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 Post subject: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 7:55 pm 
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What's up everyone? What is a good price range for an sp 606? Would you guys say that it's better than a 555(In terms of actual production/sampling/sequencing)? Let me know asap. There's a guy who's selling one but he wants me to make him an offer.


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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 2:09 am 
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i just got one and realized that its a pretty slow workflow. ive been through a 555 and i got a 808 right now and its fast as shit doing everything. the sp 606 has alot of menu and button mashing to get shit done. like my 808 lets you keep sampling by keeping you in the sample window, so its like BANG BANG BANG, sample after sample. with the 606 i gotta sample one at a time, get kicked out of the window and press like 3 or 4 buttons just to get back to where i was to sample. same with resampling. and chopping is kinda gay in comparison, this is only my opinion cause im just extremely impatient when im trying to make beats so this machine is getting to me, but im a fight through it. and i just got it like today.
hope this helps, ha.

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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 11:46 am 
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hahah thanks spring. sorry for the late reply. and yeah it did help. thats exactly the kind of stuff i wanted to hear. would you say the 808 is the best machine you've used so far? i have a 555 also, and it's pretty fun but i'm just looking for something that has a little different method and workflow. the reason i was looking at the 606 was cause of its chop function and the screen(opening windows?) looked like a refreshing view on making music but i guess it's tedious?


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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 2:20 pm 
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well the cop function doesnt let you set bars or even set anything, just the chop threshold so it does it automatic for you and has only worked good with drumloops. buts its no point in having 16 pads full of drum hits when you only need like 4. and sample editing is just like the 555 except you can see the waveform. no setting slices and having it chop it for you like a mpc. and ive had the 555 too, way better than a 606. the 808 is by far the best one, all it would need is a sequencer but im a unquantized kind of guy anyways so it doesntmatter. but the 606 is like a glorified 808 but worse. rold is just one big fuck up, none of their machines got better, just different. lose some good, gain some ok so their older machines end up being better because the newer ones lost the good shit that you liked and got used to. id say get a 808 before a 606.

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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:23 pm 
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To go with the original question: in terms of actual price don't pay any more than US$300 for a used one.

Just last weekend at this Roland sale they had an SP-606 on sale- ex-demo, guaranteed to work & under warranty for $500 Australian (which is almost equal to the US dollar right now). I nearly bought it as a back up unit for my aged 606.

To be honest I've only very briefly messed with an SP-404 & to be honest I didn't like it as much as the 606. The lack of screen was confusing, the pulsing numbers irritating & the pads (identical to those on the SP-555 felt cheap). There is menu diving but its nothing compared to using, say, any MPC (especially the save/load process, may as well be using a PC with the text set to Greek Cyrillic).

Once you understand how to do what you want with the SP-606 its actually very time efficient. Each menu is just shift+pad, then a couple of expected ups & downs on the arrows & you're editing almost whatever. The menu diving's pretty easy on the 606.

The 606's four track sequencer (editable to 96 parts per quarter note so you can get both quantized & human rhythms playing) & open ended mute group function mean both quantizers & loose players are happy. That's something the 404 & 555 can't match. Don't think the 808 can mute group the way the 606 can either. Never underestimate the importance of multiple mute groups when playing unquantized.

I agree the 606's chop sucks but with a calculator & a note pad you can do some really quick chopping that way once your sample's start & end points are trimmed. I'm down to 3 minutes to turn an 2 bar turnaround into 8 even 1/8th long samples. The manual result is far better than trusting a machine to say 'that'll do'.

Thought a little balance in this topic was necessary. The 606 is a great machine, like any other sampler take the time to learn it & it'll be worth the effort, time & money.

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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 3:20 pm 
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the 808 does have mute groups, which i was suprised by. it just doesnt have a sequencer. give the 808 a sequencer and id be in heaven. i didnt mean to sound like the 606 is crap, its just hard not to realized the ups and downs roland goes through with every machine being more or less ineffecient every time they make a new model. and when you actually put your hands on a machine and learn it in and out you realize the little things that make your workflow suck a little more or less. im just glad to have those cool ass sp effects which the 808 doesnt really have. or they do but you can change and maniplute em so much that its time consuming with unlimited results. and the shitload of effects it has. the 606 is dope, dont get me wrong. with a little more time with it, ill be loving it. but right off the bat and comparing it to other machines, dont know why roland is so screwed up. look at any other machine series, not too many lost and gained things, usually just kept all and gained. thats why you end up paying more for the machine. the 404 and the 555 are the exact same machine except for the loop capture but its like 200 bucks more. kinda funny when you think about it.
QUESTION!
do you use math when your breaking down your 2 bar loops. or do you go by ear (which would make sense) but sometimes you get a loop that you just cant really catch a beat when you scrub through it, you can count em when its playing but ive run into problems trying to catch all the beats when i chop. i know some dude on youtube has a trick with his mpc500 to count the beats with math n shit. just wondering.

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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 6:13 am 
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The 808 doesn't have a sequencer??? Damn, that's heavy...

To answer your question I generally do the maths to help out with my ear. I'll count out however many bars I want & then crop the loop so that it plays evenly- always starting the loop on the 1st beat of the 1st bar, otherwise this won't work.

Then comes the calculator & however many chops I want.

So a two bar beat on a loop 554782 snippets long chopped to 8 1/4 length notes would be:
8/554782=69348 snippets per chop

To count that out across the pads
pad 1: 0 to 69348
pad 2: 69348 to 138696
pad 3: 138696 to 208044
etc

But I'll also watch the screen to compensate for swing & slight (human) variations, so those chop points aren't the only thing I work to.

How did the fella on youtube do it? I've also got an MPC500 & quite frankly I suck at chopping without a wave form in front of me.

Also, comparing the SP606, 505 & 404's price range is a little unfair on these products. Roland stopped making the 505 a long time ago. This timeline may add a little perspective, the 505 wouldn't have been in manufacture when the 606 was produced, just as the 606 was no longer produced once the 555 came out. Remember that to buy these samplers these days means more often than not going 2nd hand, so you're paying someone else (not Roland). You're paying what someone else decides the sampler is worth...

I won't debate the choices that Roland have made with progressing this series though. I don't get why they dropped the ball so hard on pitch shifting from the 505 onwards. The 606's pitchshift is so weak it becomes more of a novelty/gimmick than a useful effect.

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 Post subject: Re: Good price for an SP 606?
PostPosted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 9:28 pm 
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im actually gettin rid of my 606 real soon, gonna be on ebay in the next few days. ill just rock the mpc and the 808. 606 wont even fit on my desk.

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