i find that when i use the pattern sequencer, whenever the pattern starts over again (i.e. loops) there is a slight delay that makes it sound off beat, example: i program a pattern (drumbeat and samples), press play, the pattern plays through and when it starts over there is an obvious yet very short pause, its a matter of milliseconds but its enough to make the pattern sound terrible when it loops, also, the same thing occurs when transitioning between two patterns, its as if it is a result of the fact that the beginning of the pattern has a slight delay between when the pattern starts recording and when i strike the sample. i typically use a 4 bar pattern length and it just sounds awful and totally ruins my patterns so an idea i had would be just to use a longer pattern length so as to eliminate the need to loop the pattern, but as i said i get the same delay thing when transitioning from pattern to pattern, i tried quantizing and it didnt seem to help, i searched the forum for any similar problems and came up emptyhanded. PLEASE HELP thanks

well, nobody seemed to have an answer for my problem but i found one on my own and it was not easy... i have never used software before, but through my own research i came to the conclusion that perhaps audacity would help solve my problem, so i got audacity and recorded each individual pattern onto it, then i painstakingly used audacity's sound editor to trim out the brief milliseconds of silence that were destroying my life, and then copy and pasted the patterns together as i would have arranged them with the sp, then sampled the entire song back onto the sp so i can use the bpm looper and other fx to make it exactly to my liking. it took almost three hours to make it happen but i did it... if anyone else has this problem thats the best way i could come up with to fix it.

so you're not trimming your samples' start points tight enough? while fine tuning with the start knob, have your sample in gate mode and keep tapping it and letting go quickly so you're only hearing the attack of the sample. turn the knob to the right until there's no more gap before the attack. now play a couple samples you truncated this way--if one is still herky jerky you need to truncate that one tighter. i was having a lot of timing issues until i figured this out and started chopping things much tighter

yeah poor sample trimming will ruin stuff, start/end and mark are your best friends

tried trimming... didnt work, i guess ill have to stick with audacity to get what i want, i guess im ok with that

could be that you are using a slow card as well...

I did notice something odd on the 404sx,heard it using the SUB pad to do quick pattern changes...

Start pattern 1...now hold down sub, start pattern 2 (KEEP holding sub) should be immediate...now switch back to 1 while holding sub. There is a slight delay.

If you start pattern 1, hold sub, start 2 RELEASE sub, then hold it again and go to pattern 1 the delay is not there. So basically each time you use sub you must release and re-hold. I did not realize this before.