Akai S01

Basics of
the
S01
Through a simple
operation, the SOI can digitally
record
any
sounds
—
pianos,
string instruments,
percussive instruments
and
other acoustic
instruments, and then
clearly play
back those sounds. Not
only instruments,
even
noise—wind,
rain, machinery, etc., can be
recorded and
transformed into
sound
you have
never heard.
This
wonderful technology
in
a
word is
sampling.
Once you
sampled
sounds, you
can simply play
them using a
MIDI keyboard, as they are. On the other
hand, you can edit
or
arrange them into another
synthesized tone.
Using
a
tone arranged
like
that, the
SOI
may work as an
8
polyphonic
multi-timbral tone generator.
It is
important that
you grasp
some basics of
sampling
technology.
What is
Sampling?
Briefly, sampling is
transformation of an
analogous
waveform
(audio signal) into
digital
data,
generally
using
a
procedure
comprised
of:
Sampling process:
Recording
the
level of an electric
signal
(analogue
waveform) every specific
period.
The specific period
is
determined by
the "sampling
frequency (FS)".
The SO l's
sampling frequency
is fixed
at
32
kHz and will sample an
audio signal
every
1/32,000
second.
Also, each
sample's
signal
level
is
determined by
"sampling
resolution".
The SOl's
sampling resolution
is
16
bits and
it will
record each
signal level in 65,536
steps (=2
8
=16 bits). Therefore the
SOI is able
to
capture subtle
changes in the
original
audio signal.
Quantizing
process:
Arranging
a
number
of recordings
obtained in
sampling process
appropriately
in the
memory. This
has to be done because
the original
waveform has been
divided into thousands of
"pieces"
in sampling
process. Unless those
pieces are
arranged
in
recorded
order,
it cannot be
correctly
reproduced.
Encoding
process:
Transforming the
level of
each recorded piece to
an appropriate
binary
digit
so
that it can be
recognized or
handled by
the SOI
.
These processes
are tasks
of an
analogue-to-digital
converter (ADC).
The encoded
waveform data
will
finally be
sent
to
memory and can be
edited or
arranged. When the
digital
waveform is
played back,
it is processed
by
digital-to-analogue
converter
(DAC) and output as an
analogous
waveform
(audio
signal).
# Banks
The
SOI contains
eight banks.
Into these banks you
are free to
sample
sounds
or load
information from
a
sound
library disk. Also, you can
edit samples by
bank using a wide
variety of
parameters
—loop,
level, pitch,
or
MIDI options,
etc.
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parameters
TRiM/LOOP/LEVEL/PlTCH/
P
MiDI/SETUP/DlSK
*
The SETUP
parameters
are used
for general setup
for the
S01
.
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