Roland SP-404 Mk2 (Part 1)

60 divided by BPM gives you the number of beats per second. Multiply it by 48000 (which is the sampling frequency of the MKII), and you get the number of samples per beat.

Edit: Sorry, I must have misunderstood the question.

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I expect this mode will be beneficial to a great deal of people. Having gone to live performances with people using SPs (including Teebs) and having personally played a set with the SP-404SX, I’m looking forward to this feature.

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In Start/End mode, shift + push encoder to open a screen that you can enter the start/end/loop point as numerical value.

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God I agree. I arm stacking up track releases on it. It’s such a great box, and I am much more of an old school MPC producer. But the workflow is super fast for me. I added an Octatrack and complicated things a little, but that has proven to be the perfect 1-2 punch.

One day I will get my 404 shipped and I will probably mess with it on it’s own for a while and just learn the machine and see how I can combine all 3 of them in different ways.

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I’m glad someone asked as I was confused how too.

For those of you wondering how the SP404mk2 performs with an Analog Synth… just uploaded an unedited quick jam from an IG live stream. (Sounds incredible btw )

https://youtu.be/t6jiwK-l-dw

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Had an Sp404mk2 for three days - it’s exceptional fun and I am really enjoying using it. It’s really fast and intuitive to use, coming from a Digitakt / MPC2500 its quickly becoming my go-to - so portable, just the right size, sits well on you lap, like a notebook.

There are some fundamental issue I hope will be fixed in future updates - I would love to somehow let Roland know, maybe I’ll try emailing… this huge thread covers a lot, so here’s a few headlines from me…

GREAT

  1. USB-C - Connecting an iPhone to the USB-C (camera connect) for sampling is superb. Makes it so easy to test sample off Spotify etc. Using it with a USB-C power brick it can last for hours…

  2. Chopping - its really fast and very easy to achieve - but you’re still better off sampling into Ableton, making loops perfect and exporting them, especially if there are any minor timing issues which you can correct with markers.

  3. Effects layout is so much better, with all the distortions grouped on the second effects page so you don’t make terrible effects mistakes. The 404sx / a had this huge block of distortions on the first effects page.

  4. Copy Pasting / Exchange sample approach is so much easier thanks to the on OLED screen info. A6 > A9 - done. I can arrange and organise samples / patterns quicker than any other sampler.

  5. Pattern Chaining - it’s so easy to do with its block by block layout, the Digitakt is pretty tedious in comparison.

  6. Effects Volumes - there were really issues with SX effects being too quite to too loud (like the phaser for example) - all the effects are balanced and sit well together on the Mk2. The Filter Drive resonance is an issue, you have to have it at zero, even set to 1/100 feels like 60% or more, (it needs calibrating)

  7. NO SAVING! This is such a brilliant aspect - you build loops and patterns, you switch it off. You turn it on again - everything is there as it was. The amount of work I have lost to Digitakt clumsiness, or saving a project with stupid performance changes - the Elektron anxiety of saving patterns and projects all the time - forget it - its all about fun here.

NOT SO GOOD

  1. The Pattern Length - can only be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 bars - when you start writing using the Pattern Mode, this can get really irritating / limiting. Why we can’t have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 16? It’s all far too regular and can make pattern based compositions feel really uninventive.

  2. No time signature options whatsoever, you’re stuck in 4/4. Even 20 year old MPC’s have time signature options which is really disappointing for being creative.

  3. The locked 48khz sigh… everything has to be 48khz, so you have use Audition (or similar) to convert sample packs etc to use on the SP. Even though you can batch convert, it’s tedious. Why the unit wasn’t an industry standard 44khz is beyond me. Could really do with the software converting on drag / drop.

  4. The SP404mk2 software is really basic. You can’t resize it, you cant ‘full screen’ making sample start / end point editing (as shown in their helpful videos) really inaccurate. It’s easy enough to do in hardware, but this needs addressing. The only way I can combat it is to change screen resolution and that doesn’t hep much.

