Fanan Team have released Sampler Arena, available for $15.00.
Turn any VSTi into a sample library or build one from your own sounds.
Sampler Arena is a focused sampling station that does one thing brilliantly: it turns instruments into ready-to-use SFZ patches. Load any VST3 instrument, hit start, and walk away. Sampler Arena drives every key, captures every velocity, names every file, and writes a perfect SFZ patch you can load into any sampler on any platform. Build a piano library from your favorite virtual grand. Capture a vintage synth before its license expires. Sample chord libraries from Virtual Guitarist. Or skip recording entirely and assemble SFZ patches from audio files you already own. One tool, three workflows, zero tedium.
Choose how you want to build your patch with the mode selector at the top of the sampling tab:
- VSTi Sampling captures audio from any connected virtual instrument across every selected key and velocity layer. Perfect for archiving instruments or making lightweight versions of CPU-heavy synths.
- Chord Sampling captures complete chord patterns from instruments like Virtual Guitarist, Strum GS-2, or arpeggio engines. Choose any combination of 18 chord types – Major, Minor, 7th, Dim, Sus, Add9 and more – and Sampler Arena drives each chord at every root note automatically.
- Sample Builder skips recording entirely. Drag and drop your own audio files into per-key slots, name them, set velocity layers, and Sampler Arena assembles a complete SFZ patch in seconds.
A full 128-note virtual keyboard sits at the heart of the sampling tab. Click keys to toggle them as sample points. Drag-select ranges of notes. Right-click any key to audition the instrument live. The integrated zone graph shows colored bars for every sampled region with draggable yellow boundary markers – including the leftmost and rightmost edges – so you can fine-tune exactly which keys each sample covers. Velocity is captured by your click position on the key itself: top of the key for soft, bottom for loud, just like a real piano.
Each selected key gets a single golden “E” button that opens a per-key editor with every customization option in one clean popup. Velocity layer overrides, duration overrides, key shift adjustments, custom output names, and sample slot management – all behind one click, organized by mode. The button glows gold when any per-key override is active, so you always know which keys have been customized at a glance.
Sampler Arena ships with a complete SFZ playback engine for testing your patches before exporting. Load any SFZ patch and play it instantly with full polyphony or monophonic portamento, AHDSR amplitude/filter/pitch envelopes, state-variable filter with keyboard tracking, three independent LFOs for vibrato and modulation, and pitch bend with configurable range. The standout feature: Loop Sync mode plays loop-based SFZ patches in perfect tempo lock with pitch fully preserved using high-quality WSOLA time-stretching. Drum loops, guitar strums, rhythmic phrases – all stretch in real time to match your master tempo or any target BPM you set.
Press Start and Sampler Arena handles the rest:
- Silence Detection automatically trims dead space at the end of each note – no more long tails of silence in your samples.
- Configurable Duration with absolute milliseconds or tempo-synced bars for rhythm-based instruments.
- Automatic Loop Finder analyzes each recording and embeds professional-quality loop points directly into the SFZ.
- Fade-Out On End prevents clicks and pops on note release.
- Multiple Bit Depths from 16 to 24-bit PCM, with sample rate override for upsampling or downsampling.
- Stereo, Mono Left, or Mono Mix capture modes for any source type.
Build any signal chain you need with the node-based graph canvas inherited from Fanan’s Colosseum DNA. Drop in VST3 plugins from any folder without scanning. Wire MIDI, audio, and sidechain pins with intuitive drag-and-drop connections. Magnetic snap keeps your graph tidy. Container nodes let you group complex chains into clean modules. Right-click anywhere for a tooltip explaining what every button does – the interface teaches itself.
A complete toolkit for shaping your sampling sessions:
- Sampling Module captures audio with all the features above.
- SFZ Player tests patches with the full sampler engine.
- MIDI Multi Filter blocks pitch bend, fixes velocity, limits note ranges, and cleans up noisy MIDI streams.
- MIDI Monitor displays live MIDI events for debugging.
- Stereo Meter monitors L/R levels with peak hold and clip detection.
- Virtual Keyboard plays any instrument with mouse or hardware MIDI.
- Connector provides stereo summing with gain control.
- Container groups any sub-graph into a tidy module.
Every selected key can have its own settings completely independent from the global defaults:
- Custom velocity layers – some keys can have 8 layers, others just 1.
- Custom note duration – hold a piano sustain longer than a percussive hit.
- Key shift – relocate the SFZ root key for transposed samples.
- Custom output names – replace the entire filename per key for naming flexibility.
In Sample Builder mode, each velocity layer of each key gets its own dedicated row with name display, rename field, load button, and drag-and-drop zone – so a six-layer drum kit gets six independent sample slots per pad.
Switch to the Loop Editor tab to fine-tune any recorded sample. The waveform display shows draggable loop start and end markers with zoom and scrub. Loop data saves as a sidecar file alongside the WAV and is automatically embedded in the SFZ on export. Click a loop point, hear it instantly through the integrated SFZ Player.
Sampler Arena is engineered for sessions that take hours:
- ASIO-First Architecture on Windows for ultra-low-latency monitoring during sampling.
- CoreAudio on macOS with universal binary support for Apple Silicon and Intel.
- Crash Isolation protects your sampling sessions from misbehaving plugins. A guard file detects unclean shutdowns and recovers automatically.
- Persistent Presets save your entire sampling configuration including mode, selected keys, layers, custom names, and sample slots.
- Plugin Caching scans plugins once and remembers them – no slow rescans on every launch.
- Real-Time CPU and RAM Monitoring in the header so you always know your system health.
The generated SFZ files are valid, complete, and load instantly into sforzando, HISE, Plogue Sforzando, Bitwig, Tracktion, or any SFZ-compatible host. Every region includes proper lokey and hikey ranges from your zone editor, pitch_keycenter from the root note, lovel and hivel from your velocity layers, and loop_start/loop_end from the auto-loop finder when enabled. Open it in any sampler and it just plays.
Features include:
- Three sampling modes: VSTi Sampling, Chord Sampling, Sample Builder
- 18 chord types with Select All / Clear All for chord library creation
- Drag-and-drop file loading for Sample Builder mode
- Full SFZ patch generation with loop points, key zones, and velocity layers
- Built-in SFZ Player with WSOLA-powered tempo-locked Loop Sync
- Visual zone editor with draggable boundary markers on every edge
- Per-key customization for velocity, duration, key shift, and output naming
- Automatic silence detection and loop point finder
- Tempo-synced sampling in bars or absolute milliseconds
- 16 or 24-bit PCM output with stereo, mono left, or mono mix capture
- Right-click audition with velocity-sensitive playback
- VST3 plugin hosting with no-scan-needed direct loading
- ASIO and CoreAudio support with rock-solid low-latency operation
- Universal Mac build for Apple Silicon and Intel
- Node-based signal routing inherited from Colosseum
- MIDI Multi Filter, Monitor, Virtual Keyboard, Stereo Meter, and Container tools
- Persistent presets including all custom settings and sample slots
- Crash protection for unstable VSTis and unclean shutdowns
- Custom dark amber-gold theme designed for long sessions
For more information on Sampler Arena, click here:
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