TAL Software TAL-Sampler User's Manual

Hollow Sun Library for TAL Sampler

By Fernando Manuel Rodrigues

(Based on old Akai libraries created by Stephen Howell, released with permission)

In memoriam of Stephen Howell – RIP Stephen.

My deepest thanks to Hollowsun for the permission granted, without which this could not be
released, and don’t forget to check their site for some good modern sample libraries that are
still being created - http://www.hollowsun.com/

This library is based on libraries of Akai sample instruments that were available for free at the
Hollow Sun site in the early 2000s (don’t remember the exact date anymore). By the time, Akai
samplers were already declining, if not vanished already (the Akai Z-series, which were the last
samplers from Akai, were launched in the beginning of the century).

Anyway, Stephen Howell, which collaborated with Akai in the S1000 and S300 series, decided
to make these available for free for a while. The libraries aren’t available anymore, but I still
had the files collecting dust in my hard-drive.

These libraries are like a museum of old electronic instruments. We have a little of everything
there. Fairlight, Emulator, PPG Wave, Moog, ARP, Sequential Circuits, Korg, Roland, Yamaha,
Alesis, lots, of drum machines, even the old vintage keyboards, like the Fender Rhodes, the
Hammond organs, the Hohner Clavinet and Pianet, the ARP Solina, the Eminent and some
others that I would never thought in sample, or even knew they existed.

All instruments have been converted from AKP format into SFZ format using Awave from FMJ
Software. Then, the sample maps have been imported into TAL Sampler and from then on
each instrument was programmed, and in the process also some new ones were created. The
sample maps aren’t always top notch, but at the time the Akai S1000 was available, RAM was a
luxury (a sampler with 1 MB of RAM was the average, and some had even less). Therefore, we
had to squeeze the maximum out of a few Kb, which meant trade-offs like lower sample rates,
smaller sizes of the recordings, and as few multi-samples as possible (many times, just one
sample covering the entire range).

This is one of the reasons why samplers of the time sounded so gritty sometimes. The other
reason was the converters, and also some trade-offs done in the circuitry.

The TAL sampler aims to recreate that vintage flavor, and I thought that reviving these
collections could be a good thing. I got permission from Hollow Sun, so I decided to release the
libraries for TAL Sampler. I rounded some corners, added some samples of my own, and
sometimes even created a few more instruments, layering sound maps. A lot more could and
can be done with these, but I had to stop somewhere, or this would never be released.

Anyway, hope you like it, and if you do, please drop me a line. If you manage to create
something and don’t mind to share it, you are welcome to send me some sequence files with
music based on these. That would really be great.

Porto, 19th of July, 2015 – Fernando Manuel Rodrigues

[e-mail]