Sampler Reference

A sample library is not just audio: it is a map. Which recording answers which key, which layer answers a hard strike, which takes rotate so a repeated note does not sound mechanical. Sampler reads that map from the instrument's own file rather than asking you to rebuild it.

The import target is Decent Sampler's .dspreset format, and the reason is straightforward: it is a declarative XML manifest, it is free to publish in, and pack authors adopted it in numbers. Importing it faithfully means feature parity for the instruments people actually publish, without inventing a format first.

Faithful means counted, not assumed. The importer reports what it could not bring across instead of dropping it quietly, so an instrument that loses something says so. What it does bring across — key ranges, velocity layers with crossfades, tuning, gain, loops, round robin order, choke groups, the authored keyboard colouring — travels as data, not as a claim that every engine implements all of it.

Groups are the unit of playback, which is the one place the format and the program model genuinely differ. Decent Sampler sounds every matching sample at once; a program picks one region per velocity cell. Merging groups would round-robin where the format layers, so each authored group becomes its own program and they stack — the mapping the format actually means.

Aurora Keys, the bundled instrument, is original: every sample is synthesized from equations with a fixed seed, so the whole bundle is redistributable and the module is playable the moment it loads.

Both browser engines play the package-owned multisample catalog. The instant preview runs the clean-room JUCE-compatible PreparedSamplerInstrument in TypeScript; the optimized engine prepares the selected immutable bank from the same verified audio assets before notes can run.

This module is a reference oracle, not the shipping sampler. Its playback runs in Web Audio, which this repository does not allow as a production DSP lane, so the product sampler is Codex Sampler: the same selection semantics ported into a ScriptC kernel that compiles to the browser WASM lane and to VST3, CLAP, AU and standalone from one source. What stays valuable here is precisely what an oracle is for — an independent implementation to hold the compiled one to, which is how the compiled kernel’s round robin, loops, release triggers, keyswitches and velocity crossfades were measured rather than asserted.