MIKE PAYNE: So next up, we've got another orchestral sample listening test. This week, we'll be checking out brass samples across the same three hardware ROMplers and three software samplers we tried before. With any sample sets, brass is typically the most telling as is it is where most samplers fail. Let's see who can stand up to our listening test this week on brass samples. Let's check it out.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Here's number one.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE ONE]

DAN AGOSTO: Hmm.

MIKE PAYNE: Wow. I'm impressed by that one.

DREW KRAG: Not too bad. Throw a little reverb on it, and, you know.

DAN AGOSTO: That was just dry.

MIKE PAYNE: Um, that first note. Was that the brown tone?

DAN AGOSTO: It might have been, but are you all right?

MIKE PAYNE: I'm okay. I'm okay.

DAN AGOSTO: Do you need [OVERLAPPING]

DREW KRAG: What's that smell?

MIKE PAYNE: Did you guys think I'm on a weird [INDISCERNIBLE]? [LAUGHING] Woo!

DAN AGOSTO: All right, so number two.

MIKE PAYNE: Cut. Cut.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Just get going.

DAN AGOSTO: Number two.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE TWO]

MIKE PAYNE: Boo.

DAN AGOSTO: You didn't like that one.

MIKE PAYNE: No.

DAN AGOSTO: I just -- I'm having a headphone problem.

MIKE PAYNE: In fact, you can sample me singing boo in a bunch of different pitches, and then put that MIDI to it.

DAN AGOSTO: [SINGING] Boo, boo-boo-boo, boo, boo. I'll do that for next week.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. That'll be number seven.

DAN AGOSTO: So, what didn't you like about that one.

MIKE PAYNE: Play it again really quick, just the first couple of seconds.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE TWO]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay, those higher trumpets just sound --

DREW KRAG: The attack sounded more realistic on the first one

DAN AGOSTO: Okay.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: I think the first one did sound a lot more real too.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE THREE]

MIKE PAYNE: I like the trumpets on that a lot better. They sounded, I mean, very real. The tuba was a little --

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It was a little weak. It wasn't quite as strong.

MIKE PAYNE: But I like those trumpets quite a bit.

DAN AGOSTO: Cool. So that was number three.

MIKE PAYNE: They sounded real but I don't know how well they sound recorded. It sounds like you can't do too much of them, unless -- Does that software have reverb within it?

DAN AGOSTO: I turned like -- For this test, I kind of turned off reverb for the ROMplers.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

DAN AGOSTO: Because all the patches in ROMplers, I don't know but --

MIKE PAYNE: But that sampler had -- that software sampler had reverb in it?

DAN AGOSTO: It probably did have some reverb in it.

MIKE PAYNE: Oh, I just got you to tell me that it's a sampler, a soft sampler.

DAN AGOSTO: It -- I mean it could have been a ROMpler with some reverb on the sample too.

DREW KRAG: Touché. Touché.

DAN AGOSTO: I don't know. Hard to tell.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So that was number three.

DREW KRAG: Mike Payne.

DAN AGOSTO: Here's number four.

DREW KRAG: Private Eyes.

MIKE PAYNE: Software private investigator.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: Who loves you, baby.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE FOUR]

MIKE PAYNE: I'm just stunned by the realism there.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That one had some reverb on it.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING] But I mean I like -- What was that? Number four?

DAN AGOSTO: That was four.

DREW KRAG: Um, that would be good like different applications I think. That one was a little bit more like in your face.

DAN AGOSTO: It sounded kind of like pop brass almost.

DREW KRAG: It sounded like a different dynamic of sample like maybe it was mezzo forte as opposed to pianoforte or whatever.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. That's true too.

DREW KRAG: Whatever, but I would use that one more in like something that is a little bit louder.

DAN AGOSTO: Mmm hmm.

DREW KRAG: Where the first one sounded to have that more kind of quiet almost like French -- what is it? Flugelhorn or what is it? French horn?

DAN AGOSTO: French horn. Yeah. It had a lot more of French Horn in it. It did.

DREW KRAG: Oh. There you go.

DAN AGOSTO: Definitely.

DAN AGOSTO: See, this one I thought was a little fake sounding.

MIKE PAYNE: See, I didn't know we're going to use the synth from the Nintendo 64.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: I didn't know that was number six.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, which one do you think that would be then?

MIKE PAYNE: The old Yamaha.

DAN AGOSTO: The MU-100R?

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: Well, we'll see about that.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Was that number four or five?

