so ive always just mixed down stuff in the box or whatever you want to call it. but when i finally heard my shit on a car stereo things were uh..... not exactly ideal in terms of sound levels. thinking bout just tracking out into a daw from now on.

whats your method of mixing down when making beats on the 404?

I make everything on monitors I trust/know so mixing down on the SP is fine with me.

http://soundcloud.com/frmt/movieexpo
^All done entirely in SP404.

thats really nice man^^

I get creative on the 404, making beats and doing all my sample and chop work in it. I'll generally make around a dozen 1 bar patterns that I can switch between.

Then when I'm ready, I'll midi the 404 with ableton and record chunks into it. Sometimes I may record just the beat it and then record the sample in separate so I can do some extra arranging inside ableton. I like working like this as I can record 4 bars say with one effect on and then put a different effect on and record another 2 bars next to it etc. I then send everything back out of ableton and into the 404 to apply effects like the looper effect and stuff

I don't do much mixing, just balancing and a bit EQ really.

You have to be really careful with bass, it's easy to get carried away!

I usually track out and mix inside my computer but I've also mixed and mastered on the SP.
With regards to the translation of the mix from your home setup to your car stereo, that is more of an issue with having a good reference to go off of when mixing instead of what actual platform you mix on. When mixing your track, in software or on an SP, continually switch back and forth between your track and a commercial track that has the sound you're going after. By doing this you'll be able to notice obvious differences between your mix and the pro one and then you can better see where you need to make your adjustments, coming to realizations like "Oh, it sounds like my bass is a lot louder on my track" etc... With this starting point to go off of, your mixes will translate better right away because you'll know what good sounds like on your setup.

Also would like to say that I really like this track. Nice work.

i always do a final eq in my pc, plus compression and some other things here and there. there are certain frequencies you can't pinpoint on an sp404