so, im messin with those mellotron samples... and when I play them along with other stuff I had sequenced my timing goes all out of wak... it even freezes up on a note for a few seconds. im using maybe about 8 notes of polyphony max, I turned the digital proccess level down, I tried resampling the samples to mono... I dont see what could be going wrong here. I noticed this happen b4 when I used alot of samples at once. but not nearly as bad as this. This started happening when I hooked my 404 up via midi to my midisport uno and tried to sync it up in live for recording (wich failed) ever since then its seemed like the 404s internal clock is off when I play certain samples. very wierd...ne one else experience this ? Oh.. its always samples off the CF card also (at least I think so) it doesnt seem to happen with external sounds. Also, I had a a CF card that stop working suddenly after I put it into my computer to load the mellotron samples.. my computer reads it fine but the 404 wont. Could the problem maybe be the CF port ? Thanks in advance for ne help

You could try to turn off the internal clock and only use the external clock form the midisport.

well, I want to sequence in my 404. This isint happening while the midisport is connected. It just started hapening after that...not real sure it has ne thing to do with it. Could be coincidence.

Maybe the cf card is giving trouble? Too slow for the job or slowing down because some of it's flash memory is failing - the controller chip in the card will do it's best to get the data in and out of the flash correctly, but it'll take longer when there are errors in the memory itself. 404 is supposed to ignore pattern and sample bpm when midi clock is coming in, so probably not a clock problem unless the 404 has a bug - do you have the latest "firmware" on the 404? Check the version. Last I looked only the Roland US site had the latest version.

I don't believe cf cards like being hot-plugged, all those contacts may not make or break at the same time. Roland say you shouldn't change the 404 card while it's switched on. I've had trouble with cf cards generally on pc's with card readers that are permanently attached to pc either internally or by the usb. The most reliable cf reader I have is a single cheap adapter with just the cf socket at one end and a usb plug at the other. I change the card while the usb end is unplugged so the card itself is never hot-plugged.

hmm...that seems like it could be my problem. Im gonna experiment with this. Thanks !

I know this is a very old topic - Try defragmenting the CF card and moving all .bin backup files to the end of the drive. This applies to SD cards as well.