Actually this isn't a sudden interest I have had a fascination with digital samplers for about as long as I have had for synthesizers. I owned an ensoniq Mirage DSK some years ago. Which was rather fun, even though you could only sample on either the upper or lower keyboard, but not accross the enitre keyboard. Plus the fact it was only an 8 bit machine and used a 2 segment LED display and used Hexadecimal for programing. It was fun sampleing the oddest things into it. Like feedback from a speaker. Made a rather cool sounding piano type sound. Even recording cheap toy casio keyboard sounded totaly different. I only got rid of it becuase I could not sample accross the entire keyboard. I wanted to try something different at the time, becasue I had gotten tired of FM synthesis, plus a store owner said it was fun. I also ran out of sounds to sample into the darn thing. Then I went back to synthesizers again after that for awhile. I almost thought about buying an Ensoniq ASR 88, but that was too expensive. So I gave that prospect up. The other reason why I like digital samplers is that they are sort of like computers. Where they need software in order to work.

I think what appeals to me about them was playing what ever sound I wanted.