EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

I know this is addressed to Eric, but I'm going to chime in here as well.

The problem of format conversion has been with us for a while. Just a 
couple of years ago we were supporting six different sampler formats, 
Akai, Roland, Emu, Gigasampler, Kurzweil and SampleCell! Even with great 
tools like Translator, this really became a problem for us because we 
were spending more time on the conversions than making the products 
themselves. But as the software samplers started hitting the market, we 
noticed that more and more people were simply buying the Akai versions of 
our products and import loading. Our Akai sales were accelerating while 
all the other formats gradually became less popular. Soon, it became 
obvious that the most efficient way for us to release our products was to 
concentrate on Akai as the de facto format standard.

At the same time, we simplified and refined our programming process, so 
that we relied less on sampler-specific parameters to shape the sound. We 
"imprinted" many of the envelopes, filter settings and tunings in the 
samples themselves, so that the final product would translate well 
regardless of the target platform. We now test our Akai masters on 
various software sampler platforms to make sure the translations are as 
close to perfect as possible.

This is one of the reasons Spectrasonics has begun to create their own 
virtual instruments, so that the sample set comes with a custom-designed 
synth engine, perfectly tailored to the nature of the product. No need to 
worry about conversion at all, simply install and go.

ILIO will be evolving toward this approach as well, but in the mean time 
we've recently released a bunch of libraries in Akai format that work 
great on EXS. We're EXS users ourselves, so we're committed to making 
great libraries that we all can use.

-Mark
ILIO

>I am also enjoying the calm and illuminating tone of this thread (again). 
>And I
>appreciate and value Eric's comments greatly on these issues. They have, 
>over the
>past months help me redefine somewhat my own tiny little moral universe.
>
>One thing bothers me a bit though. We pay a high price for quality 
>sampling CDs
>already layed out and set up in the sampler format of choice for us to be 
>ready to
>use straight off the CD. But what about legitimate EXS 24 owners who have to
>purchase in another format (usually Akai) because of lack of availablity 
>in native
>EXS format? We have to convert to EXS and lose, depending on the CD, 
>sometimes a
>great deal of the functionality that we are paying for when buying these CDs.
>
>For example, I have seen that some of the Vitous CD names get translated 
>to ex:
>Vol 001 or vol 002, etc when converted by the EXS 24; instead of the proper
>instrument name. Distorted Realities is another one where a lot of the 
>programming
>is lost on translation. And yet we have to pay the same full price as those
>getting full functionality for their money.
>
>I don't know what the soloution is, but in principle it bothers me a 
>little to
>have to pay full price and not get full functionality.