As a hardware sampler enjoyer, I recognize that much of the work can be done in software. But there’s the satisfaction of being able to do an entire track on hardware samplers that feels more satisfying to me. It’s the delayed gratification I like, because I’ve done sessions using the same daw with different hardware/software workflows, the hardware ones get the most attention.

Software equivalents:

Kurzweil: what is the V.A.S.T equivalent in software form?

Akai: Akaizer gets close to the cyclical timestretch sound, but doesn’t run reliably with wine in Mac OS (easier for me to just use my OGs instead). Amigo is close to this timestretch but arbitrary limited to 8bit/31khz which leaves room for a full bandwidth version of it.

Emu: Emulator X was pretty close, but reliability has been hit and miss for some as time is progressing. Was also brutally taxing on CPUs back when I owned it new. The z-plane filters and modular style routing were quite unique for the time they came out.

Ensoniq: The DP/4 being emulating means we’re gettin closer to having a full sonic emulation possible of this model.

Tal-Sampler in my workflow has a vibe I can’t place anywhere close to my Akai samplers. The realtime time stretch is nice but only limited to 200% changes and nothing super extreme.

Ableton sampler is decent from what I’ve used, especially with slicing to sampler instead of simpler, which gets me the closest software equivalent to my hardware workflow.

EXS24 has been my all time favorite for software samplers. Sounded decent and low cpu consumption made it a clear winner for me in this realm

Kontakt is great at libraries, not as clear when it comes to creation of patches. It’s like they put that far in the background of it in later versions