For MPCs, I currently have the Live II, but I have had the original Live and the X. My brother in law has the One, and I have messed with it.

I'm super mixed on the Live vs One discussion, because honestly... the X is the better experience. I sold of the X because I didn't want to start an MPC museum over here (also had the 500 and 1k, along with the Live and X). Just before the pandemic I had been traveling a lot, and set my mind on having just the Live II for traveling. With the pandemic though, I haven't travelled hardly at all, so the MPC has become my centerpiece of my studio and everything goes through it at this point. Which... also means, lots of cables, and now I have less interest in disconnecting it... probably should just get a label maker and label everything to make it faster, but as it stands... I just don't travel with it, and would rather have the X for my current use case.

The Live has the speaker, 6 outputs, internal drive option, and battery going for it. Those are all pretty nice, and with the outputs you can setup an FX loop with the SP super easy by taking MPC outs 3/4 (or 5/6), connect to the SP inputs, then connect the SP outputs to the MPC inputs. Easy and a quick way to bounce samples, ideas, etc between the two. Even better... you can use the USB-C to attach an iPad or whatever into the mix and seamlessly add in more instruments.

For the One though, you've got only 2 outputs, but the buttons I found a bit better laid out for navigating the system. Unfortunately with only 2 outputs, it makes it a bit more awkward to use with the SP since you cannot create an FX loop, well you can, but now you're playing mono/panning tricks or doing cable contortions that I am not into.

Big note... I haven't played with using the SP as an audio device on the Live (or One), so it's possible that USB-C is the way to go for audio and loopback on the One, but I still suspect it is a better/streamlined experience on the Live.

All that said though... honestly I think both the Live and One are great devices. The smaller pads on the One didn't bother me, but I was used to the pad sizes on the 1k/500, and now the 404 mk2, and the smaller pads I mostly find fine... only area it is a bit more tough or I just need to get used to them is some finger drumming feels a bit cramped, but I'm not a huge finger drummer and it hasn't bothered me that much.

Hope that helps!

Thank you for your extensive work NearTao!
Your manual and videos are so awesome and informative!

You're welcome man, thanks for the big ups

Today I have the big update for the guide, putting me up to version 0.21 and it is available at https://neartao.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-21/

The big section update is for the Chapter on the Utility menu, and for at least System, Pad Set, and EFX Set, I have added as much color and detail as possible without loosing my mind. I know I've said I wouldn't try to recreate the manual, but I felt it was important to go over these sections because the interface does a poor job explaining what some of the settings are, and the manual isn't exactly clear of why you would want to use some of these settings.

In my mind, there should be some UI tweaks to make the settings more clear. For example, Pad Mutes is Master or Mst+Phn... which is okay, but why is Output Assign On/Off. I just find it odd, and the official reference manual doesn't necessarily make some of these settings much more clear unless you already are familiar with the concepts.

For those of you worried that the foray into working on the YouTube videos has slowed me down, well I hope it hasn't. If anything, it's given me a bit of an extra push to better understand how some of the areas on the mk2 work. The videos won't be up for a while, but I learned a lot recording some Midi configuration videos, and that information will definitely make it's way into the guide. Possibly even before the videos go live.

Anyways, keep learning and keep making beats, peace!

I did take a more detailed look at this guide the other week, cause although I don't have a MKII, I was very curious about that complaint TGN had about the lack of effects during pattern recording. I found the section on resampling but I'm still wondering if his complaint was valid or maybe he forgot to switch a specific setting on. Do you know anything about that, any advice on it, NearTao?

Have they really made it so that you cannot use effects while recording a pattern?

Guide Update v0.22 is here https://neartao.wordpress.com/2022/04/11/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-22/

I suppose the "big news" is that firmware version 1.15 dropped. It fixes a couple of bugs, I don't think I ever hit them. Given this rather weak update for the mk2, my suspicion is that we're not likely to see anything terribly interesting for firmware updates until the supply chain issues work themselves out. I get it, Roland wants to get the most market bang for the buck, and if they are continuing to sell through stock before it ever hits the shelves, then there is no reason to do anything expansive until they need to be able to drive more business. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I just don't think belly aching about the lack of new filters, or new features, or whatever you'd like is going to get much traction right now.

