Akai S2000 - need some help

Ez guys I just bought and Akai S2000 and I'm wondering what is the best way of getting samples onto the RAM. I can buy an external floppy drive but I'd prefer to get a zip drive. Now my question is this if I get a usb zip drive and get a usb to scsi lead would that work for connecting it to the Akai? Seems that SCSI zip drives are hard to come by and quite expensive too!

dont mess with obsolete junk dude, it'll cost you too much and isnt worth it in the end

a mate of mine actually gave his 2800 away that he paid over a grand for back in the day

the person who has it now just uses it to prop up othet gear in his cluttered studio

dont mess with obsolete junk dude, it'll cost you too much and isnt worth it in the end

a mate of mine actually gave his 2800 away that he paid over a grand for back in the day

the person who has it now just uses it to prop up othet gear in his cluttered studio

i've considered this box before too. Let us know your experience with it once you get comfortable...

zip drives=click of death

don't go there

  On 4/21/2011 at 1:52 PM, Promo said:

Ez guys I just bought and Akai S2000 and I'm wondering what is the best way of getting samples onto the RAM. I can buy an external floppy drive but I'd prefer to get a zip drive. Now my question is this if I get a usb zip drive and get a usb to scsi lead would that work for connecting it to the Akai? Seems that SCSI zip drives are hard to come by and quite expensive too!

No, you can't use a usb adapter. I already answered this question for you in great depth in another thread. Why are you asking the same shit again? You need an scsi card. You can find them on ebay for less than $10. I got my SCSI zip drive with a bunch of disks for less than $30. They're not that expensive. But if you only have a laptop, you are probably shit out of luck. Here's the thread:

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/64071-akai-s2000-etc-gear-pros-question-for-you-guys/page__st__15

  On 4/21/2011 at 7:25 PM, yikes said:

zip drives=click of death

don't go there

i own three of the fuckers,

never had this problem.

if it didn't have a catchy name noone would care

  On 4/22/2011 at 5:57 AM, hahathhat said:

  On 4/21/2011 at 7:25 PM, yikes said:

zip drives=click of death

don't go there

 

i own three of the fuckers,

never had this problem.

 

if it didn't have a catchy name noone would care

Yeah, I haven't had a problem either. I've heard they have some reliability issues, but no worse than an scsi hard drive of equal age. Old shit breaks sometimes, but if it does, then you can just pick up another used one for like 20-30 bucks. Not really a big deal as long as you back shit up. If someone can't deal with these kinds of issues then they shouldn't be using old hardware in the first place. It goes along with the lifestyle.

I had an Akai S2000 once, and as MrSparkle666 says, in theory you can connect it to your PC with a SCSI cable, and then just zap the samples accross without using any media. I never had much luck with the Scsi on mine though.

But basically, don't bother. A standalone sampler like the S2000 is just an old computer in a heavy metal box. There's nothing analogue about it. You might as well just use your computer for the sample playback.

  On 4/22/2011 at 12:10 PM, zazen said:

I had an Akai S2000 once, and as MrSparkle666 says, in theory you can connect it to your PC with a SCSI cable, and then just zap the samples accross without using any media. I never had much luck with the Scsi on mine though.

 

But basically, don't bother. A standalone sampler like the S2000 is just an old computer in a heavy metal box. There's nothing analogue about it. You might as well just use your computer for the sample playback.

Something doesn't have to be analog to have a particular sound that you can't get with current computers. The converters have a slight papery crunch, the envelopes have a certain snap to them, the filter has a lofi way about it, and the down sampling and pitch shifting sounds like only an Akai sampler does. That being said, I didn't buy my s2000 for the mojo. I bought it for a hardware based live rig. It does have a little mojo, but it doesn't have near enough that I would use it just for that purpose. If someone wants mojo, there are a lot of other samplers that would be 10x better for that. But you can't say that the s2000 is the same as a sample player on a computer. It's somewhat sonically different, and very different experience using it.

Okay guys I've managed to get hold of a free external CD rom drive which is SCSI. The only problem I have now is getting the cable to fit or an adapter for it. Does anyone know what the actual type of SCSI socket is at the back ... is male or female? I feel I'm pretty close to getting it to work!

there's something to be said for the joy of getting shit like this to work !

  On 4/23/2011 at 1:23 AM, Promo said:

Okay guys I've managed to get hold of a free external CD rom drive which is SCSI. The only problem I have now is getting the cable to fit or an adapter for it. Does anyone know what the actual type of SCSI socket is at the back ... is male or female? I feel I'm pretty close to getting it to work!

You need a male DB25 connector. (the back of the s2000 is female db25)

  On 4/24/2011 at 12:57 AM, MrSparkle666 said:

  On 4/23/2011 at 1:23 AM, Promo said:

Okay guys I've managed to get hold of a free external CD rom drive which is SCSI. The only problem I have now is getting the cable to fit or an adapter for it. Does anyone know what the actual type of SCSI socket is at the back ... is male or female? I feel I'm pretty close to getting it to work!

 

You need a male DB25 connector. (the back of the s2000 is female db25)

Cheers dude.

You can, in fact, use a USB-to-SCSI converter to interface your S2000, Zip drives, etc., with your modern PC. What you should be looking for is a Xircom Portgear SCSI adapter, which works fine with Akai's Mesa editor up to Windows XP, at least (haven't tried it with anything later, I wouldn't hold my breath for Mac support, though). Iomega also made a USB-SCSI adapter which I know works fine with their (ironically named) Jaz drives and might also work with ye olde S2000 via an adapter (it has the high-density connector instead of the 25-pin one). The Xircom adapter seems pretty hard to come by, but it's much cheaper than the Iomega adapter so it'd be worth keeping an eye out for one.

