Haha that doesn’t surprise me at all!
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Depends on the track and the kind of mix you’re trying to do. I haven’t put in a huge amount of reps on this yet so this is still pretty rough, but you can do a blend e.g. for house and techno stuff, but it’s pretty much a pain in the ass. It needs the FX busses to be set up in parallel, then you can assign the track you want to mix out of to one or other bus, put an isolator on it and cut the bass or whatever works for the track, then bring in the new track, adjust the faders and let them ride for as long as seems right then take out the first track using the track fader or crossfader. This is more suitable to house and techno stuff but it’s also kinda messy, when it works it’s fine but it wouldn’t be my go-to.
What I find more fun is to set up my cue points so that I can manually loop a suitable section of a track as a way of bringing it in or out, hitting the pads in time and just mix on the crossfader, if you pick the right point then often there isn’t that much need for EQing. In general, I think this is what’s most fun about 404 as a dj tool, doing on the fly re-edits jumping between different sections of tracks and looping them up manually. I’m less into using a bunch of FX, it’s fine every once in a while but on every mix it gets monotonous.
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Cheers, I’m still very much in the try it and abandon it phase atm, learning from my mistakes. A little too much of one thing in a resample and I find I’m back at square one, but I’m having fun in the process so no big deal.
The P6 is very appealing to me mostly for granular stuff, and I almost went for one instead, but the 404 is too much of a useful toolkit and it does more for me. I decided I would try granular on apps and the PC, and feed the 404 with those instead, but that’s something to try down the line.
Got a little sub-mixer arriving today to make routing audio in my setup a little more immediate. Going to sub mix everything into my Digitakt, which goes over Overbridge for recording. Then I’ll have the audio outs on the DT with cables hooked up to route out to my 404 whenever I want to grab something quickly without using Ableton.
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The low bitrate does a number on some of the details, but here’s a first live recording out from the 404 into Live, with no processing other than gain and a limiter.
This is a single drone note from my PreenFM2 and some processing of a few short clips of sounds from a few nature cams on youtube. Turned out quite well.
I’ll be glad when my sub mixer arrives so I can ditch using the 404 as an interface. Even with -18 db to the headphones out, it’s still too loud to monitor with my iems while also pushing the volume up to hit -12db peaks in Live.
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Second to last bounce is mastering vinyl sim + Long Mode
What is “Long Mode?”
Thank you for such a detailed response. I’m going to experiment with these suggestions and report back.
There are 3 different sample rates on the sp-303.
Standard/long mode/ lofi.
Long mode is my favorite.
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Ah, thanks!
Does anybody know if/how the default tempo can be changed? The 404 keeps jumping back to 90 BPM’s when importing samples or in the External In menu, even when I‘ve set 134 as project and bank BPM’s, as well as on all samples. Maybe I miss some points where BPM‘s can be set? Is the 90 a hardcoded default?
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I’d love to know this too. It’s bizarre.
I was just feeding some samples in and overdubbing using one of my synth, set the recording settings to be a BPM, and no matter what when I press resample it sets to 90 BPM.
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Yeah, the way this currently works is a bit of a mess.
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love the visible difference here between the no effort AI response and the experienced user response. experienced user response is always helpful since they actually know the weird inconsistencies and present the answers concisely.
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Hey man. I was trying to help over coffee before work. I’ll be deleting it now.
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90 isn’t so much hard coded, as it just happens to be the default value in a number of places. I’ve done a number of videos on this, and it crops up from time to time in comments/questions I get. To me the broader problem is that the SP404 mk2 will inconsistently prioritize BPM from External Midi Sync/Project/Bank/Sample/Looper/Import/Input BPM depending on what you are doing or what mode you are in, and in some cases what settings you have configured. It’s probably worth the time to make a table of sorts to express this, but it’d get really specific, for example.
Midi Sync Auto (None), No Patterns Playing, Single Sample Playing - Current Sample BPM Value
Midi Sync Internal, Project BPM, Pattern Playing - Project BPM Value
etc…
I’m not sure how many of these situations/corner cases there would be, but I can imagine a lot that would need to be tested…
Midi Sync
- Auto (None), Auto (USB), Auto (Midi), Auto (USB+Midi)
- Internal
- Midi
- USB
Tap Tempo
- Project
- Bank
Pattern Playing (Yes/No)
- Use Midi Sync BPM value or Project/Bank BPM value
Sample Playing (Yes/No)
- Use Sample BPM value if not Pattern Playing and (I believe, need to check) no Midi Sync BPM value
Import BPM
- If the auto detect setting is on, then will attempt to auto detect a BPM based on range
- With no auto detect, I believe this will grab the Bank BPM, but again, been a while
Looper BPM
- This might just impact the loop length and not an legitimate BPM settings, need to check again though as it’s been a while since I tested
- My brain is failing me if a COPY to export the loop uses the Looper BPM or the Bank BPM…
Input BPM (Yes/No)
- I think this value may get used if there are no Midi Sync/Pattern/Samples playing but another one that’s been an edge case for my workflow, and I know this confuses people a lot because I recall it effecting FX, but not effecting Sample BPM for a REC/RESAMPLE
Then the flip side… it seems like Sample (from REC/RESAMPLE) and FX BPM values are determined through different priority trees. So explaining why recording a sample has one BPM value, while effects run at a different BPM value, can be a bit confusing to express to folks.
Honestly, the BPM space is probably the messiest thing on the SP404 mk2 because there isn’t a clear answer for which BPM value will be used and instead becomes an example of “it depends”.
If I get some time I may try to document this up as it probably would help folks better understand what the heck is going on.
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I think Roland got a bit carried away with the number of possible tempo states this device has. It’s a tricky enough mental model for the user, but I can only imagine that it’s an absolute ‘mare for them to maintain when there are issues.
Doing away with this arbitrary 90 BPM tempo for the External Input and Looper would be a start. I’m not sure why these menus don’t just follow the Bank or Project tempo to begin with.
Samples clearly need to have their own tempos, but couldn’t the Project Tempo work as a single source of truth for everything else that syncs to a tempo? That, at least, would seem to be a sensible starting point when the device is powered on.
@NearTao, if you decide to make this table, it might be an idea to send Roland a copy, too 
.
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I’m enjoying the sound generator function, even if just as a noise source and a way to easily generate a click. I could happily make an EP just based on what’s available in there.
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Yes, me too. Layering of oscillators is also very easy via resampling. I like it the most for basses, but could be used for anything.
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@echoicMalady and @NearTao your posts helped a lot, thx, for instance that the 90 in the external in menu disappears after one click on the resample button 
just an additional button press to do after each startup, along with value knob + sub pad and record menu -> ExtIn.
Edit: not even an additional button press because it‘s implied by the record menu clicks. Fine then, thanks again.
I like the special quirkiness of the 404, especially since the Japanese garden metaphor somebody described above.
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This morning I made a simple kick with it by pairing a click with some noise and driving and pitching it a bit. It’s the happiest I’ve been with a self made kick in a while!
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I’ve decided it’s worth an appendix section in the guide… have started working on it now… will see how it comes out 
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