so ive been reading about 12 bit drum samples like that are on sp1200 and akai s900 and turns out the kawaii r50 which i have, also is a 12 bit drum machine...
my question is... if i resample or even sample them into my sp 404, will it lose this 12 bit sound - am i better off running it straight to my recording computer?

mmm, i guess i totally don't know, but once you sample it into the 404 its gonna be 16 bit, but will that ruin the crunchy 12 bit drums?? i don't think so, cause most albums you hear that had 12 bit drums on it are now 16 bit 44.1khz albums, i thnk the fact that they were orignally 12 bit is worth somethin, although maybe not as much as runnin it through a 1200 for the whole beat and havin the end product being recorded out from 12bits

the sp404 is very accurate at playing back what was sampled in. I wouldnt worry about the 404 messing with the sound.

yea 404 samples will sound exactly the same as whatever your sampling.

a cool lofi trick is sample a drum in LOFI put some eq on it resample in hifi.

this gives a sudo 12 bit sound.

The SP404 won't make 16bit out of a 12bit signal, it will simply make the sound a different format, but it doesn't add sound info.

Recording a 32bit sound into the SP404 will change it into less accurate 16bit sound, but generally speaking that would still be a fine quality as it's CD quality.

I wouldn't worry about 12bit or 16bit too much, the less bits the crunchier, but anything under 8bit is easily too much if other parts of your beat are relatively clean.

awesome thanks for the responses i was working on some stuff with the machines the other night ill post it up when its one.
id recommend this drum machine kawaii r50 to anyone out there looking for 12 bit drums , its a pretty inexpensive machine