Novice users shouldn’t have trouble figuring out how to get started with SampleTank 3 and for the more adventurous, macros and the edit section provide more in-depth control. Above all, it’s easier to use than before thanks to the streamlined interface and some nice design touches. Thanks to the quality of the samples and the on-board effects, processing the instruments generally works very well and provides an excellent pool of textures from which to build up tracks. Sounds Good? SampleTank 3 provides a very broad selection of sounds to work with and these are, by and large, very good, from stately grand pianos through fat synths, heavy drums, rumbling basses and orchestral instruments. The use of synthesis alongside the sampled sounds means you can sculpt and shape timbres much more than you might imagine. You can tweak a whole range of things here including sample stretching, LFOs, filters, tuning, envelopes, polyphony, transposition and more, and there’s a useful part chooser on the right for navigation.

Instruments are searchable by type (multi, instrument and pattern) and there’s also a Live mode where you can set up groups of instruments and effects and then flip between live setups with a single click, which is ideal for performing. Quick Controls The 16 parts appear on the right-hand side of the window and can either be assigned unique MIDI channels or can share channels for the purposes of layering: put a pad and a piano together, for example, and you can alter volume and pan quickly. In the Play section you can select from the 4000 instruments and loops, which are divided into 21 categories and include 2500 drum and percussion loops, and 2000 MIDI files which can be dragged and dropped onto keys for triggering. There are three main sections: Play, Mix and Edit.

You can load your own sampled instruments into SampleTank provided the files have been correctly edited and named, although it doesn’t have any native audio recording capability of its own.Īs you might expect after such a long gap between versions, SampleTank 3 has a new interface that prioritises workflow and utility over the slightly more showy metal effect of version 2.

The full content install is a hefty 33GB but you can direct these files to a secondary or external hard drive during the installation process.

Ik multimedia sample tank 3