As I've mentioned in previous posts the 555 is just a glorified looping pedal for me mostly. And one trouble I've been having is getting loops to sync up together.
http://sp-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1494

But the 505 has the BPM sync function. But I was wondering how well that works. Most of my stuff is gonna be audio data of keyboards and for it to sync different samples up it has to do some time-stretching right? I've tried the time stretch on the 555 and it sounded weird. Does the 505 do it well?

Plus it's got auto-chop which I'm sure I could find a use for. And you can start/stop sampling via a pedal which is a problem I was having on the 555 because you can only start/stop the loop capture feature via a pedal.
http://sp-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1548

And it does songs so I can actually put my samples together and play a whole song. And the sequencer seems better since I can have parts but the 555 only has one part so it's hard to subtract and add stuff.

Are there restrictions to what each part can be in the sequencer? or could I trigger 4 keyboard samples on and off all synced together as a pattern.

The loops sync thing is kind of a useless feature. It only works if all your samples are perfectly looped and then it does it by timestretching which sounds noticable worse on the 505 than on the 555.

Auto chop however is really dope. Its actually like the new non destructive chop shop on the new MPC OS. You can slice up up to 32 parts. and it will slice them for u but then u can go in b4 you export it and edit each slice. It works really well.

The only limits to the sequencer is its 8 note polyphony.

Hmm that's too bad that the bpm sync doesn't work too well. That was the main thing that was getting me interested in one.

The pitch sample thing is also interesting. I'd actually be interested in making some weird sounds by sampling my voice at a pitch and then changing the pitch and then playing through MIDI with a keyboard.

My understanding is that the pitch sample will only do one octave no matter what right? Also I read that the sp-505 MIDI sucks as far as getting it to control something, but is the sp-505 easy to control like through a keyboard?

I guess I can always get both, but I'm trying really hard to cutback on my gear addiction even though i could probably get one for only $200 ::bites fist::

Yes, the 505 can map out a sample across its pads in an octave, but it maintains the tempo. Keep in mind that the sample must be put in the internal memory banks, which hold significantly less time than the card, of course.

EDIT: As for controlling the 505 through an external controller, I'll have to get back to you on that one. I will say that the 505's pads are soft but thin, which makes performing rolls and flams kind of difficult. They're not velocity sensitive, as you may already know.

I use a midi controller to control the 505 without any problems. I use the MPD24 which gives me velocity sensitivity. cheers.

it does an octave plus 1 extra C The 505 is the worst thing ever for sequencing external stuff...u would probably have better results with the 404 I actually find the 555 semi decent for recoring external stuff. Ive been using it to trigger/sequence my EPS.

So how is the song feature? I guess it'll always be limited by it's eight-note polyphony but I could probably do alot with 8 samples playing at once. Of course I have an akai 12-track and a PC with Cubase and what not, but I never have really gotten into sitting in front of the computer while playing music.

8 note polyphony us the minimum needed to make dope music id say. I made tons of stuff that I swore would eat all my 8 notes ups but i never ran out.
The song mode is pretty standard. It arranges your sequences into a song...like on an MPC. Nothing super exciting but gets the job done.

So you can say play sequence 1 for 16bars, then go to part B for 4 and so on?
I can chain stuff with the 555 but you have to change it manually. I can't specify number of measures

I guess I should ask this here:

For pitch shifting octave limitations: Is there a workaround for that by resampling the new pitches made and then applying the pitch thing again to the highest or lowest pitch? this way you can sort of chain ocatves together