Yamaha A5000 & A4000 Samplers

When we think of Samplers, it's often that the Akai and EM-U are first in mind, but Yamaha also made many a sampler, including the A5000 and A6000. In this video Don Solaris takes us on a journey with both of the aforementioned Samplers, detailing how they handle PWM, Synthesis and demos of their fat Analog Filters. Here's an excerpt from an A5000 review in Sound on Sound magazine on it's release in April 2000...

The A5000's synthesis facilities comprise filters, envelope generators and low-frequency oscillators. The multi-mode filter features three kinds of low-pass, two high-pass, one each of band-pass and band-eliminate, two peak filters, and a variety of dual filters - each filter type has adjustable cutoff frequency and resonance, plus a cutoff distance control for dual types. Both cutoff frequency and resonance can be modulated by velocity, and a scaling function alters filter response according to where a sample is played on the keyboard. There's even a well-specified single-band EQ on the Filter page (in addition to a 4-ba nd 'Total' EQ dedicated to a whole stereo mix and found elsewhere). In all, the filter is very comprehensive, and the possibilities are staggering given that every sample could have its own filter settings. Soundwise, it's capable of being absolutely evil, with a huge amount of bottom end, and the potential to be_very_cutting. Watch out for those speakers...

There are three EGs on board, one each for amplitude (following the attack-decay-sustain-release model of classic synths, with one or two small enhancements), filter and pitch. Each sample also has its own LFO, with choice of waveform (sawtooth, triangle, square, sample & hold), speed (though the S&speed is, rather confusingly, altered at Program level), delay, and depth amounts for amplitude, filter cutoff and pitch modulation. At this point, one greedily wishes there were_three_LFOs per sample, to modulate the three destinations independently!

The synthesis section does everything you'd reasonably want - the 5000 even has seven basic synth waveforms so you can create sounds from scratch without sampling - and Yamaha have sensibly made it comprehensible rather than esoteric. Yet there's enormous power available just by virtue of the fact that every sample can have its own settings. Since the 5000 holds up to 960 samples, that's almost like having 960 little synths. Parameters can be easily copied from one sample to another, too, so although, for example, there isn't a library of preset envelope shapes, you can nick a suitable envelope from another sample. The one niggle in the synthesis area is that the A5000 has inherited the A3000's counter-intuitive value range of 127-0 for envelope stages - for example, the fastest attack is 127 and the slowest 0.

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