Drum & Bass for your heart and soul

Sampler anti-aliasing and pitch-shifting comparison

When samples are pitched up or down, Samplers create various artefacts.

Testing method
At 120 BPM:
8 tones up (C4-C5), 8 tones down (C4-C3)

Real-use sample
Tambourine.wav

Realtime winners
Kontakt 3, VSampler 3.1 and Emulator X

Offline winners
VSampler 3.1, Emulator X, Modplug, Fruityloops, Renoise, Madtracker

Info
What is aliasing?
Jeskola Comparison


Soft/Hardware Sampler Listen Full spectral view taken with Cool Edit
Buzz
Matilde Tracker:
Linear and Spline Interpolation

WAV


Aliasing errors when pitched up (lower left corner: the bigger red points), and unwanted resampling artefacts when pitched down (upper right corner)

Native Instruments Kontakt 3
3 resampling modes to choose:
Standard, High and Perfect

WAV


This is -Perfect-. You rock Wolfgang Schneider!

Native Instruments Kontakt 1.3

WAV


It's okay.

Propellerheads Reason 3-4
NN-XT Digital Sampler

WAV


With "High Quality Interpolation" on, it sounds fine.

Emulator X

WAV


With "Ultra-High Precision Interpolation" on,
it's the bomb!

Jaime from EMU comments: "We spent lots of time engineering our interpolation such that it is the best balance between anti-aliasing and keeping the harmonic content of the sound in tact. Other interpolators do well anti-aliasing but sound dull."

Emagic EXS24 MKII

WAV


Ouch, quite bad. What about a high quality switch?

Gigasampler 2.54
Thanks to Anonymous
from Hungary for sending the file.

WAV


Wow. Never thought that an ugly interface could sound that good!

Fruityloops Studio 4
Rendered output:
with method "sinc depth 64", not realtime.

WAV


Realtime quality as the old Fruityloops, but the audio export has been improved even more, wicked.

Fruityloops
Rendered output:
with method "sinc depth 64", not realtime.

WAV


With "sinc depth 64" as rendering method everything's cool.

Steinberg Halion 2
Resampling: Best, Full Quality Slider

WAV


Not very convincing, even with the High-Quality settings and audio export.

MOTU Mach Five 1.2

WAV


Great interface and mediocre sound quality,
too bad.

Creamware Pulsar
STS 4000 Sampler

WAV


Not much better than Buzz,
but a nice rolloff for the high frequencies.

Modplug Tracker

Updated (2001-05-08):
Aliasing fixed in Version 1.14

WAV


Was okay before, very good since version 1.14.
Thanks to the author for improving the aliasing.

Native Instruments Reaktor
Sample quality excellent, Version 2.3

WAV


Same problems as Buzz
and the Creamware Sampler.

Soundblaster live!
(created a Soundfont
with the Vienna software
and played through MIDI)

WAV


Very good realtime quality. Too bad the E-MU Chip inside doesn't get a great interface.

E-MU ESI 4000 Turbo

WAV


Some aliasing.
Thanks to Cycom for sending the file.

Akai S3000 XL

WAV


Not bad, but still some rough aliasing.
Thanks to Mainframe / Precision for sending.

Akai Z8
Thanks for Rajah Patel for
sending the file.

WAV


Nearly perfect for realtime output, some quiet aliasing on certain notes.

E-MU E4X

WAV


Funny - nearly no aliasing except on one(!) note. Otherwise excellent! Thanks to The Green Man / Basswerk for sending the file.

Vsampler 3.1

WAV


Ultra Mode

The interface got better since 2.5 and the "perfect" and "ultra" modes are the icing on the cake - perfect! Great work guys.

Renoise

WAV


Perfect when rendering.

Madtracker

WAV


Great with export setting "sinc interpolation". Now you have two (Renoise & Madtracker) world-class Trackers to choose from :-)

Shortcircuit 1.0.15

WAV


Very nice! (if not excellent)

Yamaha A4000

WAV


Sounds okay, has some aliasing, alright.