The Toraiz SP16 has that Dave Smith Analog Filter that‘s absolutely killer. Worth a try if you‘re after a good filter in a sampler.
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I agree. S2400 takes the cake. Makes everything you put it in it sound better, even without the filters. If they have freely assignable lfos on the coming FX board expansion, it’s going to be revolutionary for me.
Octatrack is a lot of fun for other reasons than the sound/filters and sounds great too, and Analog Rytm sounds even better with its analog circuitry.
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Yeah Octatrack sounds great but a lot of that is sample manipulation (though the effects still hold up today). It’s definitely my all around favorite sampler.
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I think the Rytm has really amazing sounding analog filters fwiw.
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I’m not planning to buy another sampler anytime soon but that sounds very enticing. Though i don’t know if i’d like the workflow.
I might have to visit a friend who has a Rytm to try it. The analog filters from Elektron i heard so far (Analog Heat, Analog 4) sounded too bland for my liking.
It’s been a long time, so maybe it’s better in my memory than it was, but I remember the Yamaha a3000 having amazing effects. Especially compared to the Akai s2000 which was the same price at the time. The newer a4000 and a5000 I’ve not heard but I imagine them to also have very good effects. And they are really inexpensive.
The Kurzweil k2000 and k2500 also had amazing effects, which I think was fitted from the factory or an expansion depending on the trim level. And v.a.s.t. synthesis is also very capable, but that’s more sample mangling, not effects.
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Roland S760 for maybe the warmer sounding filters in a hardware sampler. I even updated mine with mouse and monitor interface!
The S760 filters can get a little honky at higher resonances but do sound really good. Also while offline and not fx, skip address makes for some of the most beautiful lo-fi goodness, there is something about using such great pitch interpolation with samples the resolution of pixelvision just does it for me.
But more in line with this thread, since the S760 has 2 pairs of outs only on spdif, I bought a cheap tc fireworx to convert one pair to analog and get some fx to boot. If your sampler has spdif there’s quite a few older rack boxes that can be used to add an fx engine that’ll be way better than anything you’d find in any older sampler.
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Best is such a subjective word.
Samplers I have used.
-Korg ESX1, though I didn’t like the filter, the effects are pretty good.
-Korg E 2 s, amazing filters, some very nice effects. Overall great sound.
-Digitakt, I really didnt like the unavoidable pushed high end, so that tainted my opinion of it. Filter was ok.
Octatrack- league of its own. The filter is stereo, and incredible if you get to know it and move it in the right way. Importantly, its a stereo filter. The effects are similar, amazing once youve put some time in, and have developed your own working knowledge of them and how to craft your own sound. How can you say no to modulation by 3 LFOs, slide trigs, p locks, and the cross fader?
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Interesting you say the es2, played with one once at a trade show and thought it sounded really good, so much so that I was definitely going to get one at one point but it also has a lot of negative reviews
Yeah you really cant trust reviews. Trust your ears.
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I think it was mainly due to voice stealing and effects getting cut off when changing patterns etc
SP 404 MK2 is killer really love the filters and FX.
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Those 2 issues are indeed a bit annoying but overall (and especially for the price) it punches well above its weight in terms of getting nice sounding tracks together quickly.
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Any idea if the mc707 has the same filters and effects as the 404, the 404 seems to be a popular choice
I say get some filters in a small euro format, there are cheap ones out there used. I am a lazy bitch, and i use A4 as filter bank for some drumloop modulation in abelton live, besides that there is fab filter volcano or xone filters which sound good. I prefer quick workflow over perfect though.
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Wow we just wrote almost the same thing — I’m going to go look around my apartment to see if you’re over there with my S-760 and ASR-X Pro.
I’m really holding back from talking about Ensoniq Mirage’s analog filters because it’s maybe not relevant in a 2023 thread about modern samplers with built-in fx 
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Interesting fact. I was just playing with the resonant digital filters on the W-30, which might’ve been Roland’s first iteration of this specific technology. I noticed that at certain levels, the resonance produced a hum/noise that wasn’t pleasant and did not go away. Lowering the resonance solved it.
whoa — are you talking about the sysex tricks on the s-760 to manipulate start point, loop point, etc.? I thought I was the only person who ever played with this…
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I’ve never played with sysex on the s-760. I’ll have to take a look at that. No, I’m talking about the skip address command on the bit convert page. It throws away every x number of samples while keeping the sample rate the same so there’s no annoying anti-aliasing filters getting in your way. You can get the sample rate down around 1k if you want. Unlike SK1’s and other 8bit things you can do this at 16bit without all the noise from low bit rates, and in stereo. There’s lots of hazy delights to be had when you repitch stuff with absurdly low sample rates.
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