Who'd have thought when the first Emulators and Fairlights appeared that sampling would make such an impact on the way music is produced today. Originally seen (and used) by some almost as a novelty effect, it quickly became apparent what a powerful tool it could evolve into, assuming technology could keep pace. Eight-bit quickly gave way to 12-bit, but the real breakthrough came with the arrival of 16-bit, which allowed samplers to play back CD-quality audio. The other restricting factor was the cost of memory chips, which for a long time prohibited the use of the large amounts of RAM that we're used to today. With these factors resolved, today's samplers are incredibly powerful recording devices, which can form the basis of a comprehensive production facility.

But with the sophistication of modern samplers, there has been a certain amount of trade-off. It's a recognised fact that many sampler owners only ever use their sampler for playing back sound libraries provided by the manufacturers and third party developers. What's the point in multi-sampling a piano, for instance, when a great deal of time and expense has been incurred by manufacturers to get the best possible piano sample? In this case, isn't it better to just buy sample-playback devices which are already chock-full of sounds in ROM. Amongst musicians who do sample, many are using sample CDs and other sources for loops, effects and un-pitched sounds — most of which don't necessarily need the extensive editing capabilities provided by the majority of samplers. It could be that the very flexibility and comprehensiveness of the modern sampler actually acts as a barrier to more people sampling. Has the spirit of sampling been lost? Is there anyone out there yearning for their old Ensoniq Mirage or Akai S612?

It's just possible that Roland's new MS-1 might herald a renaissance in sampling, a sampler that combines the quality of 16-bit sampling with the ease-of-use synonymous with those early machines. Switch it on, and within five minutes you'll be sampling everything and anything, such is its utter simplicity of operation. Combined with its massive memory capabilities — up to 20Mb on a plug-in card — you can even use it for recording whole tracks. There'll always be a place for the EIVs and S3000s of the world, but there's undoubtedly a market for performance-orientated samplers like the MS-1, which could tempt a whole new generation into music production for the first time. It might even encourage those sound library junkies to do a bit of sampling themselves...