  On 4/24/2011 at 7:09 AM, children r r future said:

You can, in fact, use a USB-to-SCSI converter to interface your S2000, Zip drives, etc., with your modern PC. What you should be looking for is a Xircom Portgear SCSI adapter, which works fine with Akai's Mesa editor up to Windows XP, at least (haven't tried it with anything later, I wouldn't hold my breath for Mac support, though). Iomega also made a USB-SCSI adapter which I know works fine with their (ironically named) Jaz drives and might also work with ye olde S2000 via an adapter (it has the high-density connector instead of the 25-pin one). The Xircom adapter seems pretty hard to come by, but it's much cheaper than the Iomega adapter so it'd be worth keeping an eye out for one.

Yeah that'd be sick if I couldn't interface it directly with the pc! I did find a cheap USB to SCSI lead on Amazon but the conventional wisdom here was that it wouldn't work and I'd really have to spend big bucks to get one that does. I've hunted down the actual lead or adapter I need and they both retail around £13 so may just plump for that. Unless I can get an USB to SCSI adapter for no more than £10 which interfaces directly with the pc then I don't think I'd bother.

I can't speak to how well any adapters besides the ones I mentioned work, especially if you aren't running XP. Definitely make sure your ASPI layer is up to date. If you're dead-set on using a hardware sampler, I'd recommend tracking down an S5000 with the USB card, which can often be found for pretty cheap (I got one for less than $150 a few years back).

  On 4/24/2011 at 7:09 AM, children r r future said:

You can, in fact, use a USB-to-SCSI converter to interface your S2000, Zip drives, etc., with your modern PC. What you should be looking for is a Xircom Portgear SCSI adapter, which works fine with Akai's Mesa editor up to Windows XP, at least (haven't tried it with anything later, I wouldn't hold my breath for Mac support, though). Iomega also made a USB-SCSI adapter which I know works fine with their (ironically named) Jaz drives and might also work with ye olde S2000 via an adapter (it has the high-density connector instead of the 25-pin one). The Xircom adapter seems pretty hard to come by, but it's much cheaper than the Iomega adapter so it'd be worth keeping an eye out for one.

Good to know that there are adapters out there that actually work. Everywhere I've read on the internet about Akai samplers and SCSI said don't even bother with an adapter, so I've never tried it myself.

  On 4/22/2011 at 1:02 PM, MrSparkle666 said:

  On 4/22/2011 at 12:10 PM, zazen said:

I had an Akai S2000 once, and as MrSparkle666 says, in theory you can connect it to your PC with a SCSI cable, and then just zap the samples accross without using any media. I never had much luck with the Scsi on mine though.

 

But basically, don't bother. A standalone sampler like the S2000 is just an old computer in a heavy metal box. There's nothing analogue about it. You might as well just use your computer for the sample playback.

 

Something doesn't have to be analog to have a particular sound that you can't get with current computers. The converters have a slight papery crunch, the envelopes have a certain snap to them, the filter has a lofi way about it, and the down sampling and pitch shifting sounds like only an Akai sampler does. That being said, I didn't buy my s2000 for the mojo. I bought it for a hardware based live rig. It does have a little mojo, but it doesn't have near enough that I would use it just for that purpose. If someone wants mojo, there are a lot of other samplers that would be 10x better for that. But you can't say that the s2000 is the same as a sample player on a computer. It's somewhat sonically different, and very different experience using it.

hmm, are the filters and envelopes implemented as hardware or software in the S2000?

  On 4/28/2011 at 1:17 PM, zazen said:

  On 4/22/2011 at 1:02 PM, MrSparkle666 said:

  On 4/22/2011 at 12:10 PM, zazen said:

I had an Akai S2000 once, and as MrSparkle666 says, in theory you can connect it to your PC with a SCSI cable, and then just zap the samples accross without using any media. I never had much luck with the Scsi on mine though.

 

But basically, don't bother. A standalone sampler like the S2000 is just an old computer in a heavy metal box. There's nothing analogue about it. You might as well just use your computer for the sample playback.

 

Something doesn't have to be analog to have a particular sound that you can't get with current computers. The converters have a slight papery crunch, the envelopes have a certain snap to them, the filter has a lofi way about it, and the down sampling and pitch shifting sounds like only an Akai sampler does. That being said, I didn't buy my s2000 for the mojo. I bought it for a hardware based live rig. It does have a little mojo, but it doesn't have near enough that I would use it just for that purpose. If someone wants mojo, there are a lot of other samplers that would be 10x better for that. But you can't say that the s2000 is the same as a sample player on a computer. It's somewhat sonically different, and very different experience using it.

 

hmm, are the filters and envelopes implemented as hardware or software in the S2000?

It's all software as far as I know. If Akai wanted to make a VST version of one of their old samplers, I'm sure they could. Then the only difference would be the AD/DA converters. But they haven't.

Guys anyone care to upload some cd images of their Akai samples so I can get cracking? I would very grateful!! Cheers.

  On 4/28/2011 at 1:36 PM, MrSparkle666 said:

It's all software as far as I know. If Akai wanted to make a VST version of one of their old samplers, I'm sure they could. Then the only difference would be the AD/DA converters. But they haven't.

I've seen it remarked that the free Shortcircuit VST sampler is set up just like old Akai rack samplers.

http://vemberaudio.se/shortcircuit.php