Serato
Slicing and dicing samples is easy with Serato’s intuitive sampler. Rex Johnson is drawn to its new stem separation ability…
The first version of Serato Sample was released back in 2017 and it included Serato’s legendary Pitch ’n’ Time algorithm alongside a lightning fast workflow. Now with version 2, Serato has upped the ante and added in realtime stem separation. But does it still hold the crown of most intuitive sampler ever?
Everything you need to work with Serato Sample is presented in a single window, as the GUI and workflow have been built for speed. When you first open an instance, you get a window asking you to Load or Drag and Drop an audio file. If you drag in something like an old funk track, the key and tempo are automatically detected, and the file is stretched to fit the host bpm. Simply set a cue point on the downbeat and you’re good to go with everything synced to your arrangement. If you’re used to some of the more cumbersome ways of doing this in your DAW, then it’s an astonishingly fast alternative.
New for 2
The built-in stem separation opens up a vast amount of possibilities to use tracks (legally!)
You then have options for hold or one-shot trigger modes, mono or poly voice modes, key and fine detuning, host sync on/off, tempo adjustment, velocity on/off, and the ability to switch off the Pitch ’n’ Time processing for a more classic sampling style. The main new feature for version 2 though, is the built-in stem separation. You get four buttons for vocal, music/other, bass, and drums, which can be toggled on and off. This opens up a vast amount of possibilities to use tracks (legally of course!) in ways you can’t do with traditional sampling, like removing a beat and adding your own, or soloing a particularly tasty drum fill. Having this readily available inside a sampler is a bit of a game-changer for workflow, especially if you’re someone that does a lot of sampling of multiple track sources in a more traditional sense. Depending on how fast your computer is, and how large the file you’re working with, you may have to wait a little while for the stem buttons to become active, as the sampler is analysing and prepping the file in the background. This isn’t a major issue, but it might be useful if there were some sort of indication to show when it’s ready.
How does it rate?
We put these algorithms to the test against several other bits of software to see how Serato Sample stacks up. First, we time-stretch an old disco sample from 105bpm down to 65bpm. There’s a little graininess in the vocal, but it does surprisingly well, giving results comparable to Kontakt 7’s Time Machine Pro algorithm, and Ableton’s Warp, and superior to Logic’s Flex Time. Next we test the stem separation alongside our current favourite, RipX. We were expecting RipX to come out on top as it t
