As a user of the 606 ,I have never had the opportunity to use any of the other roland samplers...has anyone used these other samplers and how do they compare to the sp 606 in terms of functionality,sound and feel?

i had a 404 (not sx)
i didnt like the pads (too hard and less responsive than my 303), the quantize and midi. the sound...well it's a matter of taste, many people use the 404 on this forum then it's probaly me...
as a live machine is more practical than a 606 in therms of tweakin fx (as alo the 303)
i miss the loopr fx indeed

i have a 505
as standalone is more complete than the 606 (wich is more conceived to work with pc i think), it sounds a little more flat; the fx section is weaky:i don't dig at all the compressor and ,less, the filters; the other fx are ok but that's all. the pitch scale function it could be fantastic or weirdy dipendig on what we're searching and , above all, on what type of sample we put on it (high tones, noises, or simply chops from records etc); the chop is more cool here than on the 606: you can also move markers when autochop is done in order to assign new reworked chops to pads
bpm sync is more clear on the 606 than on the 505...

i first had a 555 and it was pretty good, very similair to a 404, with a looper added. played with a 404, it was ok. got a 808 right now and its amazing, all the effects, like 200. and easy resampling, 4 track recorder for quick ideas, and you can resample your tracks to pads, sort of like bouncing tracks, which you can do as well. Nice ass filters and isolators. Crazy wah effects, like 5. Millions of reverb presets and lots of parameters to control, not just 3 knobs, like you control every aspect of an effect, which is really good. Had a 606 for like a month and sold it, felt like a toy and was very menu intensive. the mpc is menu intensive, but its for something, you know, when you hit a button. the 606 was a bunch of button pressing for nothing. like everytime you record a sample you have to set the same thing over and over, instead of it remembering your last setting, hated that. Not a bad machine but i didnt like it at all, always felt like i could break it. still trying to get a 303, waiting till its super cheap.

damn, this machine is tempting...
what sops me it's the saving (on the disks) and its dimensions...
spring, do you have a real sequencer on the 808 and how the midi works? can you trasmitts midi notes?


i understand you.
i bought the 606 for the first time in 2009. i sold it in 15 days...
now i'm more working with a pc, my workflow has changed and so this sampler is better to work like this than standalone i think, not just for th lack of real pitch but also for the fact to be used also as a soundcard and a controller...

I dont think you can transmit midi notes and it has no sequencer. It sort of forces me to unquantize and just rock out with random samples. I have it hooked up to my multitrack with midi and thats about it. it start/stops my mpc and is a slave to my multitrack which is cool when i want to record things on time to the tempo and beats, otherwise i just do whatever which always sounds better. The 808 also has a few pitch effects, all good. One is some triad pitch which sort of doubles everything up, or probably triples since its triad. Then it has the regular effect and you can also make your own effects patches which you could (i havent yet) lets say, make a pitch that has a compressor and a eq in the same effect. Like i said you can adjust almost all of the parameters for each effect, not just 3 knobs, so when you go to effect edit, lets say, reverb, you can adjust the dampness, reverb time, decay, predelay, then slide over to the eq of that effect and adjust that in the chain. Pretty cool fuckin machine, got it for 200 bucks and its my best machine, like it even more than the mpc though the sequencer on that is amazing and lets me lay things out nicely when i need good timing. And the pads are great.

wow!!

ya man, its pretty cool, i use it as an effects processor and a quick ideas grabber.
dont really sample on it unless it something i wanna resample a bunch.

I used 606 ,505 and a 404(not the sx,for 2-3 hours)...the 505 has some special sound mostly of it's long and lofi sampling modes and the effects are a bit lofi!sure 606 and 404 have new fx engine but I really like 505...
As far for the compressor fx on the 505 I mainly use:
1-2 o'clock for attack and above 12 o'clock for sustain and I get punch!
However 606 is THE animal ,especially if you use it with a computer, but for me computers are for midi sequencing,mixing-editing...not for producing music!
I wonder if Roland makes a dedicated midi controller with sp emulation using a software like fxpansion Geist...but I'm sure they will fail!

The 404 is my workhorse. Clean sampling (what u put in u get back out) and great effects. I can understand Ella's comment about the pads but I still like them. Sequencer is limited, so you find workarounds with resampling or MIDI hookup.
The 505 is a great machine - very simple and intuitive. Quieter output than other SP's but everything sounds 'warmer' to me and stuff sticks together really well in the mix. Limited, but what SP isn't? The screen, chop function and 4-track sequencer make it a beast.
The 202 is obvs very limited and noisy, but could still be the best SP in terms of very quickly coming up with creative stuff. I totally love the 202.

I though 606 has much lower output than 505...When I had sp606 ,I had to use the master effect as volume booster....!

Ya- the 606 leaves a ton of headroom, becasue- as you know, with some of the FX like delays the volume can get dangerously high.

Kinda like on MPCs- when you sample, the volume is at 100, but you can raise it to 200.

I made a mastering template on the 606 with compression ratios of 1:1 and then rasied the volume up- effectively organically boosting the signal.

Another way is to run the SPDIF out into a device that has SPDIF in with analog outs & boost it there.

I play the 606 live and I bought a 555 (liked that it has a mic pre) but the pads on the 555 were not as bang-able as the 606 pads. 555 were more like rubberized buttons- but the 606 pads are more solild & robust- most of the numbers have worn off mine but they still respond well.

i re-bought an sp606 last year, it was very cheap.
now i think that it's still a pc-machine like (a sort of a pionneeristic Maschine) but also standalone it's not bad. what i don't like is that the last time i used it live but it was very hard to upload samples for a like of less than 400mb; so i had to cut them and convert them from stereo to mono in order to have less space to occupy and it worked, but it wasn't cool at all...
for live use the fx tweaking is cool, but for sample stocking the 404 has lot of more possibilities

I gave up on loading samples to the 606- no matter what I just sample it in now- I was looking at the Roland site just today- seems the new 404 and the 555 are the last surviving tabletop samplers from Rolly