I am in the market for a new Fantom, and it would be a big upgrade from what I've got now. I'm really interesting in the sampling capabilities. For example, I'd love to same some of the VSTs I have an have them be part of my sounds to take on the road with me to gigs. I saw in the manuals you can have keyboard samples up to 2 minutes and so many seconds per sample. I know the Pads are different, but I'm not worried about them right now.
When it says per sample, does that mean each note (pitch) on the keyboard is one sample? I watched Ed Diaz perform a multisample of a VST into the Fantom here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8o1f_PStzY at 1:11:40. So that was awesome, and exactly what I'm looking to do. Take a VST, sample into the Fantom, and have that as a new patch for a song at a gig. My question is, how many individual "new voices" can I sample into the Fantom. If the example Ed did was counted as "one" new voice, how many more can I store before storage is used up. That video is two years old, and at the time, it was stated in the video that you could not stream samples live from the flash drive or external hard drive. Has that changed with any updates?
Thank you so much for your time.
How Much Can You Actually Sample?
Re: How Much Can You Actually Sample?
https://www.roland.com/us/products/fantom_series/specs/ contains the following specs keyboard and multi samples:
A multi-sample is a collection of samples that are assigned to key ranges. When creating a tone, you might want to use multiple velocity layers. Beyond that, the duration of the samples is important.
One extreme is a piano tone, with 4 stereo samples per key (velocity layers), and 10 seconds per sample. The total sample time is about 1h. That means you would be able to create 3 such tones.
Another example is a short pluck sound that you only need in 2 octaves, and that does not require velocity layers. 4-6 samples over the 2 octaves might be enough, which consumes 2-3 seconds in total if each sample is only 0.5 seconds long.
- Format: 16/24-bit linear, 44.1/48kHz, WAV/AIFF
- Number of Samples: 8,000
- Number of Multisamples: 128
- Sampling Time: The maximum is 2 minutes 44 second (1 Sample)
- A total of approximately 2 GB (Share with Expansion titles)
A multi-sample is a collection of samples that are assigned to key ranges. When creating a tone, you might want to use multiple velocity layers. Beyond that, the duration of the samples is important.
One extreme is a piano tone, with 4 stereo samples per key (velocity layers), and 10 seconds per sample. The total sample time is about 1h. That means you would be able to create 3 such tones.
Another example is a short pluck sound that you only need in 2 octaves, and that does not require velocity layers. 4-6 samples over the 2 octaves might be enough, which consumes 2-3 seconds in total if each sample is only 0.5 seconds long.
Re: How Much Can You Actually Sample?
Don't hold your breath on using the Fantom as a sampler. I would imagine only trying to use an old Ensoniq Mirage for instrument construction would be more painful at this point. And that was only two samples...
I too was hoping (yeah, I bought the thing and THEN found out the truth) to use the Fantom as a hybrid between sampled instruments I created myself and its synth capabilities. I was disappointed in the Fantom's capabilities - still, to this day. To be fair, its synth capabilities are very good...and the hardware (minus the afterbash: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=69145&p=339628#p339628) is very nice.
Here are a couple of posts related to the dismal sample capabilities of the Fantom, in which I make a few criticisms:
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=68799&p=338409#p338409
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=59357&p=323924#p323924
Nutshell: the Fantom has no crossfading loop capabilities. Instrument construction is a pig. If converting from sfz, for instance, you will get the loop data from the sample, but the placement of samples is completely manual - so much for "conversion."
To your questions about multisamples: the official specs say, 8000 samples, and 128 multisamples.
I too was hoping (yeah, I bought the thing and THEN found out the truth) to use the Fantom as a hybrid between sampled instruments I created myself and its synth capabilities. I was disappointed in the Fantom's capabilities - still, to this day. To be fair, its synth capabilities are very good...and the hardware (minus the afterbash: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=69145&p=339628#p339628) is very nice.
Here are a couple of posts related to the dismal sample capabilities of the Fantom, in which I make a few criticisms:
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=68799&p=338409#p338409
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=59357&p=323924#p323924
Nutshell: the Fantom has no crossfading loop capabilities. Instrument construction is a pig. If converting from sfz, for instance, you will get the loop data from the sample, but the placement of samples is completely manual - so much for "conversion."
To your questions about multisamples: the official specs say, 8000 samples, and 128 multisamples.
Re: How Much Can You Actually Sample?
If you sample to internal memory, the max time will be somewhere over 2 minutes. But if you sample to a pad, then I made it to sample over 10 minutes.