Anyone on here use IK Multimedia Sampletank?

[TheElement]

the strings and piano sound really great. very realistic.

to my ears anyway. I could be wrong.

anyone use this rompler?
Thanks

[Len911]

I have sampletank 2 Player and these expansions:

OmniSynth 2 SampleTank Expansion
Piano Collection 2 SampleTank Expansion
Country Folk Rhythms ReTank Expansion
Electric Guitar Collection 2 SampleTank Expansion
Acoustic Guitar Collection 2 SampleTank Expansion
Symphony Strings 2 SampleTank Expansion

I use it as a gm device with composition software, or for sketches.

I don't know how much the version 3 improved. The sampletank 2 player was free, and esoundz had a sale and I bought the expansions for $10 a piece. The strings are limited as far as articulations go, for a pop song, not for any detailed orchestration. My overall opinion of these expansions are that they seem to have a lot of presets, and many with "effects", but not a lot of meticulous, complete sampling as you would expect from a dedicated library for pianos that might only have a couple of choices. It's great for sketching and as a general midi rompler, sounds better than many, and useable in a mix.

It looks like some of those expansions are on sale for $5 now,lol!

The Alan Parsons Imperial grand, is $50 on sale, and has over a gigabyte of samples, the Kontakt Alicia Keys piano has 7gb of compressed samples for $100.

Bottom line, the expansions for $5 and the free sampletank player, can't go wrong, when you start getting into the more expensive instruments, now you're competing with free Kontakt 5 Player and extremely competitive instruments.

[mojobone]

I had it; never used it, the factory samples are pretty spotty, imo. SampleTank's time-stretching algo is reportedly very good, but I never used that, either. I bought Kontakt and haven't looked back.

[andygabrys]

For me:

I bought sample tank 2 - and at the time they hung on to the 32 bit plugin format when Logic and everyone else jumped to 64 bit processing (not talking sound quality, just 64 but memory address).

Logic's 32 bit bridge was über flakey, so I just stopped using Sample tank and went with Kontakt as they jumped on the 64 bit idea really early on.

The stuff sounded fine, but I haven't looked at it in years.

[TheElement]

cool thanks for the replys.

[mojobone]

I should probably also mention that since the last upgrade there are lots of third-party instruments/samples and some great-sounding add-ons. I think the Miroslav orchestral instruments got an update, too, but I don't know how deep they go with articulations.