I own some top notch Eastwest and Yellow Tools libraries. Believe me, when it comes to samples, nothing can beat these guys. The libraries are simply amazing and I often brag about them (can't help it ).

I have no idea how I could convert these sounds to Tyros format. That would be cool, but I suppose it's not easy. I have a Tyros 2. I also think that by converting the sounds, I would be breaking copyright laws, although not sure.

Think about it, if that could be done, Yamaha , Korg etc would have done it already and resell the sounds as expansion samples for their keyboards.

The trouble with many VSTi sample libraries is, due to streaming, little effort (if any at all, these days!) has been made to make the sounds RAM efficient. GB's just for ONE sound, at times!

If you want to load in a pretty decent variety of good sounds into your Yamaha (or any other arranger with a sampler), you are better served looking back a few years at older Akai libraries, which were smaller RAM machines, and sound developers spent a LOT of time optimizing the sounds to take as little RAM as they could get away with. Some of these are quite excellent, even by modern standards.

James, I know you have a pretty decent Akai library. Just how well does this sample translation tool convert things like velocity layers into Yamaha format? Do you find yourself having to spend a lot of times remapping and tweaking these? And does the tool do anything to import the voice programming (ADSR's, LFO's etc.) from the Akai version in, or is it samples only?

My K2500 has an Akai import, and when things are simple one layer things, it does a pretty good job on just the samples and multisamples, but a lot of layered and vel-layered stuff required HUGE amounts of tweaking to get right, and then you STILL had the issue of all the envelopes, etc.. Does this help in any way?

I guess at least if you don't care too much about RAM efficiency, the modern samples are great because they are so long, they don't really NEED much programming as simple one layer things, but there is still MUCH to do to get a good translation beyond simply the sample import, in my experience.

BTW, I am SO sorry to hear about your piracy issues. I've posted on this issue many times, often at loggerheads with you (me, I don't see much difference between stealing a sample out of another sampled keyboard and stealing a sample set from someone that got the sample out of another sampled keyboard!) but it's obvious that piracy has decimated the once thriving sample industry. At least computer based sample products have a fair degree of protection built in (most big sample collections, the data is one block that is protected) but keyboards have yet (with the Tyros as the only exception) to offer data security. Have you ever been in touch with the major players, and discussed using a common sample based security system like Yamaha have? This 'unique identifier' seems to be the only way that talented programmers like yourself can work with hardware samplers any more without the first sample set you release turning out to be the LAST!

Maybe Yamaha could implement an iTunes Store model of vending original samples to customers? They get a piece, you get a piece, but no-one can wholesale copy the data...

Once upon a time, the sample industry was healthy. Broadband has decimated it. Same thing for style creation, honestly. It USED to be much better, now it's just a few tiny houses hanging on for dear life. Without universal copy protection for hardware keyboards' data, the only time you see anything new is in the ROM of a new product. That sucks!

not sure, I think that as I bought my libraries, I could convert and use as I deem fit , as long as I'd make only a personal use(supposing that it would be easy enough to do the conversions). Actually Eastwest libraries are extremely hard to copy and download, first because they are huge (check out their 'Pianos' library, even the economical 'Gold' version is 60 gb , the full version is about 3 times as much ! ). But also ,they have a very strong registration process, with an I-lok. I am no hacker so I would not know, but I know that on P2P programs, these libraries cannot be found working. Which I think is a good thing, otherwise these guys would be out of business and there would be no more amazing products.

I agree about older Akai libraries being pretty good even by modern standards. Your Kurzweil blows out of the water all the Tyros keyboards, for sample handling. I had a K2000 a long time ago and to me it was like owning a spaceship. A beautiful instrument. Back then, there wasn't anything that could touch it.

The Tyros 2 sampler, compared to the sampler of your K2500, is a joke....beside the 1 gb ram, which doesn't really matter much as WAV files eat up 1 gb RAM very quickly...

I was referring mostly to the creation of NEW sound libraries, there, Y/N.

An iTunes Store model would be a boon to those trying to create new stuff. Mind you, it would also be a good place for those that HAVE created new stuff to prove that others may be copying (by sampling the audio outs) their original content, as it's pretty easy to show, at least with recording acoustic waveforms, an easy correlation between the original and the copy. Then simple banning of the copy infringer pulls the financial incentive for doing so out from under them.

Converting older sample libraries for your own personal use I would think comes under any 'fair use' provision, but taking older libraries, converting them then offering them for sale should definitely only be done with permission (and a recompense) to the original sampler. It's a HUGE undertaking to create a coherent multisample set, especially of an acoustic instrument. No one that takes on this task should ever have their work sold by someone else with no licensing fee.