Back in the day of dinosaurs, cavemen, Chevrolet Corvairs, and Leave It To Beaver, samplers were all external pieces of hardware that read and wrote onto media that computers couldn't read. Back then, computers were primitive compared to what we use today, so it didn't matter. Hardware samplers include Akai (e.g. S-1000/3000), Roland (S-7x Series), Emu (Emulators, ESi, Emax), Ensoniq (EPS, ASR-10), Kurzweil, Peavey, Yamaha, and even behemoths like Synclavier, Fairlight, and Waveframe.

Some of us still use these old samplers, and others don't use them anymore but still have the CD's and disks floating around.

Progress has dicatated that everything now should be compatible; i.e. read all disks etc. Mac's now network seemlessly with Windows computers, and vis-versa; hey, that wasn't so easy 5 years ago.

Instrument Manager™ supports these disks. You can read off of them and write to them. Simply select File-Proprietary Disks and the Proprietary Dialog appears. You can drag in and drag out of it. See Proprietary Dialog for more information how to operate this dialog.