looping drums,samplers etc.

[Andrew <andrew@bocs.co.uk>]

The recent talk of samplers, and the hope that others are thinking along 
the same lines brings up a few questions. How many of us spend most of our 
time fiddling with bits of gear at home, trying to improve the quality of 
our music ? Our main instruments ( guitars, keys, sticks and the like ) 
don't pose too many problems when it comes to knowing what sound we're 
looking for ( whether we get it is another matter.. ) and we're fairly 
familiar with the gear required. But say you want to record some drum 
loops ? Not just your crappy drum machine but the kind of loops that sound 
realistic ( DJ's Shadow, Spooky, Krush, Torns's last CD all have great 
drum sounds - where'd they get 'em ?) I once sampled ( using the 2.5 sec 
one shot sampler on my Digitech Tsr24 ) the drum fade out  on the first 
Black Sabbath album ( 'Behind the wall of Sleep' I think ) and then 
recorded both that and a loop from the guitar onto tape. The outcome was 
infinitely more pleasing than most things I'd done using an Alesis D4 drum 
module. The 'real' drum sounds made my efforts sound almost, well, 'real'.
So, anyone want to discuss the gear required to bring the rest of our 
music into the real world ?
Adat ? Da88 ? , Samplers ?, Computers ?, Emagic,Cubase ?

All the best
Andrew