hey guys. i'm still considering buying a 404sx. I have two questions/needs before I pull the trigger:

-can you only trigger samples as one-shots? or are they handled as on/off? say i have an 8 bar drum loop. once the sample pad is pressed, does it automatically play the whole sample, or can i keep the sample pad pressed for four bars then, upon releasing the pad, the sample would stop?

-*this one is a biggie*- can you really not control panning per sample?!

thanks!

one shots - yes, you can.

panning: no on-board pan control (other than an mfx that throws it ear-to-ear). best bet is to record in, in stereo, w/ the sound panned as you want it.

thanks fauna. actually, i'm more interested in being able to use sample/loops as on/off instead of one-shots. can it do that?

crazy that you can't pan per sample. seems so basic.

thanks again!

he meant that your question pertaining to one shots is a yes, you absolutely can have the pad on gate mode, which only pays while you hold it down, or you can have loop on and press it once to turn it on, then you press it again to turn it off, with single shot evertime you press it it will just play from the beginning of the sample......

you can also resample the break or whatever it is though so that you have one pad with it a full 8 bars, and then another that has only the first 4 from that, or maybe another that starts on the snare hit of the second bar and plays out from there, and another that you had only play the first 2 beats so that it dropped out, and then you can come back in on the snare of the second bar and keep it playin, if that example makes sense, you can do alot with this box, don't sweat these limitations until you've gotten some time to play with it

i was thinking about using loop in the pattern sequencer though after fuckin around with my sequencer in Max/MSP though, because with that i have to turn sounds on and off depending how long i want them to play, and you could do the same thing with loop on and not worry about how long you held down a gated pad, just turn it off when you want it to be off, and if you want it to play longer in a different pattern, no resample necessary, just sequence in the off switch later on.....bringing back the tips section whaaat

I guess the feature you're looking for is "mute group". There's a very simple trick for this: use the pattern sequencer, record each loop as a pattern and there you go.

If you have your samples set to Loop, you just have to press the pad of the one that's playing at the same time as you press the pad of the one you want to play next.

Other than sampling "mono in stereo" like fauna said, you could use the pan effect with a really low rate and sample/resample the panned sound.

If you really need mute groups go for the SP-606 (if you want to stay within the SP realm, that is). The SPD-S can pan and has mute groups, but it's a different kind of animal. From what I recall the MicroSampler has both features.

[...or just what Dr Van Nostrand said - didn't see it when I was writing]

great, thanks alot for the info ya'll! much appreciated.

okay, so just to double check, when recording patterns, the sequencer can record gate on/offs and save them as part of the pattern?

Yes, but gate doesn't work as an on/off switch. If you set a sample to loop, you can do that switching, but honestly I think it's probably easier to use gate (that means you'll have to continually press a pad for as long as you want it to go on).

Make sure to set the correct pattern length in the sequencer.

thanks PHeMoX!

I used to pan stuff using the pan effect, as mentioned above... works!