound was unstable (hah and we want analogue...those people should try sampletank 3), playing few notes it was usual that sound was cutted or note stealing, even on max velocity notes werent playing at same fixed velocity but somehow random. Envelopes were just not behaving as they should, if i set attack for half a second it actually means an eternity or sometimes the setting was just ignored, really it was just not behaving as it should. Luckily Sampletank 4 behaves, like a well trained dog, thank you IK Multimedia for listening to my rants all those years!

Ok now the sound, its great, what can i say more, its great, Sampletank 4 library, some of the best guitars ive ever heard, synth pads even tho requires some work to shine, but they by default sound very good and not hollow, but dynamic, warm, pleasant, like playing from a synth.

But i have some critique here, there are just way too much of same sounding patches, like for example 1-4 osc sync sweep saw patches each takes from 80-120mb, what a waste of space...and they sound nearly the same, just minor differences like adding amplitude modulation on one or another oscillator (what really?) and they sound just the same in the end. You couldve saved your time by just creating same preset with different modulation effect. Anyhow i think if IK would add single layer or multi patches using same sources but with more expressivness it would fix same sounding patch "problem"

Woodwinds, very nice.

Voices, not something i would use, but they actually sound very nice, actually its a next level comparing to Starvin Marvin. BUT! some patches (ohh straight sustains) has very different volumes in its layers, lower voices sound lower then higher ones and it seems you cannot balance them out manualy (i hope ik reads this aswel).

Actually, the rest of the sounds i think are great, i didnt checked all thoroughly but roughly i took an hour to play the sounds and they do theyr job well. Except for loops and drums, i just dont care about them, so i just didnt even bothered to check.

Ok, now to usability of the tool. I wasnt expecting this but it actually requires some learning curve, mainly because tabs have icons and its something you actually have to memorize because not all icons makes imediate sense. Now another thing, contrast of the gui, its not bad, but when you open mod matrix, i did noticed that the text hides itself to the background, text definatly should be more distinguished, brighter. Auomation, finaly you have added it...well sort of, first you have to assign parameter to automatable (kind of like in virus ti if you ever used it) but hey it works right? no complaints here anymore.

Now on something i think that should be really improved. GUI and differentiation from sampletank 3 and sampletank 4 instruments. Look there are 2 LFOs and both are always enabled, but only by trial and error i had to learn that LFO 1 does not work on sampletank 3 instruments. First question to my mind was, why? second - if you dont want us to use LFO why? third question - if you reall really really so upset to use us LFO 1 with sampletank 3 instruments, just grey it out, dont trick is in to believing it works Also it would be great if ST3 instruments would have same perks as ST4 instruments...

Another thing, it would be nice to see ability to extend the deadzone of the sample like you can do in Kontakt. If instrument ends at lets say C4 and you want it to go lower you cant do that in ST4. On Kontakt you can just drag the deadzone and when the lower key is hit that C4 note is just being time stretched. It would be nice to see such functionality in ST4 in future update.

Anyhow, overal its a really good product, really good rompler, especialy if you need those real world instruments (they are really really very good). Huge improvement over ST3. I will gonna use it. Thank you IK, i hope you will not stop with the latest update and will add more improvements to this instrument.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Thanks for the continued discussion. Please note that a full installation manager is not a small project and I wouldn't expect that tomorrow. That's a big endeavor and one that will take some time to do right.

For those interested in the editing and such, we did release some new videos recently, including this one:

https://youtu.be/z1P38KXrAR8