The good ole SP forums. There are some great guys an gals over there with all kinds of wisdom.
I’m guessing the A meant AIRA edition.
On a side note, and by no means disrespect. I find it hilarious that someone joined a forum to voice their concerns/buyer beware and named them self after said product.
I called myself SP-USER cause I had intended to be one. But collectively, Roland with their BS and some of the ridiculous limitations the 404 has, sadly ended those plans.
I just feel it a moral duty to make buyer beware. It’s not me you need to be wary of, but rather Roland’s apparent immunity from the law, allowing it to rename a current product and resell it as a new one without getting it’s collar felt.
Check out the Octatrack
Sure will, I’m looking for something that can replace it.
Without the FX is the issue.
Currently imo it is better to get a MC-101, load in some user samples and design the Scatter FX than get a Blackbox trying to emulate a SP.
Sure the Blackbox can trigger samples and more easily, but FX is severely lacking on that box, I used it as a glorified sampler and as a glorified clip launcher when I had it.
The SP is such an underrated sound mangler.
The 101 too if you take your time with it.
The Blackbox can resample through its inputs, tho. Bring your fav fx unit and you got the SP workflow right there
I, too, have a soft spot for the 404sx as it was my first sampler and got me into the world of samples, sound design, thinking with color/texture…My band and I would sample our synths and piano chords and put them into the 404sx and I would play it live. It’s remarkably good at that…If I want to just play some chords. The Octatrack can most certainly do it too, but every time I think about doing it I think “that’s a bit of a workaround” and frankly I just probably wouldn’t perform like that anymore, anyway; even though the live, dynamic aspect of physically pressing the chords and sounds on my 404 was certainly more exciting than sequencing them.
Alas, I sold it maybe about a year ago. It was sitting in a drawer in my desk for a couple years totally untouched. Of all the gear I sold it hurt me the most to do so, but it just didn’t seem necessary anymore. I’ll never forget taking it on a family vacation and recording samples and phone recordings into it, then mangling them, bringing it back to my bandmates and making a new song with those. Oddly enough, the lack of a (good) sequencer (as in–I never used the sequencer on that thing ever) makes the sampling more free form. Now I’m getting an idea to just sample and use plays free tracks on the DPS-1.
Thanks for the suggestions, still looking into this but the Elektron box for starters is way out of my price range and does not take batteries. I need battery power since I intend to take it on Wild-Camping trips.
The BlackBox is too much touch-screen orientated for me to like it. I’m wanting to be dawless, with one of the reasons being so that I can escape mice and touch-screens.
The MC-101 is the most likely candidate so far. It’s unfortunate it does not sample but at least it can resample standalone and can import samples standalone. It’s also powerful, small, and can be battery-powered, so definitely a likely candidate. As was suggested by one of the homies on SP-Forums, I could always use my phone to bring-in an external sample if I’m out in the wild.
Don’t confuse a touch screen with a daw. I get where you’re coming from but if you dodge the Blackbox cause you wanna go dawless, it’s like staying away from coffee because you prefer caffeine. People go ”Uh, but … okay.” With this said, I respect your journey and search. We all have our own way to find our way home.
If your considering using the phone in tandem, take a look at the Koala Sampler app. It’s cheap and basically an SP plus more in app form. Lots of praise here and crazy fun.
Also look at a PO-33, I absolutely love mine. Minus the ability to have long samples and a ton of effects it’s just as fun as a SP if not more.
Actually Koala plus a 33 would be an interesting combo.
Funny enough, it’s the existence of Koala Sampler that makes me see the BlackBox as pointless (for me I mean). I love Koala Sampler, it can even be considered a complete workstation depending on how you use it, but it’s the whole touch-screen thing I don’t like. I wouldn’t be looking for portable hardware solutions if I were ok with touch-screens, I’d just use the tablet.
I prefer tactile controls, so the problem I have with BlackBox is that it still uses a touch-screen to the point that even the pads are touch-screen. There would be no point in it compared to Koala, cause at least on Koala my touch-screen pads would be bigger, and the whole thing likely lighter and easier to carry.
So it’s gotta be tactile, yes, like the PO-33. I had thought about going that route, I could buy two which would give me resampling ability, so it’s not out of the question. Even buying two of them would total no more that 150 quid, so it’s less than half the price I paid for the 404.
Only prob with the PO-33 is the effects, I know it has effects, but I’d at least love a reverb or delay. I suppose a delay could be sequenced-in, not ideal, but doable, so I might indeed go the 2x PO-33 route, wouldn’t even know I was carrying them, either, so that’s another plus.
As it stands, it’s a toss-up between an MC-101 with it’s sheer power, resampling and sample import or 2x PO-33 with full sampling and resampling between them, but relatively limited effects and processing power. One of the homies on SP-Forums suggested an MPC500. Trouble is I wanted to buy new, and even if I could get a new one now, it’s heavy-built steel construction, so a bit of a lump to be taking on Wild-Camping trips. Haven’t actually looked at the official weight but I’m guessing it must have some heft to it.
I’m gonna let this go now and just ask one more thing - have you tried a Blackbox in real life?
I haven’t, but I started watching the Loopop review on YouTube after you mentioned it. Early on in the review I saw him using the screen as pads so it put me off watching the rest.
That said, you seem persistent and passionate about it, there must be a reason so I’ll watch it right through over tea tonight. I just noticed Tines has a review as well so I’ll take a look at that if there is anything in Loopop’s review that changes my mind.
It will have to have quite a party trick up its sleeve to make it a better option than Koala though!
I keep thinking of getting the Korg DJ Controller (MINIKP2S) to pair with my 33. Great reviews, small, and would solve the need for two 33s. Even thinking of getting a PO-32 for drums, 33 for sampling and the mini KP2 for effects and recording. Fun little portable rig for still less than a 404A.
