While Midi sounds are good, you still can't beat analogue samples and it's becoming harder to find them on the net now. I used to rip the good analogue instrument samples from other people's mod files but lately, more and more people are converting to MP3 formats to stop others copying and claiming credit for songs. (Note that I always give credit to the origins of my samples in the text, Future Crew provided most of mine.)
It would be nice to have a starter pack that includes a selection of sampled sounds or a sample pack download separate from the starter pack but linked in the same DL section as an optional pack. Getting that staccato wow guitar sound like the intro to the TV series Shaft is almost impossible using midi unless you have a very good knowledge of how to use MPT. Even then, it's tricky and majority of people use samples or even loops for that reason.
Also can someone update the sticky in the general forum with new links to samples since the ones there are mostly dead now.
Including samples is not a good idea imho, because
- They're big
- Sample copyright might be a problem
- My definition of useful samples might differ from your definition of useful samples. let's say, OpenMPT would be shipped only with samples for producing techno. Would that shed light on what you can do with OpenMPT? I don't think so.
Now, including a nice list of where to get some good samples would be a better idea, but then again, one would have to pick the sites for this list carefully, and also update it often.
I think even a regularly updated links page for sample sites would be better than nothing.
Finding them has been increasingly more difficult over the years. I have used MPT since it first came out and accumulated a large number of samples but sadly a disk crash recently wiped them all out. Looking for replacements now has become a nightmare. I like to use pure instrument samples rather than loops and often use sound manipulation programs to create my own effects from them like wow and phasing.
Well, the best thing you can do is actually making samples yourself. Take some VSTi and VST plugins, play around with them in OpenMPT, chain them together... et voilà - you get a custom sample that sounds exactly like you want it to sound.
You can have a look at the waveworld torrent (http://tracker.modarchive.org/) - it has the same samples that used to be on the Modarchive website.
And ofcource: http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=174.0
That's exactly what Tryst was referring to - already in the first post, there are a couple of dead links.
Ah right... Yeah, reading really is an art sometimes :P
I don't think my link is dead. A small collection of samples can be found here (http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/samps/sample.html).
And a sample package of percussion is here (http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/modz/starter.7z).
I'm planning to add more. But, as said, making your own samples is a better way.
Once, there was with MPT 117 a 'starterkit', but of course the samples were quite lofi then, so smaller.