Akai S1100 digital sampler – 16 meg

This is the (semi-unknown) big brother to the S1000 sampler – just about exact same thing except its got a black face as well as a DSP effects processor with a number of effects to be put to work, built in SCSI port (unlike S1000), AES/EBU Digital In/Out also built in, HardDisk Recording feature “phase-locked stereo recording” also built in SMPTE.

16-bit linear sampling at 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz.
16-voice polyphony.
24-bit internal processing.
Stereo hard disk recording.
Real-time DSP effects.
SCSI interface.
SMPTE read/write.
16Mb RAM
200 samples, 100 programs.
Stereo output.
8 assignable outputs.
Digital output.
320-character display.

“The entire Akai sampler range, starting with the S1000 and then S1100 and S3000 was used extensively on DM and Recoil albums. They appear all over ‘Violator’, ‘SOFAD’, ‘Unsound Methods’ and others. Flood was a big fan. In particular, many of the famous ‘Violator’ and ‘SOFAD’ drums were sampled using the Akai which was particularly good at stacking and triggering sounds tightly (much better than the Emulators which took a back seat around this time). We would often trigger four or five snares at once for example, with different envelope shapes and filtering on each to make a composite big sound. Each component could be sent from a different output if necessary, so it was very flexible in that way. I remember, during those recording sessions, us having several Akai machines all running simultaneously, with many sounds and loops emanating from each before we committed anything to tape so that we could continually update the sound picture as we built the songs. This particular machine was one of the gang and is still functioning as it should.”