Other forms of synthesis
In the pursuit of ever more creative ways to create new sounds, let’s see some of the other synthesis formats, some of which you might be using without even knowing it…
S&S to ROMplers
Sampling technology came of age in the ’80s, thanks to a number of hardware devices that made it affordable to capture audio and reproduce it at a key stroke. The big problem with sampling, at least at that time, was that it was entirely dependent on RAM (Random Access Memory) to hold the sample in an active state, ready for reproduction.
This meant that many of the most affordable samplers could only hold a few seconds of audio at a time. As has so often been the case with music technology, it took computers to push sampling to the next level. In 1997, the introduction of Gigastudio (aka Gigasampler) brought hard disk streaming of samples to the fore for the first time. The only sampling limit, it would seem, was the size of your computer’s hard drive, and the rest, as they say…
During the early ’90s, companies such as Roland developed a format employing what became known as Sample (sometimes sampled or sampling) and Synthesis, or S&S for short. The basic concept relied on samples being stored in ROM (Read Only Memory) which could then be retrieved in real time, much like a sampler would do it.