404sx vs 606: 1st thoughts

[Unfolding]

HOLY SHIT THE SX IS FAST TO USE.

It's so fast it needs italics.

[ellaguru]

Unfolding
what i miss about the 303 (wich i still have) and 404 vs my 606/505 is the live approach they have: reverse/mark/fx/loop modes just in front of you...it's a different approach...with 606/505 i tend to build tracks and then improvise with mute/unmute, roll,2fx,dbeam, mute group(606)...with 303/404 it's different...

[gis_sweden]

HOLY SHIT THE SX IS FAST TO USE.

It's so fast it needs italics.

One day i will upgrade to the SX...

[LO-]

the 606 is a workstation so you have to do a lot of work to get things done,
the 404 has an almost seamless workflow.

when I was working with a guitar player , producing an album with him,
I had the 404 on lock enough for it not to interfere with our process at all,
everything ran smooth,

the 606 on the other hand can almost never be used for this type of situation, as it will stall your workflow with all the starting and stopping,
however, resample pad + ext > pad is a good step in the right direction.

something the og lacks, not shure if the sx allows this.

[hseiken]

SX didn't add feature to sample with pad and external source. It's still limited to whatever models already had it.

[Unfolding]

@Ellaguru: Yeah having no menus & front-up buttons is great! No more time spent dialling shit in & forgetting what I was meant to be doing... Ha!

@Bonkers: Yeah they're totally different machines, and for good reason too. Glad their different too. The 'mark' button's gonna give me loads of inspiration as I get more solid on the SX but damn I've gotta practice finger drumming now to get all the little fiddly drum hits in the right places... The 606's (and 505's) sequencer microscope edit is something I came to rely on. The 606's still gonna remain the core of my set up because of the fine tuning. The SX is the 'just get it done!' machine.

@Hseiken: Not sure if it's like this on the OG, but the SX also loses polyphony on resampling. Only 4 stereo voices rather than the usual 6! Pity. The 606 doesn't have this issue.

[LO-]

my problem with the 606 is the clicky buttons hurt my fingers because i have to press them really hard to work, so I end up making drum kits all day.,
then i dont even use them, i end up using the drum kits in bank 1 and forget that i have 30 more banks of drums to use,

i gotta get a 404 again,, because i like the soft pads,

i end up fiddling with the synth untill it makes drum rythms, then i sample them. or do anything that doesnt requre hurting my fingers, so usually playing synth or drums untill i fall asleep.

[Unfolding]

Damn man, reads like your 606 needs a service! Never had that problem button with either of my 606s. Gotta say I prefer the 606's pads because they aren't 'clicky' as in they need to be depressed to play, the solid pads are heaps nicer.

[LO-]

i seem to have some 606 bad luck, because the first time I ordered one a few years ago, it never arrived, then I get one in july 2013 and its kinda busted,

I contacted the roland about this, and they said not to order any new boards for it, untill they test it with special testing program to see what could be broken, so it might not be the top panel board, but a glitch in the main board causing the click buttons to become in a way 'velocity sensitive' which makes
pretty much no sense but yea.

[hseiken]

@Hseiken: Not sure if it's like this on the OG, but the SX also loses polyphony on resampling. Only 4 stereo voices rather than the usual 6! Pity. The 606 doesn't have this issue.

SX is identical in resampling polyphony as OG: 2 stereo samples or 4 mono samples.

Very little was changed with the SX other than these observable things:

Some FX altered or tweaked
No internal memory
Change from CF to SD card
Additional pad 'house cleaning' operations like copy/move/etc.
Colder audio overall

Other than that, SX is still the same old beast as the 404. It's a tad faster than OG I think with things like startup (more bandwidth on the card data transfer?) and such, but I've seen and others have seen that sometimes the software has glitches where you need to reset the system, usually sampling glitches with lost time, etc. on longer samples or if you're getting close to filling up your SD card, you'll start to see and hear some glitches, sometimes you'll feel latency creep up, especially when resampling, etc.

I never got to use 606, but 505 was slow performing choperations, but I didn't feel like it was a big deal, just business as usual.