KCCM Resample Pro

Whether you use a stand‑alone sampler, or a 'PC plus soundcard' sampling setup, KCCM's ReSample Pro is designed to relieve you of all those irritating sample format incompatibility problems. Panicos Georghiades gets converted...

Regular users of 'ready‑made' samples will be only too aware of the huge choice of sampled sounds now available — and the problems of sample format incompatibility that can arise when using samples from different manufacturers' libraries. Although samplers from many manufacturers are capable of reading Akai‑format disks, the sounds you're after may exist in another library — and they may be cheaper there, or of a better quality. In these fairly common situations, a sample format conversion program is required, and this is exactly what ReSample Pro is. All the sample formats can be read and written by this software, with the exception of the Akai S2800, S3000, MOD and Roland S550 formats, which can only be read. The Akai S1000 format can be read and written.

In Use

To convert a sample file, you simply load it and resave it in another format. Occasionally, further tweaks are required; sometimes some of the waveform characteristics have to be altered to match the requirements of the destination sample format, and while the program suggests the changes, it doesn't make them automatically. For instance, if you load an 8‑bit WAV file and you wish to save it as a KRZ (Kurzweil K2000) file, ReSample Pro informs you that the sample should be 16‑bit, which means that you should resample it before trying to save. However, if you choose not to do so, the program goes on to save it anyway — more or less uselessly — as an 8‑bit file with a KRZ extension.

ReSample Pro will also carry out batch conversions, where you can select a number of files in a directory to be converted from one file format to another (say WAV to AIFF). Unfortunately, this batch facility doesn't include other intermediate operations. You can't, for example, select a list of 8‑bit WAV files to be loaded, resampled to 16 bits and then resaved in another format — which would be necessary if you were converting, say, 12‑bit Yamaha TX16W files to any format for a sampler requiring 16‑bit files. A macro recorder would have been useful in this case.

Editing

ReSample Pro also acts as a sample editor, and a pretty good one in terms of the features it offers. Naturally, you can carry out sample rate conversions, and sample waveforms can be shaped using an envelope drawing facility. There's a crossfade looper, and you can delete, crop, or cut and copy sections, mute them, insert portions of silence, paste in new sections, and so on. The Paste facility includes Paste Over, Insert Paste and Merge Paste. There's also a straight crossfade function, and an automatic loop finder that attempts to find good loop points, although in many cases, as you might expect, the suggested options are not the best sounding ones. Fortunately, if you don't like anything you edit, you can employ the useful Undo facility.

On top of all this, you can zoom to a single sample resolution — and ReSample Pro makes good use of hot keys like +, ‑, PgUp and PgDn to zoom and pan, so you don't have to resort to extensive work with the mouse and menu all the time.

You can audition an entire waveform, a selected part, or a looped section. Last but not least, there's an iconic piano for sending notes to your MIDI Out by using the mouse, which is very handy.

Conclusion

Resample Pro boasts some other very good features which space forbids me from mentioning in too much detail. There is an excellent on‑line help facility (which makes up for the lack of a manual) with good background material on the different sample formats. The program is also (wisely) capable of reading Akai‑format sample floppy disks from your PC's disk drive. Nevertheless, I have a couple of gripes. The review copy of ReSample Pro was unable to handle stereo waveforms (although this feature will no doubt be added in a later version), and, more seriously, the program crashed on a number of occasions while I was reviewing it. However, once the bugs are sorted out, I believe that Resample Pro will be a good investment for anyone heavily into sampling.