  5. Effects Button Names - considering you can change all the direct effects layout in software, why the six effect buttons couldn’t just be numbers, like EF1 > EF5 and MFX, instead of ‘Isolator / DJFX Looper’ etc, and why the CTRL dials have to be named underneath’ Cut-off’ ‘Resonance’ ‘Drive’ is also really pointless. It’s legacy I guess… Maybe some new buttons will come out with just basic numbers and MFX and a custom face plate will fix the other issue.

  6. Effects Sync - I dragged a Cookin Soul album to a project and DJ’d it and it s a lot of fun - BUT because all the tracks are different BPMs, any effects that rely on SYNC won’t work properly at all. Scatter / Tape Delay and all the new effects that have SYNC turn the mix into a total mess.

  7. Roll - you’re supposed to able to Beat Repeat, but its really weird. If your sample is less than 1/16th then you get a 1/16th beat repeat, but most samples (even a closed hat) are longer than 1/16th, so the sample goes into a weird roll, which makes it totally our of time. This could be useful if you’re making weird rhythms, but if all you want is a 8, 16, 32 beat repeat its totally unpredictable as its based off the sample length.

  8. There’s no independent headphone volume, oh hang on there’s a volume attenuation feature that makes heaphones 12db louder than the output?! That’s insane. It should be the other way round. All attenuation options for line-out / headphones etc makes it louder (!) there’s no quieter option.

There are loads of things I have yet to cover and explore, but this is a quality machine, so much fun. The effects and overall sound quality are a great improvement, the layout is intuitive and compelling. You feel driven to create which is what this is all about.

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Oh god yes. So much unintentional ear agony :joy:

So, 3 record-to-pad methods:

  1. sample: empty pads blink, filled pads solid.

  2. resample: empty pads blink, filled pads solid.

  3. chop / assign to pads: inexplicably, empty pads are green, and filled pads are orange; both have a hue so similar, that this colorblind user can’t tell which is which!

Please, Roland… make empty pads blink, when assigning to pads. Like when sampling into them. Or, make the empty pads blue or white. This is really hindering my workflow.

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Lack of time sigs has put me off many devices, and I agree this should have more options, but it only limits you when using the sequencer. I found this video inspiring on the old model, using resampling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vEb1Y23BJY

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I’m seriously enjoying the new extensive Pattern Sequencer rather than resampling, as you can keep editing / creating patterns which makes your beats so much better… I’m going to have to get resampling until then.

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Totally agree with your review and this point is major. Really think i can blow up a speaker with this resonnance and i prefer to not use it at the moment …

[quote=“8bitBarry, post:2500, topic:161021, full:true”]
There’s no independent headphone volume, oh hang on there’s a volume attenuation feature that makes heaphones 12db louder than the output?![/quote]

Actually it’s a cool feature for high impedance headphones.

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one mans trash is another mans treasue

have my mk2 for over a week now, but the daw has me again and i didnt touch it yet :slightly_frowning_face:

Totally agree… so it needs to go -24 > +12 for exactly these reasons. I have a set of Sennheiser HD25 C II which are rated at 70ohms and I have to have the volume at 10 o’clock or it’s way too loud. These are ‘DJ’ headphones (similar to what most people could be using). Most decent hifi headphones are much higher ohm than this (like my HD650’s) , but you’d probably be going into a mixer anyway.

I managed to solve this by outputting the headphone jack to a Little Dot 1+ headphone amp, but it’s a workaround that could be avoided with proper attenuation.

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keep me posted if you receive shipping conformation! also ordered from perfect circuit, I haven’t heard anything from them.

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All Australian sellers have updated the expected delivery to JAN/FEB now

future SP mk2 owners would like to know do you guys prefer the scatter effect on the 404mk2 or the mc-101?

Is it easy to record a part of a song from YouTube and have it loop correctly. I haven’t seen any examples of this only some recording and chopping videos.

Whether chopping or slicing, it requires a few steps, but it is not that difficult.

Seems it’s not that easy to make a perfect loop as far I understand, reading about it (happy to be corrected)

I was imagining that given the fact that there is a tempo for samples - provided it is set correctly - the loop length could be set in beat time but it’s not the case. I consider that as a feature wish :blush:

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