dust them off in the arena bro!!! gotta get these entries in:)

I did what I could in 10 minutes... probably shouldn't have used the 202... would have freed up more time to get a proper track together

No stress bro it’s good to see entries come in regardless:)

MK2 arrived yesterday..
firmware 2.0
It seems that MONO mode was dropped out completely?
Thus MK2 works always in STEREO mode?
Thus 16 voices polyphony limit?

In PITCH/SPEED, hold shift, if you pan hard left or hard right, it plays the sample in mono

Ah, OK. Now i get it.
The option is not available in sampling mode, but on sample editing. OK.

I finally got off my butt and confirmed once and for all that yes the mk2 is 32 note polyphony if you load mono samples. Blog post with links to videos and test project are included here for anybody who is interested

https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/03/08/sp404-mk2-polyphony/

This is the last update to the guide for firmware 2.01, I just wanted to try and close out on a few remaining things (mostly the midi section) before moving over to updating the guide for the recent firmware 3.0 release.

https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/03/13/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-26/

More updates coming, hopefully soon

Getting updates going for the 3.0 version of the guide finally... enjoy! https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/04/07/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-27/

Just a few simple tweaks for today based on some information I learned while running a few experiments (and answering questions) on my live stream at
https://youtube.com/live/LT8YEWt7zuY?feature=share

The plan was to figure out a few volume maximums/limits, especially for recording. I decided to use the USB-C audio interface connection from the SP404 mk2 to my computer since it is a digital connection and I assume (a bit grossly perhaps) that it should be consistent for us. From here, I spent some time recording test tones, tried to record as loud as I could through the line ins and mic/inst jack without clipping, and then did some comparative analysis through Ableton Live to see how these various recordings compared to normalized audio.

Overall, it looks like there is a hard -3db limit for recording in. You can compensate for this with normalization, but this headroom appears to be reserved for the FX bus, as you can record the input through the FX and get samples that peak at 0db. Interesting for sure, but I don’t have a straightforward way to ‘defeat’ the -3db limit through an FX chain that doesn’t color the sample in some way, or otherwise avoid normalization. Normalize, it’s fine, and not going to hurt anybody. That, or record someplace else, and then import the sample through the Application or an SD Card.

I got some questions, and actually spent possibly way too long on it, but dug a bit into sample length limits. It appears that the limit for samples is 185,506,412 bytes, and not the advertised 16 minutes. This really only matters in so much as you can load a mono sample that is up to 32 minutes. I suspect that this is an important tidbit for DJs who are looking to drop in mixes into their set that are longer than the 16 minute limit, but only just a guess. I am sure that there are uses for ambient folks out there as well, though this is an output only hack. Since the mk2 cannot record in mono only (it always records as stereo, even for mono input), you can only go so far with this. Regardless I hope it helps somebody.

I measured the impact of the System setting under GAIN for Attenuator, and unless my math is wrong, it looks like it is an easy to calculate -14db drop in audio volume if it is turned on. 99% of the time there is no reason to have this turned on, but I suppose if you have a device with no gain knob, it can get you by. Now it just makes me wish that there was a line in attenuator on the back though so I could get a bit of gain or drop the gain if I wanted to. It is what it is though.

As a result of all this tweaking I also added a section about maximizing recording volume int the Sampling Chapter. If you’re struggling with quiet samples, check it out and see if it can help you get a bit louder.

Thanks everyone for your support and have a wonderful day!

https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/07/15/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-28/

Dropped version 0.29 of the guide at https://neartao.wordpress.com/2023/12/11/roland-sp-404-mk2-guide-v0-29/

I'm also 11 days into my 2023 Sample Advent Calendar, plenty of free samples to mess with that you can get from the YouTube playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLreK50aqgX-ZUaGRkTrVmeb-jSA_vZEpd or hop onto my discord server and download them.

Happy Holidays and best wishes to everyone!

Guide version 0.33, covering Firmware 4.04 is at: https://neartao.wordpress.com/2024/05/2 ... ide-v0-33/

Hey everybody, it's been a long time coming to get the guide updated for firmware 4.04, but it is finally here! What's happened in between? Well I dropped the Quick Reference for the SP404 mk2, which was a lot of fun to make, but super time consuming. Plus within just a few days of releasing it, Roland dropped the 4.04 firmware update. I decided to invest the effort into updating the Quick Reference for 4.04 rather than the guide, and then I sunk time into getting some 4.04 videos out. It's been a crazy couple of months!

For those of you wondering what happened to 0.30, 0.31, & 0.32... well I've decided to post iterative updates to my Patreon for subscribers, but I'll continue to release the more completed output for free here on my blog. I may decide to go back and put these more minor updates up on the blog when I drop all the other content, but for now, I'm just getting v0.33 out there. For those with thoughts though, let me know.

You all have been playing with 4.04, and while the update isn't as huge in some ways as previous updates (at least to document), I do feel like there are a number of things that are more impactful for people to work in new ways. Looper is probably the standout feature in my mind from a "just get different cool stuff done", but it is kind of a bummer to lose Skipback. We cannot have everything though, and at least there's a choice to switch between the two.

I'm cool with Sound Generator. It doesn't feel quite as fully realized as I'd like it to, but for what it is, it certainly is fine. I can see a lot of people using it to generate some strange sounds by running the oscillators through different effects, all in the box. It's cool.

Beyond all that though, everybody, absolutely stay cool, keep making music, and don't forget to have fun!

I have uploaded version 0.36 of the guide. Go check it out at https://neartao.wordpress.com/2024/11/0 ... ide-v0-36/