404 deep thoughts

[Les Braun]

You can do anything with the 404 except pitch shifting and heavy basses. End of discussion.

heavy basses? fool wait till you hear our project i made one called trunk bunker. it fucking rips on the bass

Are you recording to cassette?

[dman5000]

correction, $1800 is way outta my range

thats how i feel too.. but i did think about it. almost got the 8k but i dont know

[ColeRockLee]

Regarding OP:

Anyone mentioned the Akai XR20? Has 12 pads just like the 404 (but way better ans velocity sensitive), tight 3 track sequencer, some great bread and butter sounds too. Just midi em up.

[Lezlie]

Regarding OP:

Anyone mentioned the Akai XR20? Has 12 pads just like the 404 (but way better ans velocity sensitive), tight 3 track sequencer, some great bread and butter sounds too. Just midi em up.

Hmm, wasn't aware of that one. Certainly looks like a capable machine, if its sequencing is decent, it would probably be a great little box for controlling the SP's. Builtin sounds that can probably be of some use, and runs on batteries, too! Great tip

[Lezlie]

I did a read up on the Akai, and it seems the sound sets are aimed squarely at hip hop and r'n'b. If you'd like more varied sounds, the Alesis SR18 is supposed to be more or less the exact same machine, but with different and more varied sounds:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan09/a ... issr18.htm

[ColeRockLee]

Yeah looks like the XR20 and SR18 are pretty much the same. I really like the sequencer on my XR20 and plan to put it to use with whatever SP I pick up next (hopefully a 303 or 505). If your a stickler for better pads I'd go with the XR20 the SR18's pads look a little small.

[Lezlie]

Yeah, the pads on the Akai do seem better than those on the Alesis. How do you find the sounds in the Akai? Useful outside hip hop/r'n'b production?
I' mainly a techno/breaks man myself.

[tedstryka]

does the xr20 have any onboard effects for tweaking drums? and it can't sample right?

the 404 yamaha rs 7000 and akai xr20 might make a dope combo...

[tedstryka]

just checked ou the xr20 on youtube etc and i dont know, seems like the 404 kinda blows it out of the water...xr20 has a few effects, but for the most part youre stuck with the preset sounds, and no sampler...the sequencer may be better than 404's but xr20 just doesn't half nearly as much going for it as the 404 does...if you already own the 404, xr20 seems a bit pointless imo

turns out the more i look elsewhere, the more i appreciate the features and versatility of the 404...great machine. period.

[megamaeng]

I tried taking a look at the xr20 manual but I was hoping someone who uses it could help. I'm interested in using the xr20 as a sequencer for my two sp303's. I'm also interested in the fact that it has bass and synth on board. When you play back a pattern, can you do track mutes via pads like you can do on mpc's? Also, is there a way to record synth parts into the sequencer and not have it send midi out info but be able to record midi out info on other tracks to control my sp's?

[Dr Van Nostrand]

i would assume for track mutes you would be able to mute one of the different sequencer tracks and it would turn off all the pads sequenced within that track, so you would do all the drums you wanna drop on one track and then be able to mute those ones, gotta think ahead when doing it, i'm wondering if it would be able to turn a pad off mid playback via midi though as soon as a track is muted, or if that pad has to play out to the end and then it just won't send the signal for any more pads to play until you unmute it

[ColeRockLee]

It's only a drum machine, no sampling capability at all. You do have reverb and EQ+Compression on sends. I'm pretty sure you adjust the fx send for each pad but the actual fx preset is assigned to the whole kit. You can also change the pitch for each pad (and transpose the whole kit), adjust filter level (lowpass no resonance), volume, decay (plus release and attack for the synth track sounds), panning, mute group, and assign each pad to one of the aux outputs.

Doc Nos pretty much got it right about the mutes. Hold down the [MUTE] button and press the button for the track you wanna mute (drums, one-shots, synth).

You can assign each track it's own MIDI channel and you switch MIDI input off/on for each track.

You can do other genres with the sounds in it but it's obvious that it's hip-hop focused.

There's a song mode where you can chain patterns into a song, pattern play mode which is pretty much like the pattern play mode on the 404. Yes it would be great to control your 303's.

I really like it because it's portable, pretty sturdily built, and is fun to play. I'm entertaining the the idea of getting a USB/MIDI interface so I can use it to sequence VSTi's.

[Lazyfoot23]

has anyone tried writing custom software to the 404 firmware? like a combination of buttons that you could press that copies? i dno...if anyone is smart enough would be cool!

That would be cool, I just do computer and duplicate.

COMPUTERS wrote:
You can do anything with the 404 except pitch shifting and heavy basses. End of discussion.

I always jam out with my Bass to my SP, The F/X are cool. But I see what your saying trying to get the lo of lows is hard

dman50004. ive achieved much better results with my 404 when its been midi clocked to something else and ive heard the same on here from others

I can use it via Pro-Tools, MIDI Sync to SP, The Notes are on the Grid easy to edit. Well as easy as pro-tools can make it, would rather have live 8, Logic, or MPC, although Pro-Tools event operations do carry the MPC Swing.

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kel wrote:
I agree with Just_Jeff on the MPC 1000. the sequencer is great, and chopping is extremely quick and accurate with the JJ OS. the 404 seems to me only to suck at quantizing when it's trying to handle alot of simultaneous pads. Also really wish i could skip ahead to other bars while recording a sequence like the MPC. I gave up on 404 sequencing and just resampled instead for a while cuz I cannot stand to wait for the bars to loop around if i need to correct one little mistake.

Yes, the ultimate hardware combo MPC and SP at least that is what MF said,

[7th CITY]

ok now i have ?'s. so the xr20...controlling my 404sx, could i make it so one track/midi channel is mono-triggering my sp? and make one track/midi channel doing one shots for drums on my sp? how many tracks/midi channels can even work on my sp? lol....yeah i am good when it comes to computer midi, but i am LD when it comes to hardware for some reason. haha...

about a year ago i almost got a yamaha qy70 to sequence the 303 i had. from what i read it could only do like one midi channel for the 303 and two for the 404. (i don't even know how many for the SX) but the main thing i was wanting it for was.....it had a function for Gate playback. were you could control how long the samples played in beats. 1/4, 1/2, 1/8, 1/16...(mono-triggering, kinda) and it had a swing....
so with that said, can the xr20 do that? or better? because if it could, it would be a great lil set up! let me know. i could read read read about it, but i am tired...help sp fam! plus i need to go make a beat....i need to have "SX" with my 404! hahahah...i made funny! jk. cheesy. thanks y'all! one

[megamaeng]

I'm pretty excited about the xr20. With my 2 303's I don't need any sampling capabilities. Coming from no track mutes to 3 tracks, that's plenty. I'm debating between this and something like the micro br because I love sequencing in straight audio because i don't have to worry about saving samples and backing up my 303 Smart media card. I never was successful sequencing with midi. arggghhhh!!!!!! I'm not really interested in the yamaha qy series because those chicklet pads are a joke.