IK Multimedia Sampletank 2 XL

I worked with it one week at a friend's. He also has Colossus, so I was able to compare them. I'll tell you more about that later!

I didn't install nor authorize it, so I can't say anything about it.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

It works very good and the design is all right.
It runs fine, doesn't crash.

OVERALL OPINION

The sounds: You have everything. And a lot of variety, there are thousands and pretty varied sounds. Most sections (strings, pianos, etc.) offer different sound "characters", with different recordings, conditions, etc. I had the impression that several libraries were mixed together, which I love, because you have lots of choices!

In terms of quality, it goes from awesome to ridiculous and awful. But you eventually end up finding what you need thanks to the number of sounds available.

It's very musical: You go fast, it sounds fine, it's full of life and uses very little resources! On the other hand, it is outclassed in terms of sound by more modern libraries.

Compared to Colossus, the latter has a larger library, considering the number of layers and the quality of the samples. However, Sampletank 2 is more practical and musical! When looking for a sound we started with Colossus (which is 3 years more recent + with better sampling quality) and 9 out 10 times we ended up using ST2!

It's a Swiss-army knife that can save you in many situations!

This VST installed nicely and quickly and has worked nicely on both of my computers. I have used it on a low end computer (1.8GHZ pentium and 1gb ram) as well as my current (2.5GHZ Core2Quad & 4GB ram) and it runs decently on both. On the low end PC it does suffer some delay and latency in the sound but other than that it is pretty fine. The lbirary is easily accessable and nice to use, and is operated via folders on display on the GUI of the VST. It is nicely organised into instrument types and then the actual instruments. It works nicely in both of the DAW's that I use, Ableton and FL Studio.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

This software works well in FL Studio with no hiccups, however I have to run Ableton Live in administrator mode to get it to work, otherwise Ableton will display it as an unsupported vst. The bank of stock sounds that comes with Sampletank is very decent and is very good for acoustic instruments. The CPU load is pretty low too so there is no problems with stacking up sounds. The memory usage is also low for a VST of the nature that it is, it has hundreds upon hundreds of preset sounds in the library. There seems to be a problem with stability though, as this VST has crashed FL multiple times upon loading. I'm not sure if it is specific patches causing this or the VST itself.

OVERALL OPINION

I love some of the sounds on offer from this VST, especially the guitars and some of the strings. However the other acoustic sounds, most notably the pianos, on offer are extremely flat and dry. These sounds are designed for layering. I cannot seem to find a search function on the VST too, this makes finding patches previously used an absolute nightmare. I would still get this VST though knowing what I know now. Just a pre caution, make sure you know how to compress and EQ your sounds correctly before you purchase this VST.

Nope nothing missing here. You pretty much have everything you need to really manipulate sounds in this plugin. The effects are great and you get a lot of options for editing samples.

Price paid

$350

Wasn't really hard to get around after reading the manual but they(IK) should make it a little more intuitive to use.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

The sound quality is great! Everything sounds great from the bass to the percussions. The brass instruments in my opinion are pretty wack but I don't really incorporate brass into my beats unless they're samples from records. There doesn't seem to be enough synth instruments to get your crunk on but what can you do? Other than that everything sounds great! Especially the bass & strings.

It crashes on me a lot but I think that might because of low PC memory or something. I wouldn't recommend getting this plugin unless you have a really well-built computer to run this on. I can't even have two instruments playing out of Sampletank at the same time without it crashing on me. Definitely upgrade your computer before getting this.

OVERALL OPINION

It's alright. I'm a sample-based producer so I don't really use much of the sounds anyways. The only instruments I really use out of Sampletank is the bass. It's a good plugin but I'm sticking to hardware from now on. I have a Roland JV-1080 on the way as we speak.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: I.Q. ( 6-, 2005)