The overall state of the guide is starting to come together in a good way. I know I have a lot more random sections to fill out or get clarity on, but by and large the guide is pretty well fleshed out, and has a lot of the information I had set out to put together. For people that have reached out about it, I do recognize that updates have also slowed down a bit for the guide. It actually has little to do with making the videos, and more to do with moving into spring time, helping my family with some person things, and trying to figure out where music fits in to my life. I could see myself selling off most of my gear (possibly the mk2 as well) and being incredibly happy with 3-4 instruments that I could learn far more deeply than I can with all of the gear that I currently have.

For those of you who keep reaching out, whether through the discord channel, forum posts, YouTube comments, email, feel free to say hi or ask questions. I'm trying to keep up and help where I can.

Stay cool everybody, and have a wonderful day. Until next time...

So you can play/resample patterns and have effects going, but you cannot record patterns and have Bus1/Bus2 effects going. It's kind of annoying, and I don't get the reasoning behind it... but it is what it is

Oddly you can have Bus3/Bus4 on though... *shrug*

Found out that, if you hit record when the pattern is already playing and you enter record mode this way, the efx1/2 stays activated. Strange behaviour.

That sounds like a bug then, I hope you reported it to Roland as reproducible, but at least it's not intentional or at least it doesn't seem that way, so that's a relief!

Looks as if resampling your stuff using the guitar effects is out of the question though, which is completely dumb and uncalled for since one of the points of the SP line is being able to resample with effects. If it wasn't for those two issues I might still buy it, so I hope they fix them and add a Touch Wah, one that is accessible through resampling.

A request came in to add a shortcut section, so I added an Appendix G and tried to organize it in a way that made more sense to me than what information is in the official manual.

https://neartao.wordpress.com/2022/05/13/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-23/

If anybody has been wondering where the updates have been for the guide, well I've partly been lazy, I have been trying to figure out how to improve the YouTube videos for the mk2, and well I went on vacation. The vacation was with my family, we drove about 1200 or so miles to get down to North Carolina, and I had a lot of fun at both the Ocean Isles Beach, and then we spent a day in South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. I did bring the mk2 with me, and was able to spend the first day with my nephew showing him a bit about the mk2, but he is more interested in his iPad and using Garage Band at this time. We had fun, but beyond that I hardly touched the mk2. Not for lack of trying, but it was a lot of driving, keeping friends and family entertained, cooking, and at the end of the day just being tired. I'm hoping I'll get some more time in July with the mk2 on my trip to Brazil with my family... *fingers crossed*.

Honestly I hadn't been sure what to do next with the guide. I've had a few ideas, but nothing that felt like it was worthwhile enough to sit down by itself for. Somebody posted on discord a few days ago about the lack of a good Shortcuts guide, and that gave me the idea to just write up a few pages for how it would make more sense to organize to me. What I have so far isn't perfect, but you can at least see shortcuts for Sample Mode, Pattern Mode, DJ Mode, Effects, and Settings. There were a few things in there that I realized I missed as well, so it will be a good exercise to keep adding to the shortcuts (or just a straight up commands) section, but also to drive that information back into the rest of the guide as well.

I also had been sitting on a few notes I had written down from people reaching out to me for other things, so you might see your name as a shout out in the guide if you happened to look around. Above that, I decided it was also time to just start scrubbing through all the ???s I had left around. I've learned a lot more about the mk2 over the last several months from when I started, and figured it was time to start answering questions for real. That brought me down from about 120 ??? to 71 ??? I believe was the last count. Some of them will take some legitimate time to setup and run experiments, but a lot of it I believe is still worth digging into.

The last, rather minor detail, is I decided I am going to start replacing some of the image content with vector graphics. Do I technically need to save space on the file? Not really, but I also have been seeing the file size continue to grow rather rapidly into something that I could see getting a bit out of control. As a result, I'll probably just keep designing little symbols for a bit to get the file size back under control, and then I can save the images for things that actually deserve more detail, or aren't just copy/pasted throughout the document.

I suppose all of this is a long way to say, I am still around, I am still taking input from the community, and I do still want to get folks the best information possible.

An update to the guide is available at https://neartao.wordpress.com/2022/08/04/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-24/ or the usual place(s) that I post it up at.

Enjoy!

