Patent ID: 7709723

Claim:
An audio-sampler/sample-processor for preparing audio units for playback in a sample-based sound-producing device, the sound-producing device having a plurality of operable, physical control elements each of which, when operated by a user, causes a sound to be generated based on an audio unit, the audio-sampler/sample-processor comprising: an input module for receiving an audio file; an audio-unit extractor for defining a set of audio units, automatically, by sampling within the input audio file, the audio-unit extractor itself setting the start and end points of each audio unit of said set of audio units; an analyzer for analyzing said audio units, automatically, to determine the acoustic properties thereof and for defining data descriptive of the determined acoustic properties of each audio unit; and a mapping module for defining, automatically, a mapping of extracted audio units to the physical control elements of the sample-based sound-producing device, said mapping being dependent on at least part of said data, determined by the analyzer, descriptive of the acoustic properties of the extracted audio unit and on a mapping function defining a condition holding on audio-unit meta-data; wherein the audio-sampler/sample-processor is configured such that, when coupled to said sample-based sound-producing device, an user operation of one of said physical control elements of the sample-based sound-producing device causes an output of sound corresponding to an extracted audio unit mapped, by the mapping module, to the one of said physical control elements.