sp-303

thinking of buying one of these for something simple and fun to play around with.

second hand they seem to go for around $200 i think.

does anyone have one? how tricky is it to get the sample onto the thing?

is it worth spending a bit more and getting the 404 or the 555?

or is there something more fun that i should look at instead?

i had one for a while. i got it for free. it was fun and easy to use. i mostly used it for the effects, which are pretty badass. had my guitar running thru it usually. you cuold definitely find one used for cheaper than 200 bucks aswell. i also played around with an sp-505 for a couple months, which i also enjoyed. i actually used that thing to make hip hop beats. it was piss easy to use. beneboi uses a 505 too, and his music is quite awesome. i havent had much experience with the 404..

only downside to the SP303 is that the Smartmedia cards it takes are rarely used now and you'll probably have to ebay em. 404 has more banks, keys, more everything-- which isn't really necessary, I think the main reason you'd want one is to use more current SD cards, bigger capacitys and easier to find.

getting the samples onto the SP303 is real easy if you have a USB cardreader... you can just copy .WAVs or .AIFFs directly to the disk and the sampler will import them.

  ieafs said:

not velocity sensitive pads

well thats sucks

  ieafs said:

getting samples on via computer - you need a compact flash card reader, then you just copy the wav files over... and then you have to 'import' the samples onto the machine itself (they use some sort of flac-alike compressing thing for them).

how much does one of them cost? any ideas?

and does the 404 usually come with a tiny amount of memory forcing you to buy more?

I'm a silly guy, I like using the sp-303 because it's such a classic. (having been used by legends liked madlib and J. Dilla) Getting memory cards for it is pretty damn easy if you ask me, I just bought 3 on ebay for a total of like 20 bucks.

LOTS of fun :)

bought a SP-404 last week

PROS :

- great looping unit. instant weird ambiant-ish stuff with up to 12 unsynced loops running at the same time ...

- having an internal mic is cool

- sounds good, and great FXs

- battery powered

- 120 samples available with no loading. memory is cheap. up to 1 go of samples.

- vynil compressor is amazingly good. better than most plugins

CONS :

- the sequencer sucks and is annoying to use. worst sequencer i've ever used

- no pitch. just a pitchshifter

- only one FX at a time. though you can resample a pad (not a pattern)

- BPM isn't saved. FX settings aren't saved. no FX automation

- those key combinations are annoying

- only 3 knobs + volume

- needs a card reader

- midi in only

- cutoff stuck at around 300 hz

i love it as much as i hate it. but as someone said, it forces you to find new ways to make music. this is the main strength of this machine

running two patterns at the same time would be messy cause there's only 12 mono voices and 6 stereo voices ....

i think there's no pitch because the machine has no or very limited RAM.

samples are read live directly from the internal memory card or external compact flash card.

to have pitch the machine would need some RAM but then it would be more expensive and probably limited to 128 mo like a MPC... AND you would have to load samples

yesterday i discovered that you can plug an XLR mic to the mic input ! you just need the right adapter ... (xlr to stereo jack)

i thought you could only use battery powered mics ...

this is amazing ! sample anything, anywhere ...

good idea indeed

one of the many things the machine can technically do, but won't, just to piss you off