first time user, first time member so i'm a noob. been wanting to get an SP404SX for years and it's starting to discourage me from getting one.

my problem is: in the manual, it says that for me to set up a pattern sequence that i hit 'pattern select' and all of my wav files that i put on the pads will light up for me to set up a pattern. when i do this, nothing lights up. am i doing this whole process wrong? it took me a while to just find drum kit samples online and now i'm starting to assume this sp is broken (or it could just be me, i don't know). this is starting to get pretty frustrating

when you hit pattern select, the 404 changes modes so its in pattern mode so if no pads are lit up, you have no patterns. Hit record and set the quantize and length and which pad you wanna record a pattern to, then i think when you hit record again, your in the "pad mode" where you play your pads as the pattern records. Im sure the manual has this info step by step, might be wrong tho. Its fairly easy tho.

when i hit record, it records audio for some reason. is this supposed to happen?

its recording your pad hits, not the actual audio. When you play a pattern, you will notice that that your pads are being played.

alright. i just recorded a bunch of samples onto my SP 404SX straight to my SD card. and i just wanted to load a few samples into the sound banks. when i took it out from my computer to my SP, all of my recorded samples i did previous on both A and B sound banks were lost. this is the 2nd this has happened to me, is there someone out there know why this is happening?

there have been a lot of new posts recently with the same issues. your real problem is that you're getting samples off the internet instead of going to the thrift stores and getting records. not saying there's only one way to do things but its like the newer generation isn't even aware of the connection between records and hip-hop. just one guy's opinion of course people can disagree with it

even if you must get samples of the internet, plug your laptop into the sp's input, sample!! use the headphone out on your laptop if you have too. christmas will be with us in no time, get a turntable

for real, the main thing people say they sweat is the start and end points and how something loops, but you absolutely can get down with the mark button and the fine tuning to accomplish what you need, if you really need to have subtle decay and all sorts of prep stuff for your loops and chops before you put it in the machine then maybe the 404 isn't the machine for you

i have a bunch of records that i just bought and one's that i borrowed/stole from my great grandmother. all i was trying to do was put in a bass drum sound and a snare drum wave file from the wav converter program for the sp and when i was done and put in my SD card back into my SP, all the ones i recorded were gone mysteriously and the wav files i just put on the card were still there. this is the 2nd time this has happened. as far as the mark button, i got that part down...i think. i still don't know how to use the trim aspect with the knobs yet but i'm still trying to figure the SP out. also for some reason when i make a pattern, the BPM changed....why is that? i.e: i set it to 80 BPM then i shut off my SP for the night. i just turned it on and the BPM changed to 100+, i don't know why this happened.

i forgot, how do you set the samples to certain BPM's? like if a sample i recorded was at 124 BPM and i wanted it to be at 80, how would i do that?

You can hit the time/bpm button for the sample you want to change and use the knobs to manually change it. It uses some sort of dodgy timestretching to do it though and nearly always sounds like ass unless its only a few bpms up or down. You can use the pitch effect to and them resample if you need too though but this also has the same limitations.

Oh, and the bpms of your patterns always reset when the machine is shut down. annoying but nothing you can do about it. Check out the resample method of sequencing. loads of guys on here use it and get great results, i've only used the sequencer for a few tunes. We never really got on.

thanks for the help everyone. i've been using the SP for a few months now. if you want to check out what i've made over the past few months, check out my soundcloud.

http://soundcloud.com/tape-mastah

any criticism, tips, tricks is definitely appreciated.