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hate to sound like a dumbass but as the title implies, how can one tell if the sample is good or not, i read on here a while back someone bashing CM samples and how the hats sound like high passed kicks! does it take a trained ear to determine what is good? or is this just a matter of opinion? aside from the obvious like crackles, pops and other things that would not make the sample usable how is this determined? and if it sounds good already, is processing/layering still required?

Listen to your favourite tracks, with special attention to their drums.

Great sounding samples sound natural, almost organic (even heavily processed digital ones - which I would advise against using, because it means your own creative process is hampered).

Bad samples sound dirty, weird tones.etc.

I'm afraid the answer is use your ears. I think once you've got an awareness of the sounds you want to make then it's just a matter of picking samples that are the closest to that sound or ones you know you can manipulate into that sound.

Here's some things to consider: how does this sound fit in with the ones I've already got/want? Does it compliment the other sounds or does it not fit in at all? Or does it contrast with the other sounds in an interesting way? Is it phat/warm/crunchy/dirty/clean/dull/hollow/whatever enough for what I want?

Those are the sorts of things I ask myself when browsing through my samples folder or synthesizing sounds from scratch.

Wrigzilla wrote: Here's some things to consider: how does this sound fit in with the ones I've already got/want? Does it compliment the other sounds or does it not fit in at all? Or does it contrast with the other sounds in an interesting way? Is it phat/warm/crunchy/dirty/clean/dull/hollow/whatever enough for what I want?

right, but lets say we take that into considertion and going back to the CM example, if i find a warm kick that i like from CM, would a similar warm kick from say a vengance pack be better? seeing as how people on here hold vengance samples highly, does this fall back on opinion? (i hope im not going in circles here)

Listen to some tracks that you think have the best sounding hits, then try and recreate those sounds.

Once you get good at being able to recreate certain sounds you can think about how you can expand and make them your own sound

yea use your ears, sometimes a tune called for those dirty samples and crackle etc
personally i love when samples have character like that, not necessarily for my dubstep, but for my other stuff, imperfections, drift and noise can add so much more character and atmosphere to a tune

thanks for the input everyone! i guess it does come down to opinion since ultimately i still need to spice it up and add my own flavor to it, i just wanted some clarification since alot of people bash samples from CM saying how they can only find one good one in the whole dvd so it made me think about what is considered a good sample