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As someone who has gone through the same process and tried all of the above devices except the iPad, here are my two cents:

  • MPC - I get it, it’s not really a sampling companion and more like a full-blown DAW.
  • Digitakt - The lack of battery, mono sampling and monophony made me hesitate about it. But in all honesty, once you have plugged two devices together, you already have power, midi, and audio cables, so what difference does one more power cable do? And the mono sampling, yes I’d still love it if it didn’t have that limitation but in a mix where lots of samples are playing, panned or modulated in the stereo spectrum, you really don’t think about it. And the monophony, it’s easy enough to make specialized patterns on eg Bank H where you copy a sample across several tracks to sequence chords like you would on a tracker. Then just resample those into new samples for use in the project. Changed your mind about a chord progression? Just go back to bank H and make changes and resample. All in all, the Digitakt is a very musical sampler with proper envelopes and LFOs. This makes a massive difference when sequencing music.
  • SP-404 mk2 - What I really appreciate with it is how quick the (re)sampling workflow is. Just hit Rec, press a pad and you just recorded a new sample. And because the storage is so generous, you can easily make multiple copies of a sample and create variations by resampling. The Digitakt is slower and more tedious in comparison, particularly, it forces you to give each sample a name which sucks. Triggering one shots from the Syntakt to the SP is easy enough. Where the SP falls short (by a mile) is when it comes to its own step sequencer. It’s the kind of experience that will make you want to throw it into the trash. So, the SP is strictly for external sequencing for me, while the Digitakt is an instrument in its own right. The battery power is nice, but changing AA batteries is a nail-damaging exercise. I’d much prefer a user-replaceable lithium battery that charged via the usb-c port.

All in all, if it were me and I had too choose between these, I’d pick the Digitakt.

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