some advice with this would be much appreciated....i will probably be able to work most of it out when get the machine, so i dont need detailed instructions just yet, i just need to know that its all possible and will work ok live.
i'm watching a couple of sp-404s on ebay...(whats a good second hand price these days?) planning to get one and trigger samples (a few 2 octave sets of 1 sound) via midi keyboard.. by sampling from pc a couple of octaves of m-tron flute samples, and same again for eastweat violins, just softsnyths i have on pc, and use in our band when playing live, as well as some 1 pad big hand claps, foot stomps etc. so we dont have to cart a laptop and soundcard to gigs...
sp-404 doesnt have usb...how much hassle is it to import via card. do i just need to get a usb card reader for my pc (do they exist/best option) and drag drop the files on to card, is there a file naming tip that will automatically assign them to the correct pad/midi synth key. and how much hassle is it assigning the notes to the correct keys/pads. will i have to do this at EVERY gig/rehearsal.....cheers


and, can i use more than 1 1gb mem card....so i could have the sounds for four songs on 1 card, filling it up, then switch mid gig and have the rest on another?

and, can i set it so the samples will stop when the midi key is released? i dont want all the samples/notes to bleed over each other......
apologies for such lengthy enquiries...

yep, it's that easy
you will only need to do it once (unlike MPCs where I think you have to assign samples to pads everytime you turn it on)
the files are imported alphabetically, so naming them like A_01, A_02 etc will ensure which Bank and Pad they end up on (as long as there's nothing already on that pad)

your samples won't end when the MIDI key is lifted unless you have set that sample to Gate


i use a 2 gig card, but remember you are limited by the number of Pads the 404 has as well as the capacity of the card. having a few cards and swapping mid-set shouldn't be an issue because the 404 has an almost immediate load-up time and your samples play straight off the card

it's a great live tool, you should enjoy it

cheers. thats great, hopefully it will save us a small fortune (unneccessary laptop purchase) and the hassle of lugging easily broken hradware around...

if i set the samples to gate, will that then be stored when turn machine off or will we need to go through and select gate on every sample every time we turn it on/want to trigger them via the midi controller, which could prove a little irritating for our keyboard player.....

also, when you say
'remember you are limited by the number of Pads the 404 has as well as the capacity of the card'

we'll still have all the sounds of ALL banks/pads etc at our disposal on the midi keyboard yes? not just 12 at a time? we'll be doing sets of 24 note samples, 2 octaves of 1 sound, so will need to access those 24 at a time at the very least to play the notes we'll need during a riff etc....i read somewhere that if we were using a 2 octave ontroller we could just go up through the octaves on the controller and that would access all the sounds on the card/internal sp-404....

a sample remembers if it is set to Gate or not, no need to re-assign it everytime you turn the box on

the 404's pad banks are split between two MIDI channels - this shouldn't be a problem 'cos most MIDI controllers will let you split the keyboard into different regions for each channel

Yo..

The 404 remembers stuff by itself, so you just have to set the samples to gate, and they will be like that next time you turn it on.

I don't really know what a good 2nd hand price is for one though.

not entirely sure what that means, but our keyboard player's a little more savvy with midi than i, as long as we'll be able to access all the sounds on card, and not just one bank, 12 samples, at a time, and have 2 octaves (24 samples) of samples accessible by the trigger keyboard thats cool...

cheers

good to know the gate etc is stored in memory, thanks

yep, all easily done. plus, you'll have velocity sensitivity using a keyboard to trigger as well (overcoming the 404's lack of this)

the polyphony of the 404 is 6 stereo samples (might be an issue if you're playing chords over one another) and 12 mono samples

good luck on ebay

i think for the sake of live we'll mostly just use the highest quality mono samples it will take then, and then revert to using the pc/softsynths if we want to record them for demos etc in better quality...
cheers for the knowledge drewzel, all much appreciated. looking forward to getting it and messing around with some other stuff as well....

One thing to remember is that when you have a sample set to Gate on the 404, you won't have a natural release like you would with a synth/vst..... the 404 will cut the sample straight off. An easy way to get around this is to use the 404's reverbs or delays to simulate a this release. it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get the right result though.

cheers, shouldnt be too noticeable with a little reverb or delay as you mentioned, might give it an interesting tape- cut/splice effect sound to some of them anyway....