EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

> guess it depends on where you're coming from. The EXS24 might be fine
 > for patches with a few string samples that all have similar
 > envelopes, or drum loops, but if you're CREATING drum patches
 > yourself, most drum sounds require different envelopes (to optimize
 > polyphony and minimize hiss as the sample decays), and making +/-
 > adjustments to a master envelope seems very unintuitive to me. Plus,
 > you can't even view/edit the envelope graphically, as far as I can
 > tell. I'm going to play with it some more and see if it grows on me,
 > but my first impression is that its missing a few basic features that
 > traditional samplers/synths usually have.

You've hit the head on the nail here.  The design of the EXS24 is 
HORRIBLE for creating drum patches.  Actually, it's horrible for any 
sort of multi-instrument patch.  But this is understandable (if not 
excusable) if you keep in mind that it's designed as a plug and not 
(from my point of view) as a full-blown sampler.  It's meant to be 
layered, one sampler on top of another, as opposed to managing its own 
polyphony.

Let's say you have a brass sample and a string sample.  Because the EXS 
is a plug, it's more natural to make a separate brass patch and a 
separate string patch, then load two instances of EXS in your song, and 
load one patch into each.  Now each EXS instance is responsible for 
playing just one patch and everything works great.

On another, non-plugin-oriented sampler it might make just as much sense 
to combine both samples together into one patch.  Or maybe this other 
sampler is one of those that lets you load and manage multiple patches 
at once into a single instance of the sampler.

Conceptually I really like the plug-in orientation of the EXS.  It fits 
very intuitively with the way I work.  I don't use many drum patches in 
my stuff, but when I do I tend to treat them just like my other sampled 
instruments -- I have my kick on a single EXS, my snare on another, my 
hat on another...

But I rarely have more than 8 or so drum parts in my songs.  I just pop 
those into a folder and it's all good.  I can see how this would be a 
big problem for someone who uses 120 percussive instruments in a project.

So yeah, if that's the kind of work you're going to do, the EXS is not 
the tool for you.  That doesn't invalidate it as a useful tool for 
others, but it really just hasn't been designed to do the kind of work 
you want it to.

Cheers,
-Josh Emmons