A more flexible sample-based synthesis design allowing the user to record arbitrary waveforms to form a sound's basic timbre is called a sampler. Early samplers were very expensive, and typically had low sample rates and bit depth, resulting in grainy and aliased sound. Since the late-1980s, however, samplers have featured specifications at least as good as CDs. By the late 1990s, the huge increases in computer processor speed permitted the widespread development of software synthesizers and software samplers. The vast storage capacity of modern computers was ideally suited to sample-based synthesis, and many samplers have thus migrated to software implementations or been superseded by new software samplers.