MIKE PAYNE: That was number four.

DREW KRAG: That was four.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Here's five.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE FIVE]

MIKE PAYNE: I liked it.

DREW KRAG: I liked the lower -- What is that? A trombone or trumpet?

DAN AGOSTO: the --

MIKE PAYNE: The tuba.

DREW KRAG: I'm sorry. Trombone or tuba?

DAN AGOSTO: I believe it was a tuba. Yeah.

DREW KRAG: I like the tuba sound.

MIKE PAYNE: I was a trombone player for a long time.

DREW KRAG: [IMITATING A TROMBONE GLISSANDO] Whump!

DAN AGOSTO: So, you know the bones.

MIKE PAYNE: I do know the bones very well.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Very well.

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: No, that was -- Yeah, that was a tuba but the attack was kind of slow on that. I don't know if that was default, if you can actually edit that.

DAN AGOSTO: For most of the --

MIKE PAYNE: Within that sampler.

DAN AGOSTO: For most samplers and ROMplers.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: There's different attack settings with different patches in the ROMplers. In the samplers, you can just choose different samples, of course, that have different attack. I chose the most vanilla attack that I could find, you know, just something that fit across the board.

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DREW KRAG: I like that one.

MIKE PAYNE: That's good.

DREW KRAG: Just the tuba side of it.

DAN AGOSTO: Very dry. Very dry.

DREW KRAG: Yeah. The tuba side of it.

DAN AGOSTO: You just need some reverb on it.

DREW KRAG: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. Six.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYS BACK BRASS SAMPLE SIX]

MIKE PAYNE: Motif.

DAN AGOSTO: Okay. Your guess is the Motif.

MIKE PAYNE: My guess is the Motif.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. I think this one sounds pretty real, not as real as some of the other ones, but it's kind of something like you'd hear like Vangelis use or something like that.

DREW KRAG: Sure.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: It kind of has a little bit more digital edge to it or some sort of synthetic edge to it I think that can be really nice but isn't completely --

DREW KRAG: You got to make it work.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. It's not completely convincing.

MIKE PAYNE: I could be wrong about my guess but I own the ES5.

DAN AGOSTO: It definitely could be.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. [LAUGHING]

[PANELISTS LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: Okay. Gotcha.

DREW KRAG: Fair enough.

MIKE PAYNE: Fair enough.

DAN AGOSTO: All right. So, as with last week's program, or last -- That was a couple of weeks ago.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah.

DAN AGOSTO: As with the last program, we're going to have these samples up for download at full frequency 48k, 24-bit so you'l be able to listen to them yourselves. You could also, you know, listen to this show, and it's not going to be as high quality if you listen to it with the movie but you can still take a guess if you'd like. Go to our forums. There'll be another sticky, and please vote because we'd really like to get some feedback going on how our viewers feel about the different sounds.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Those of you who took place in the last one, thanks a lot. Hope that was fun.

DAN AGOSTO: Oh, and actually special thanks to Creations who actually took the MIDI sample that I had and put it through the Philharmonic, the Miroslav Philharmonic.

DREW KRAG: Oh, nice.

DAN AGOSTO: Those are pretty nice. He needed two different patches with that, and also Dimension Pro, the Cakewalk Dimension Pro, and also an Edirol VST I believe.

MIKE PAYNE: Gotcha. Gotcha.

DAN AGOSTO: And so, if you want to hear those as well, those are on the sticky for the string ensemble test.

MIKE PAYNE: You know what we should do when we do another orchestral listening test like this to see if we can get the -- if somebody can choose them all correctly, see if we can get them a copy of like EastWest Quantum Silver.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. We can definitely do that. Let's see if we can -- If we could hook it up, maybe we'll have to call our friends at EastWest or maybe VSL.

MIKE PAYNE: There you go. There you go. Cool. All right. Oh, and if anybody wants to use the music that Dan wrote for each of those samples in their Japanese role-playing game, they are available for license and I will take a cut of that for finder's fee but --

DAN AGOSTO: Get a hold of us at crosstalk@gearwire.com.

MIKE PAYNE: Yes.

DAN AGOSTO: If you'd like to purchase.

MIKE PAYNE: Exactly or myjapaneserpg@gearwire.com.

DAN AGOSTO: Yeah. Let's set that one up.

MIKE PAYNE: Yeah. Let's do that.

DREW KRAG: [LAUGHING]

MIKE PAYNE: All right.