trying to decide on a new piece of gear and i'm stuck between an ipad, microsampler or sp 555. already have a 404 and 505.

thoughts? at the moment i'm leaning toward ipad...those beat apps look crazy

microsampler

I'd go microsampler.. or maaaybe ipad

depends what you wanna do really.

i guess i'm just looking for a new piece of equipment that would play well with the 404, and has some some tricks up it's sleeves...

@ kel
why the microsampler?

If I had one, I'd hook the ins/outs together between the two and sample back and forth. It looks like you can chop with the micro in alot of different ways, including on the fly by holding and releasing the piano keys. I'm guessing the thing has real-style pitch, and you could sample it back into the sp, maybe make your own bass/synth lines from one-note samples and play your melodies back as a single pad. same with drum patterns. It's just about the ugliest peice of gear I've ever seen but check out this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5k8YP-0 ... 2A5917E532

The scaling of a sample on the ms-1(microsampler) is not as good as I was expecting but it is good for making interesting (though not always so convincing) sounds. I have an app that is better at that but I never use it. Actually I bought many music apps for my iPod (2g, it's getting outdated). But I rarely use them, the iPod is still just a "computer" or at least has that cold feel when trying to make music.

What I like is to throw samples in the 404, chop them up there, then make patterns. After that I use the bpm sensing and record my loops to the ms-1. Finally, I apply effects and send back to the 404 with it's bpm function. I end up with well synced loops that have been saturated in effects. But if you have two samplers already, why are getting another? I would get a mopho kb or a slim phatty plus some cheap controller if I had the means. Just saying.

I concur, unless you plan to sell the 505 for the 555, there's no real reason to have a 404/505 & 555. The Microsampler, sorry, just screams toy to me. It's the fugliest of the Korg Microline, that's for sure. At least you'd get a decent sequencer if you got a EMX/ESX Electribe instead. (And they got for about the cost of a MSampler)

Now if you need a synth, then you've got plenty of choices for new/used, and it will fit your budget. Not all of them have a sequencer, so if you need one, do your homework on the right synth for your needs.

Sampletrak!

yeah, i was super-excited about the MS but after watching the vid again i'm not so sure how much I'd want it. It would be fun to collect all the SPs, you already have 3. But don't think you'd necessarily need them. i agree w/ a.D., never used a sampletrak but all i care about is real pitch... the 404 can do the rest.

The st's got swing too- you can do your drum patterns in it,then sample them into the 404, and drop them in the sequencer...or simply start laying shit over them w/resample if you do resample style. That new joint I put up yesterday(and all my old sample track shit) has way more/better swing than almost any 404 beat I've done. The pitch is sooo dope too,along with the scaling feature. It could also be good for using just the compression as well-it sounds a lot less harsh than the 404-if you have a completed beat on the 404,you could just run it through the st. The reverb is much better too for snares,etc, imo.Personally think this is the ideal companion for most sp's,when it comes to another inexpensive sampler/sequencer..they're getting harder and harder to come by though- I think theres only 1 on ebay right now,and they're asking 300!Crazy,way too much. Then again,when they're becoming harder and harder to find,people are gonna start to be willing to pay more for them. I am completely confused as to why zoom hasn't started making these again-they've become a really successful company since the st came out in 99...

I have the sampletrak and an ipad. Used to own a korg esx too. I did not really enjoy the korg esx sequencer. You only really get 3 midi channels to mess around on. 1 midi channel is only 10 parts (the drum section and stretch parts) The other 2 are the synth parts which only work in mono poly (meaning you can only sequence one sound at a time).

The sampletrak is dope and is still my favorite machine to work on. I just try not to use it a lot because I don't want to break it and then be out a sampletrak Real pitch and 18bit grime FTW!

The ipad is freaking dope. I do not see it as a computer since only one app is open at a time. It's not like you can browse the web, check email, chat all while making a beat. One app at a time really gives it the feel of a hardware machine. Also, with the camera connection kit and usb hub I can hook up my 500gb hard drive, mem card reader, Korg Nanokey and a Behringer audio interface all at the same time. It has been well worth the money for me. And you gotta love the 10hr battery life!

I guess the secret is out when it comes to budget samplers that aren't sp's or mpc's. (The only others I can think of are the Yamaha Su10, 200, 700/RS7000). I never knew the Zoom ST224 had swing. I would have picked one up if I knew that when they were going for cheap. I think most gear is like a vintage wine, takes ages for people to appreciate what it can do over what it can't. Then it becomes supply and demand and people try to buy them and wait until the prices go up so they can sell them high. I concur, Zoom needs to make another budget sampler, but they've got to compete with the sp404/555 feature wise at the very least, and try to cover as much ground as a mpc500/1000 does. That's just the way things are at the moment. Rackmount samplers are a dead market, but people want mpc's/sp's. Computers sort of ruined a few markets, but then again, they made some things better for it. Another reason vintage gear just does what it does so well without trying to compare to the latest laptop/daw.

man on some real shit- besides maybe the amount of pads the st has- imo it exceeds the 404 and most other sp's in almost every cattegory. As mentioned it's got the swing,coppying patterns takes like litterally 10 seconds,has the same basic sequencer,better pad response,the real pitch function along w/ the option of scaling a single note into 12 notes,a lot of the effects are better...3 different sample modes-2 minutes of internal sample time-- It also has a much more effecient and quicker way of moving through a sample and figuring out where you wanna chop it-only thing lacking in that area is it can sometimes be tedious to get your start/end points completely prescise.But if a new one had 12 or 16 pads, it would be more than competeing with sp's- it would be better than pretty much all of them.It was 2000 when I discovered it,I was living on a shoestring budget but really wanted to get back into beatmaking--wanted an asr or an mpc,but couldn't afford it at all- I started doing mad google searches, coming up with all the random groove boxes that were out at the time...then I came across the zoom-I had never heard of zoom,and thought the thing looked like a joke-but then I read all the features it had,and it was only like 2 hundred some bucks brand new!Apparently they were mainly aimed at bedroom dance music producers, I felt like I had made the illest hip hop discovery of all time,lol-At the time I was like shit, this is like having an mpc for a couple hundred bucks..kinda like how sp's are looked at now.And the sp-202 came out around the same time-they were about the same price, but you can do SO much more shit w the sampletrak than a 202, plus get the same kind of gritty sound.Shit, I think I forgot what got me started typing this in the first place,lol-other than how dope it is.....oh yea- guess what I'm saying is that it definitely does compete w the 404-and beats it hands down in a lot of areas- I know nothing about mpc 500/1000 features for the most part. And I love the shit out of my 404--just saying... they really need to revive this machine--maybe it's some kind of marketing strategy,and they're aware of the buzz it's building now or some dumb shit...seems like this is something they would have to do at some point.

^ word.

thanks everybody for the input...tryin to get my hands on a sampletrak as i write...i feel like a royal shit head because i HAD a sampletrak yeeeears ago, and just didnt invest enough time with it...i think i sold it for like $50...jesus

@ a.d.

you get that verse i pm'd? just wanna make sure i'm working this shit right

Sorry man, I haven't been on here for about a week- I'm headed to my inbox in a second.......11