I bought a sample pack from Florian Meindl. I record from my analog heat into a really shitty tape recorder. Think like $25 dollar recorder from Amazon tape recorder.
When played back Meindl’s samples: kicks, hats, chords, voices, percs, all sound clear and undistorted.
But when I live record/sample my Syntakt or other instruments it comes out so choppy/distorted sounding like garbage. At first I thought it was too much Db into the recorder but because Meindl’s samples translated so well… What is his secret? Is there a pedal that can help smooth out the sound? I think if I can master this part of the process the rest of my work will translate.
One common culprit is very low frequencies. Try running a low cut, getting rid of everything under 20-50Hz and cutting up to 100Hz or higher under everything but bass and kick.
I uploaded a video here… it’s still a bit distorted but, please do let me know what do you think? xxtunes._LIMINAL_v10.AIFF.mov - YouTube the first seconds are not my samples, then the next song are all from my Syntakt.
the first bit seems much less treble biased too. I wonder if it’s just that tape distortion on lows sounds all nice and round, wheras tape distortion on highs sounds like tearing sheet metal?
(sometimes in a good way)
kinda difficult to tell with a phone recording out of that speaker though!
Also, maybe it’s compression? - his sounds are quite punchy/solid. The sounds coming straight out of a synth are not going to be the same dynamically as something that’s been polished up for a sample pack I guess.
I mean, that’s partly why people find Loopcloud/Splice so useful, cos you just get “ready” sounds.