Here in easy-to-digest Making Music style is a whole wodge of useful information on every pro sampler available. If you've ever tried to wade through the spec in the brochures, you'll probably be in a confused state. Let us help. We will point you at the truly useful info. Bear with us, and we'll guide you through our chart.

BRAND/MODEL is easy. PRICE is easy, too — it's the maker's recommended selling price, so some shops might be amenable to bargaining. No harm in trying. The KBD/RACK column will have a K if it's a sampler with a keyboard attached; or R if it's a rack-mounting keyboardless sampler. KBD POLY tells you how many notes polyphonic the sampler is. The SOUND LIBRARY section is very important. First, under COMES WITH, it tells you the number of discs you get with the machine and the instrument samples contained on them. The OPTIONAL column tells you how many additional discs are available, both from the maker and third-party firms, and is a quick indication of the support the machine has. SYNTH FAC'S says Y if the sampler has additional synth facilities (waveform generation, say), and N for no. The MEMORY section gives the maker's estimate at the number of sounds you can load into memory at once (SOUNDS IN AT ONCE), and how long it takes them to get there in seconds (HOW LONG TO LOAD THOSE).

SPLITS is the number of samples you can set across the keyboard, and LAYERS tells how many sounds you can layer at once. DISPLAY CH/LINES gives the number of characters and lines in the machine's read-out, and BITS is self-evident. The SEQ column says Y if the sampler has an on-board sequencer, N if it doesn't. Next comes the SAMPLING TIME section. This is split into MAX RTE/B-W/TIME, which translates into maximum sampling rate, bandwidth, and sample time, and AVG RTE/B-W/TIME, which is the same only at an average rate quoted by the maker. Some makers don't specify bandwidth, which explains a couple of gaps. DISC SIZE comes in inches, and SOFTWARE PACKAGES is the number of third-party editing programs and so on that the maker is aware of. For a few of the brand new samplers there is the symbol N/A in two columns, meaning information not available. Now, with this evidence in your brain, make sure you go out and try the machines for yourself.

1 DSK display is two digits plus decimal point
2 Alters polyphony
3 333-event sequencer on-board
4 333-event sequencer on-board, expandable via SQX1 cartridge (£64) to 1357 events
5 EMAX sequencer memory depends on sampler memory used — every one second of unused sampling memory gives approx 5000 events
6 S3000 Sequencing hardware is there; software to make it work is optional