SMDI (Direct Sampler Communication)

SMDI is short for Sample Machine Digital Interface. Actually, that's a lie, but whatever. Believe it or not, innovative sampler innovator Peavey came up with it, and it the common protocol method to transfer samples (not full-blown instruments). There are several instruments that use this: Ensoniq ASR-X, Emu samplers (ESi and up), Kurzweil, and of course Peavey. Akai and Roland are strangely missing from this picture, as they use proprietary methods to transfer sounds through SCSI. Akai, surprisingly, is the leader in complete SCSI compatibility (see Rubber Chicken Software's Millennium product). The Ensoniq EPS and ASR-10 family almost had SCSI transfer ability, but the OS didn't implement this very well and performance was erratic or nonexistent.

Many samplers support SMDI, although it is mostly for transferring single samples back and forth. In our opinion SMDI is underutilized in this regard, but we'd have to argue with the manufacturers about this, and we don't want to...

OK, on to Translator. Translator supports SMDI. Applications such as SoundForge, Peak, and other pro apps support SMDI and are useful for taking waves out of samplers and putting them back.

Translator goes a step further and integrates SMDI communication within the powerful Translator interface. You can take files off disk/CD are fly them directly into your SMDI-supported sampler. (Of course, this means only waves, not whole mapped instruments.)

If Translator detects a SMDI-supported :

Upon clicking the +, you will see all the current samples stored in the SMDI sampler. You can drag samples in and out of the device by dragging and dropping.