Hey guys sorry for all my questions recently. Been playing around with the VCV Drums set I just bought for $30. I really like it but I’d like to also try some other drum sounds.
I already own a lot of great dum samples.
Rather than trying to sync an external drum machine via MIDI clock – always have problems with that with VCV Rack in the past – is there a good way to trigger samples in VCV Rack?
I’d love a module where I can load a WAV sample and then trigger it from gate sequencer. And have it simply play the sound.
Check out Samplerx8. You can load up to 8 samples in it. I created it specifically for drums. Right-click to access the menu where you load the sounds.
My SFZ player can play sample banks, so you could either a) play any drum banks you already have in SFZ format, or b) trivially make your own bank that would map each drum sound to a pitch. 16 voice polyphonic.
Regarding the Samplerx8 and SFZ Player modules, is there an ideal sample rate to use? I mean should it ideally match the sample rate of the audio output in my audio interface? I have the output audio at 96K… but say if the samples are 44.1K… would it be better to have the output set to 88.2K or 44.1k vs 96K?
My favourite sampler for drums by far is the Lomas sampler.
Everything you need and nothing you don’t - CV control over which sample plays, start and end points, controls for pitch, attack and decay. Loop and record and a waveform window too. Very intuitive and easy to use.
Playing with the Lomas sampler right now… pretty sweet. Only uses 0.7% CPU utilization on my Mac M1 Mini. I like how I can say load a folder of the same instrument and pitch… but multiple recordings and then use CV input to have it randomly select which sample is played to make it sound more human I guess. (A neat feature but not required of course… seems pretty capable this module). I have to try the others… it’s the first one I tried.
The non integer ratios are fine. It would actually probably work better at the native rate of the samples, but that should be ok. Why do you run at a high sr, btw?
Sfz format lets you map multiple drums to one pitch and then use round robin or random to pick one. Most drum banks use round robin to avoid picking the same sample twice. There are many free or cheap drum libraries in SFZ format. Samples from mars have quite a few sample packs from vintage drum machines.
The Lomas one and cf Player (not Play, but specifically Player ) are my favorites for this kind of thing, too. They have slight differences and are both fun and nice.
On the cf one, I like how you get reverse playback just by going slow enough (the speed parameter), which just flips into playing backwards when going “even slower than staying still”; on the Lomas Advanced Sampler you get backwards playback only by setting the start and end points in a reverse order. Oh, and cf is stereo, Lomas is mono. Then again, in the latter, you get an envelope with CV control, and can scrub through the sample selection via CV, too, and so on. Both are great for oneshots!
where you have 16 samplers, all loading from the same directory,
drag&drop aware
all able to switch sample using TRIG or CV (midi note) mode (changes guaranteed free of clicks)
all with ACTIVE, START, STOP, VCA included, PAN included, MIXER included , waveshape displays included
stereo, pitchable, backwardable etc etc
If Im running a full drum rack in ableton with 127 samples loaded. yeah. Ableton handles that way better than a vcv patch would be as a vst on my Mac. SHit maybe I haven’t found the sampler in vcv that works for me. Also yeah maybe I was projecting a bit on my own current setup and machine needs when working with VCV. Was just trying to say save cpu power wherever you can if possible I guess. Cheers
Right-click to access the menu where you load the sounds.
