What are the pros and cons of having drum samples (not drum breaks) contained in a single instrument, instead of just giving them all their own instrument slot?
Is it all down to personal preference, or are there benefits to doing each method?
I am aware that you can save instruments and can have your samples mapped across the keyboard, but are there any other benefits I am missing?
What is your preference?
I like to keep the overview, so my preference clearly is having an own slot for each instrument, just like each instrument having its own track while composing for mixing reasons. The benefit of having several drum samples contained in one single instrument is that you can easily play live, but that’s it imo.
Do you use your keyboard to change instrument slots or just your mouse?
It’s way faster and easier to select another instrument slot by using the mouse, so that’s what I’m doing.
If you would like to do this via keyboard, you’ve got these options.
For key elements (kick, hats, clap/snare, cymbals) each is its own instrument, because they will each be on their own track. I usually do some work in the instrument fx section, which makes it so that only one track can call such an instrument at a time, so it makes sense to have dedicated tracks for all such instruments, whether percussion or otherwise.
That said, for auxillary percussion, fills, breakbeats, rhythmic fx, etc. I’ll often have multiple samples in one instrument. But they will still typically have their own dedicated mixer track. Sometimes I like to mix it up and put instruments through a variety of tracks for timbral variation, but I don’t typically work that way as it can get a little confusing when it comes time to mix
1 sample per instrument for me too. Much easier to apply FX, tweak, etc. Not to mention that you get the entire key range when you want to play other pitches.
And you can still slice up drum loops and fills in it’s own instrument too. So I guess I technically use both methods in tandem 
I was agnostic on this question until I got really excited about swing. I need more than 4 LPB so I don’t find the Global Swing property useful, so that means I implement swing in phrases using a drum kit instrument. I’m using 12 LPB and recording a lot of MIDI real-time so that I don’t need automatic swing in my other tracks, but it’s REALLY handy to have it automated in the drum phrases. If I didn’t have all my primary drum samples on one instrument, I wouldn’t be able to use phrases this way quite so easily.
So I guess, long story short, if you want to use phrases with a diversity of percussion samples, that’s one reason to have a lot of samples on one instrument.
You can output individual FX chains to specific tracks too. This is why I like to keep all my drum samples in the same instruments. I just route them accordingly. Except when I want to do repitching (like snares), then I use a separate instrument (so I can repitch it by changing notes).
I do the sequencing in a single track, though. Other tracks only receive audio from FX chains inside the Sampler.
Yeah, nice. I can see how it would be desirable to have all the sequencing in one track. I’m often splitting out layers of sounds, though usually just the sub. I might play around with your method and see if I enjoy it. It’s a little trickier because I’m usually side chaining various things from different percussion elements, and I use a midi trigger as my side chain input, so that functions on a per track basis. But I like the idea. Makes a lot of sense for breakcore adjacent music, perhaps less so for what I’m doing
Yeah that makes things a bit more complicated with the method I use. I use audio for sidechaining so it’s not a problem. Since I’m outputting everything to separate tracks, I can simply sidechain the kick to the breakbeats, for instance.
Btw, when I say I do the sequencing in a single track, I’m referring only to the drum machines and breakbeats. I’m just lazy to keep changing tracks and instruments for every different sample 
So I make a midi track (ex: drum midi) the outputs (snare, kick, hats, etc) and group everything.