SampleTank 3 includes a large collection of over 2,000 MIDI files that you can trigger from within the app or your DAW or keyboard.
Categories include Acoustic Drums, Electronic Drums, Bass, Synth Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Piano, Electric Piano, Brass, Strings, Organ, Chromatic, Woodwinds, Synth Lead, Synth Pad, Voices, Ethnic, Percussion, Sound FX, Loops, Synth FX, and Imported Instruments.
The overall sound quality of the included effects is quite good too, and you'll find yourself using them frequently. Many of the effects are sourced from IK Multimedia's T-RackS and Amplitube apps. Many parameters can be tempo-synchronized, which is a big plus. Pretty much everything you could ask for is here, including delays, reverbs, modulation effects, rotary speaker and amp simulations, studio processors, and much much more. There are lots of effects included - 55 different types, of which 22 are new.These are available on each of the three main environment screens. You also get some basic controls for the selected instrument, as well as the ability to assign and edit effects for each instrument in a panel near the bottom of the screen via the Macro and FX buttons.A browser style area on the left side allows you to browse, select and load content. Volume and pan controls are also found here, as well as a level meter for each part. As with previous versions, you can assign instrument parts to different MIDI channels as well as mute and solo individual parts from this screen. It has slots for loading up to 16 different parts. The main Play screen will look familiar to users of earlier versions of SampleTank.SampleTank 3 has three main screens or "environments" as IK Multimedia refers to them.The good news is that the process is simple and pain free, and went off without a hitch - it's just a bit time consuming, so plan on spending an afternoon (or more) on the task.
There's over 33GB of sounds and content included - over 4,000 instruments! I have a fairly fast pipe (50 Mbps up and down) but it still took a while to download and install everything. Speaking of the installation, it takes a while.
It can run under Mac OS X (10.7 or later) or Windows (7/8) and needs a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2 processor or faster, at least 4GB of RAM (8GB is recommended) and 34GB of hard drive space for installation. VST (2/3), AU and AAS plugin formats are supported.
It requires a 64 bit operating system and, when used as a plugin, a 64 bit DAW host. SampleTank 3 can run as a stand-alone application, or as a 64 bit plugin.Three synth engines (Stretch, Pitch-shift/Time-shift, and Resample) are provided, and four play modes (poly, mono and two different legato modes) are supported.
It uses an Instruments, Multis and MIDI Patterns structure for its content. It is 16 part multitimbral, with 16 stereo outputs. SampleTank 3 is a completely new and totally revamped version of the legendary sample-based virtual instrument plugin.Let's see how well it lives up to the stellar reputation of its predecessors. Called (not surprisingly) SampleTank 3, it has been over ten years in the making. Now IK Multimedia has released a new version of their popular flagship product. A couple of years later SampleTank 2 was released, and it has remained very popular ever since. Based in Italy, their widely popular SampleTank application was first released back in 2001, and was the first sample-based sound workstation for computers to hit the market. In fact, in many ways they have largely supplanted hardware modules and keyboards where once you'd find a large multi-tiered keyboard stand and a rack filled with MIDI modules, today you'll often find a nice MIDI controller or two coupled with a laptop filled with virtual instrument software.Ĭertainly one of the pioneers in the field of virtual instruments is IK Multimedia. It's hard to believe just how rapidly virtual instruments have taken off, and in the process they have become indispensable tools for modern music production. Sound and groove workstation / virtual instrument with MIDI files and loops By Phil O'Keefe