Just wanted to give thanks to NearTao for still being consistent with his SP404mk2 uploads.

Everytime I have a question about something when I'm making a beat, I search google and one of his videos pops up.

You've really helped me learn this machine faster than any SP I've had in the past.

Thanks spliffsoldier, glad to hear it helps!

Since I'm so close to a full year of videos for the SP404 mk2 I figure I'll get daily videos posted up through February at least. From there I'll likely keep up with daily videos, but mix it up more with other devices as well.

I posted this over at the Elektronauts forum, but just FYI in case anybody happens upon it from here....

~~~

For anybody interested, starting tomorrow, I've got a full month of daily free samples being uploaded to my YouTube channel. You can grab the samples off of the YouTube videos, daily content is uploaded as zip files, and audio is exported from the SP404 mk2 as .wav files and ought to be compatible with just about anything that can play audio files.

Hopefully the videos themselves are somewhat entertaining, but there's plenty to sample off of if that interests you. Plus, some of the videos have *unreleased* super secret content (i.e. recording mistakes, sounds that didn't make the cut, having too much fun playing a synth but no more room to record to pads for the day, etc...).

Anyways, I hope everybody has a happy holiday, regardless of what you celebrate. Make music, share music, and just be an awesome person!

Here's the playlist where everything will be dropping so you don't have to weed through my channel:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLreK ... -jSA_vZEpd

Happy New Year everybody!

Version 0.25 of the guide is uploaded
https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/01/05/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-25/

Let’s see, where to start? I got my first donation of $5 over at buymeacoffee.com, super cool, and big thanks. I know I keep telling you all it’s not necessary (it isn’t), and I keep doing all of this work for free, but I also want to say it is greatly appreciated. It’s going into my future gear purchase fund when I find the next device I want to dig into. I suspect I know what it will be, but well, let’s wait and see.

I’ve also just hit the ability to monetize on YouTube (yeah… or boooo), and I’ve just been playing with a few of the new videos to see about the hopefully minor popup advertisements. I’m really trying to keep these videos short and I don’t want to put people through an endless stream of advertisements. Besides, so far, I’ve only managed to make $0.27, so it’s not like the income would have any impact on my life, and I’m not suddenly able to make a career out of informational videos. Either way though, feel free to reach out to me if you’ve got any opinions on the advertisement stuff, I’d like to hear all of your thoughts out there.

I donated all of my old AM/FM radio gear, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes, players, and all that. I needed some space back and boy was that stuff all taking up a lot of room. Anyways, sent it off for a good cause and hopefully it will help get some money back into the local community.

What else? I’ve been toying with a few logo ideas, and I figured I’d try out a test run on this version of the guide. I know, it’s not the SP404 mk2 that we’ve all come to know and love, but that’s Roland branding, and I wanted to try something different out. I’ve got a few color versions I’ve been playing with as well, if something really sits well with me maybe I’ll try and get some merchandise together for a T-Shirt or something… I don’t know yet. For now, or maybe permanently, the guide will stick to black and white… and the logo seems to work alright.

As for the guide updates, it’s pretty much at the moment a “fix it up” kind of release. I tried to kill some more of the ??? stuff that I had left in there, and I took notes on sections I actually need to get back to for answering, because there’s a fair amount I had stubbed out, and never got around to adding still.

Then, there’s all the YouTube videos. I’m on the fence if I should document them in the guide, leave the guide and videos separate, or start drawing the two together. Where my head is at is that there’s a lot of interesting workflows that I’ve documented in the videos that would make a lot of sense in the guide, and there’s plenty in the guide that I could do videos on. Typing that up though, I’m not sure I want them that tightly fused together or not. I’ll think on it some more.

Anyways, thanks everybody for your support, it’s greatly appreciated whether it is dropping by discord to say hi, commenting on videos, emailing me, or dropping a few bucks as a donation, it’s all good to me.

Thx. I sold all my SP I had them all and my 404SX had no reverse polarity protection (BAD ROLAND, BAD!!!) and have been drooling over this new one for awhile. I may have to dust off the odd ball 505 I still have... or drop some coin on the mkii.

Thx for your efforts!

Happy to help, and I'm still enjoying the mk2... although that doesn't necessarily mean anything

Gotta get out my older SPs and jam out with them again myself!