Does the 404SX read samples directly from the SD card in realtime? As in, when you press a button, it goes to the SD card to play back the sample assigned to that button? And if you want new samples you could just switch out cards?

If this is true, I'm just wondering why other samplers seem to have such a small amount of volatile memory or have long load times. Something about the 404SX seems too good to be true. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Yes it does, just like the regular SP-404 does with CF cards - only difference is that with the SX there's no internal memory and you can make backups with 10 banks instead of A+B.

No need to switch cards as long as you make backups and your samples are short enough. People who have both should be able to tell how long it takes but I'm willing to bet the SX loads backups faster. You can however switch cards, but it takes about the same time to turn it off, take one out, put another one in and turn it on again.

Well, all of the SPs have limitations, but most of the time you'll find a workaround. In short: the sequencer is nothing fancy, there's no mute groups and there's no USB connection for transfering samples.

OK. Cool. I just bought one and am picking it up this afternoon.

My primary use will be loading it with drum loops and having them trigger from the sequencer in a Kurzweil PC3. So, I'm less concerned with effects and more concerned with having a large number of loops available for playback with no load time.

Of course, if there are cool effects on board I assume I can just resample them. It looks like the unit does not receive any MIDI CC data for the controls.

Sadly it doesn't, but the SP-606 does (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6657) - no one seems to care about that though.

Apparently the SPD-S does it too, despite being a bit less versatile in that department than the 606.

120 loops/samples available but you need to set up two MIDI channels.

Yes, you're missing just a tiny little thing:

SP-404(SX) - 12 voices, while stereo samples need 2 voices -> 6 stereo voices and a maximum of 12 places on the card where the SP-404(SX) has to read data at the same time

most modern "full-blown" samplers have 128 stereo voices or more. Do you understand now why they have to rely on high-speed RAM?