I’m deep into the next phase of my experiments with SKYLIFE Sample Robot — automatically sampling a pipe organ voice from Yamaha Genos™
Two mundane, yet important observations:
- The license allows up to 3 simultaneous installs — quite generous.
- Sample Robot is 64-bit only. (?)
I intended to install Sample Robot on my “upstairs” PC. The upstairs PC is equipped with a basic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC), a Behringer UCA202. Yes, I know, it’s kind of low-brow, but I don’t do enough sampling, etc. to splash out for an expensive converter. The upstairs rig is always ready to go, including its E-MU MIDI2x2 interface. It all sits right next to Genos. A quick cable up and we should be ready.
Or not. The upstairs PC runs Windows 7 32-bit. The copy of Sample Robot which Yamaha Musicsoft dealt to me insists on 64-bit Windows 7. BTW, I couldn’t find this requirement (or any detailed platform requirements) on the Sample Robot web site or in the Sample Robot manual. I think it’s 64-bits or the highway…
“If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.” Drag Genos, UCA202, and a handful of cables downstairs to Windows 7 64-bit and Sample Robot.
With everything moved and cabled, it’s finally time to fire up Sample Robot. Thank goodness for its start-up wizard because it definitely takes you through every essential setting which must be made. The wizard leads up to its final screen which has a button to start sampling. Great. except what about setting levels?
Here the road gets a bit rough. First, I noticed that Sample Robots meter is twitching as though it’s getting schmutz on the audio input or at least a dirty sample stream from the UCA202 ADC. I’ll be darned if I can find a way to monitor the incoming sample stream through the box, i.e., route the incoming stream to Sample Robot’s audio output in order to hear incoming audio on the monitors.
Worse, I didn’t even know that Genos was playing the wrong voice! Genos has two 5-pin MIDI ports: Port A IN/OUT and Port B IN/OUT. By default, Port A is associated with the SONG channels and Port B is associated with the keyboard (tone generator) itself. I needed port B, and of course, was plugged into Port A.
How did I work through these issues? First, I turned off Sample Robot’s Auto-gain feature. “Use the Force, Luke.” I feel much better hitting the ADC with a known sensible level for starters. I can always enable Auto-gain later on.
Next, I had to get some aural feedback. I reduced the amount of time each sample is taken to two seconds. With such a short time, I could quickly capture half-a-dozen samples, stop capture, and playback each individual sample for quality assurance. This is how I finally discovered the Port A/Port B wrong voice problem.
With Genos properly configured, I started to hear pipe organ instead of cheesy GM piano. This afternoon, I intend to capture a full set of short samples and QA them before acquiring full length (12 second) samples and looping them. Better to wait 60 seconds instead of six minutes; shorten that feedback loop!
Now, I think I can move ahead. But, please, oh please, where is the Monitor function in Sample Robot? To its credit, Sample Robot does what it says on the tin (modulo 64-bitness). More to come.