Been using my 555 for a day now and browsing through the manual. Made a couple nice beats and have just been experimenting.

I see in the manual on page 20 that you can change the effect tempo sync.

Either synced off the current pad or synced off the pattern itself. This can also be set to stay after power off.

Just for basics, is it better to sync with pad or pattern?

I am thinking with pattern selected all your effects, particularly if you saturate the pad, would fluctuate, oscillate, etc in time with the pattern and that would be what one would want.

Not sure though seeing as how Roland set it up for pad sync default.