Was it the store in Gothenburg? Their website said 1 left the other day… 
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Yep 
I was literally looking at multiple 404MKII boxes when I was there. And this was … Tuesday, I believe?
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Ah that’s cool. I think I’ll grab one September/October. But maybe the second bath sold out by then so I have to wait another year…
(Bath, 
I’ll keep that misspelling)
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I guess I just don’t see newness as being an important indicator of scarcity. Despite all being groove boxes (and personally, I don’t think the 404 is anything like a groove box) the component requirements of the 404 are still in a completely different class.
None of those devices mentioned can hold 16min x 160 pads worth of audio without streaming, for example. The Circuit Rhythm has a measly 228 second sampling time. That’s less than 1/4th of a single 404 pad. Even MPCs, closest of that group, can only hold 53 minutes of samples, total. An order of magnitude less than the 404’s requirements.
So if RAM is the thing that’s constrained right now, the comparison between the 404 and devices like the Syntakt which are newer but have negligible need of RAM don’t just make the 404 look ridiculous. They make it look like apples vs. oranges.
Still, even having 10x less requirements than the 404, I’d expect the MPC to be showing some strain in the market by now. The reason it’s not is, I believe, just down to its launch time. The current MPC products were all designed and manufactured before shortages which gave Akai a big window within which to build up supply — not just of devices but also of the components to make them. They’re sitting on a stash while Roland is having to scrounge for everything.
This theory seems reenforced by Akai’s decision to release a reskin of identical components with the Retro. But still, to be clear, all of this is meaningless speculation without bills of goods to compare between the 404 and [device of one’s choice]. But I’m all for meaningless speculation!
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Not condenser, they require phantom power. You need a dynamic mic if plugging straight into the mic jack.
I use my H1n field recorder with a trs 1/8 to dual 1/4 cable as a mic. It works well.
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I could see you really liking it, actually. It has the same sort of relentless, recursive simplicity of the BlackBox, but rather than using sequences to build you up and up from pad to pattern to song, The 404 focuses on always building you down from a sequence to a pad again. It leads to a very iterative experimentation that’s a different place than I end up with on the BlackBox.
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Likely to be one of a few things, most likely either:
A) It uses a part that’s in particularly high demand, even accounting for the shortages
B) A part has required re-sourcing or the supplier has been temporarily unavailable
Could be something as simple as the screen, for example; that there are other devices that have screens doesn’t make a difference when you need a specific one.
I’d love to try one - I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in stock in the UK…
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Yes 
it’ll be interesting to see where this fits into my overall thing
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I use a Shure SM57 as well. It’s not small but rugged and can take a beating.
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The answer is rather: A rugged dynamic mic flattering your voice.
The mentioned Shure SM57 is good for my deep voice because it has a bass roll off round about 150 Hz and down that removes my muddy sounds. If one has a higher voice / more singing language it makes it imho thinner.
A soundwise interesting alternative in the same price range seems to be the SE V7 but I had to return mine because its foam was so stinky. Maybe only an issue in that series.
BTW: All the thousands of YT microphone videos can provide only a rough idea how a mic actually sounds: YT sound is processed audio and one never knows the recording room, the preamp, its settings etc.
Synced recording isn’t a thing with this one, right? The closest I can find is threshold recording, which is okay but not great.
But I can accept this, I get that this sampler isn’t about recording perfectly synced loops. I just want to make sure I didn’t miss anything here. Midi synced recording and such things, that’s not the SP style, right?
Yeah, I haven’t found any way to, say, trigger recording with MIDI transport or clock or anything, which is sad.
Its MIDI implementation is a little all over the place, generally. But in this respect I think you’re correct that it’s primarily an SP-style thing. It helps me to think of it as an oversized field recorder. You can’t sync the start of ocean waves or birds chirping or grooves on an LP.
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I wouldn’t use my voice, too scared and shy, just random sounds. What I loved with the old one was to just record anything and mangle it to oblivion, without the extra fuss of plugging in. Which is why I was looking for something small as opposed to good sounding.
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I kind of like that. Just letting go of trying to nail that beat on the nanosecond, takes me to other places.
Besides, making a beat inside the SP, slapping on fx and then go to resampling town, seems to be the way here, anyway.
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They don’t have English on the page! I tried reading backwards but it doesn’t work 
Still one left, mate
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Ulgreh buûùü (thank you!)
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i don’t think they ship to my country; will wait for thomann
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Haven’t had much time to use mine recently. Just got a chance today. Damnnnn, everything sounds so good through it. Well, to my ears. Even when I mess up, theres something in there that I like.
I don’t know. I’m on the fence here. More likely than not, this one goes back in the box.