Sampler anti-aliasing and pitch-shifting comparison
When samples are pitched up or down, Samplers create various artefacts.
Testing method
At 120 BPM:
8 tones up (C4-C5), 8 tones down (C4-C3)
Real-use sample
Tambourine.wav
Realtime winners
Kontakt 3, VSampler 3.1 and Emulator X
Offline winners
VSampler 3.1, Emulator X, Modplug, Fruityloops, Renoise, Madtracker
Info
What is aliasing?
Jeskola Comparison
Soft/Hardware Sampler | Listen | Full spectral view taken with Cool Edit |
Buzz Matilde Tracker: Linear and Spline Interpolation |
Aliasing errors when pitched up (lower left corner: the bigger red points), and unwanted resampling artefacts when pitched down (upper right corner) |
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Native Instruments Kontakt 3 |
This is -Perfect-. You rock Wolfgang Schneider! |
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Native Instruments Kontakt 1.3 | It's okay. |
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Propellerheads Reason 3-4 NN-XT Digital Sampler |
With "High Quality Interpolation" on, it sounds fine. |
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Emulator X |
With "Ultra-High Precision Interpolation" on, |
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Emagic EXS24 MKII |
Ouch, quite bad. What about a high quality switch? |
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Gigasampler 2.54 Thanks to Anonymous from Hungary for sending the file. |
Wow. Never thought that an ugly interface could sound that good! |
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Fruityloops Studio 4 Rendered output: with method "sinc depth 64", not realtime. |
Realtime quality as the old Fruityloops, but the audio export has been improved even more, wicked. |
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Fruityloops Rendered output: with method "sinc depth 64", not realtime. |
With "sinc depth 64" as rendering method everything's cool. |
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Steinberg Halion 2 Resampling: Best, Full Quality Slider |
Not very convincing, even with the High-Quality settings and audio export. |
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MOTU Mach Five 1.2 |
Great interface and mediocre sound quality, |
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Creamware Pulsar STS 4000 Sampler |
Not much better than Buzz, |
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Modplug Tracker Updated (2001-05-08): Aliasing fixed in Version 1.14 |
Was okay before, very good since version 1.14. |
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Native Instruments Reaktor Sample quality excellent, Version 2.3 |
Same problems as Buzz |
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Soundblaster live! (created a Soundfont with the Vienna software and played through MIDI) |
Very good realtime quality. Too bad the E-MU Chip inside doesn't get a great interface. |
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E-MU ESI 4000 Turbo |
Some aliasing. |
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Akai S3000 XL |
Not bad, but still some rough aliasing. |
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Akai Z8 Thanks for Rajah Patel for sending the file. |
Nearly perfect for realtime output, some quiet aliasing on certain notes. |
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E-MU E4X |
Funny - nearly no aliasing except on one(!) note. Otherwise excellent! Thanks to The Green Man / Basswerk for sending the file. |
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Vsampler 3.1 |
Ultra Mode The interface got better since 2.5 and the "perfect" and "ultra" modes are the icing on the cake - perfect! Great work guys. |
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Renoise |
Perfect when rendering. |
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Madtracker |
Great with export setting "sinc interpolation". Now you have two (Renoise & Madtracker) world-class Trackers to choose from :-) |
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Shortcircuit 1.0.15 |
Very nice! (if not excellent) |
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Yamaha A4000 |
Sounds okay, has some aliasing, alright. |