BlackBox doesn’t do it for me. No internal battery, no resampling (as far as I can tell), and it’s touch-screen for the most part. It’s certainly a powerful device and I can see how its feature set will be very attractive to some, but it’s not for me.
Thanks for pointing it out though, I wouldn’t have bothered looking otherwise, and there’s more to it than I thought there was.
I like the idea of the KP2S as part of a little self-contained dawless setup. That’s more like it. I remember when it first came out, I tried desperately to find out if you could play a sample while at the same time, recording it using the built-in recorder. Still don’t know to this day. There never seems to be any serious in-depth tutorials or reviews on those devices, and Korg’s crappy little fold-out sheet instructions don’t help either.
Back to the PO-33 thing a minute though, another idea I had was to buy two PO-33s and one Volca Modular. Crazy as it sounds, those three devices give you a portable battery-powered self-contained studio of sorts.
It means you not only have a modular synthesizer to create your tones, you also have a sampler to sample them, you even have the ability to output from the first PO-33, feed it through that cool, creepy-sounding reverb of the Volca modular, and sample it into the second PO-33.
Cool eh? And even cooler is that both the PO-33s and the Volca Modular all use the same connectors and are even sync compatible! When you think of how powerful and tiny that setup actually is, it’s kinda mind-blowing really. And there is yet another cool aspect to it, very cool, cause if like me you are wanting to become truly dawless, this simple setup will even allow you to backup your samples to a cassette tape using the modem on the PO-33, just record the backup to tape!
Hehehe!
So that means you have the power of the sequencers, both of which can be tied into the actual synthesis on the Volca Modular, the sampling, the resampling, and the reverb, all in a tiny, fully-tactile battery-powered rig.
I still might do that, but since I had to return the 404 anyway, I intend to search a little longer first. I can’t imagine finding a better, more capable combo than 2x PO-33 + 1x Volca Modular, but the challenge is kinda enjoyable and I’m always open to ideas.
That said, we might have to take it to another thread since this one is for the 404. It’s beginning to look like I hijacked the thread 
Blackbox resamples 
both through one of its six mono outputs back into hardware or directly within the box.
But I get where you’re coming from, po’s and volcas are totally about as hands on as you get and very funky.
Good to hear it resamples. Resampling has to be the most important thing ever on a device that samples, but it’s amazing how many sampling devices don’t do it.
Yeah, I must admit I was pretty damn happy when I realised the potential of linking those devices. Unless you come across the right tutorials on YouTube, it’s easy not to realise that you can actually modulate the Volca Modular synthesis with your PO-33 samples. It’s even easier not to realise that the Modulars own sequencer can be synced with the PO-33 sequencer, while at the same time, modulating it’s own parameters in perfect sync with the PO-33. Kinda hard to explain what I mean by that but it is insanely powerful.
Adding a Tonic and Speak to that particular setup would add ‘modulating’ vocoder, speech, and drum synthesis (because they can also be tied into the synthesis of the Modular).
Something I forgot to point out about having two PO-33s in the rig is that the second one acts as a multi-track recorder, not just a resampler. It means you can take the four-note polyphony of the PO-33 and sample it down to just one note (or in this case track) of the second PO-33. In effect, that gives this powerful little rig a 16-note polyphonic 4-track recorder without having to bounce back the recording even once. Doing it like this means you can store complete multi-track songs on a PO-33 as long as you structure and sequence the resampled tracks sensibly.
What the hell, while I’m at it I might as well reveal the cake. There is one other device that can be added to this rig, one so powerful it allows you to connect your PO-33 samples and multitrack recordings directly to a lo-fi record-cutting device, which cuts an actual lo-fi record which can be played on a real turntable, or even sent back directly from the cutting device to the PO-33 for some truly genuine lo-fi sampling.
It’s called EZ Record Maker, designed by Yuri Suzuki, who funnily enough, also had input on the Pocket Operators (maybe that’s why we often see Japanese text on Pocket Operator stuff?)
I already own the EZ Record Maker but haven’t built it yet, waiting until I have the rest of the rig settled on, but honestly, it’s just one of those things I would never part with. No matter what rig you build, this thing connects to it with standard audio cables, one for input from your rig to the cutting arm, and one from the playback arm back out to your rig so that you can sample it. You can even sample via USB if you are using a computer.
The blank records for it at the moment are expensive because the maker, Gakken, were not prepared for how popular it would become, and it sold out pretty much immediately. The good news is that you can even make your own blank records using standard sheets of ecetate, readily available on eBay or whatever.
Personally I love it for being lo-fi, and you have to admit, it’s a pretty attractive proposition to think that your self-contained dawless rig can even contain an actual record-cutting machine with connections directly to and from your rig, no matter what that rig may be - no computer needed.
Watch these vids and you’ll get an idea of the lo-fi aspect, but apparently, in Japan, it has already gathered a cult following and there are people who obsessively modify the device to create much higher fidelity recordings
Never selling mine, they’d have to pry it from my cold, dead hands 
If nothing else, my lengthy ramblings might have worth if learning about this device brings a smile to someones face. It certainly did to mine 
I reckon it should be top of every producers lo-fi must-have list!
By the way, the designers website can be found here:
https://www.yurisuzuki.com/design-studio/easyrecordmaker
Anyone into lo-fi production who has a YouTube channel, would be cool to bring this product to your viewers attention and I’m guessing they should be back in stock by now.
EDIT : Yes, I see them on eBay again, so they’re back, but the blanks are crazy priced for what they are, I would just buy sheets of ecetate and use that instead.