Arturia BeatStep Pro

This lad is decent

Damn that looks fun, don't have any hardware but would love to see how that runs with Ableton

Edited July 2, 2015 by b born droid

This looks like it addresses everything that kept me from getting the original, and the price is still good. Still wish they had sprung for proper DIN jacks for midi and 1/4" jacks for audio, though, I don't trust those 1/8th inchers for playing out live, and that's the main reason I'd want one of these. Still very tempted to sell something and grab one when they come out, though, since that stuff is nothing that couldn't be fixed with some soldering and maybe a case mod.

midi-to-CV!

looks pretty cool tbh

  On 7/3/2015 at 12:43 AM, RSP said:

This looks like it addresses everything that kept me from getting the original, and the price is still good. Still wish they had sprung for proper DIN jacks for midi and 1/4" jacks for audio, though, I don't trust those 1/8th inchers for playing out live, and that's the main reason I'd want one of these. Still very tempted to sell something and grab one when they come out, though, since that stuff is nothing that couldn't be fixed with some soldering and maybe a case mod.

Build quality on the sockets is very good, actually. At least on the original BeatStep. The plug goes in and stays in.

It's mostly a space issue since a DIN socket actually wouldn't fit on the side of the unit. Only two pins are connected for MIDI out anyway—it wouldn't actually be difficult to make a dedicated 3.5mm to MIDI cable so you don't need the adapter.

oh damn, this vid really sold it for me (still dont have a sequencer looool).

good price. heaps of features. midi + cv. good shit!!

 

  On 7/3/2015 at 2:29 AM, modey said:

 

  On 7/3/2015 at 12:43 AM, RSP said:

This looks like it addresses everything that kept me from getting the original, and the price is still good. Still wish they had sprung for proper DIN jacks for midi and 1/4" jacks for audio, though, I don't trust those 1/8th inchers for playing out live, and that's the main reason I'd want one of these. Still very tempted to sell something and grab one when they come out, though, since that stuff is nothing that couldn't be fixed with some soldering and maybe a case mod.

Build quality on the sockets is very good, actually. At least on the original BeatStep. The plug goes in and stays in.

It's mostly a space issue since a DIN socket actually wouldn't fit on the side of the unit. Only two pins are connected for MIDI out anyway—it wouldn't actually be difficult to make a dedicated 3.5mm to MIDI cable so you don't need the adapter.

 

 

Well I'm convinced. The Arturia hardware I've messed with before has always been solid, I just don't trust 1/8" jacks because they always seem to get scratchy.

 

Now what can I sell to justify getting this?

another cool demo this time using nothing but nothing but the infamous nasal sounding arturia 'brute synths

 

I guess the only jacks that'd get scratchy would be the cv outs. Having said that I've had my beatstep for quite a while now and it seems fine.

 

  On 7/3/2015 at 5:54 PM, modey said:

I guess the only jacks that'd get scratchy would be the cv outs. Having said that I've had my beatstep for quite a while now and it seems fine.

I'd be most worried about the Midi i/o getting scratchy, you could really mess up the midi data stream that way since there's no error correction or redundancy at all in MIDI. But I'm probably overthinking it, common 1/8" jacks seem to be a lot more reliable i the past few years, I haven't had a laptop or phone give me trouble in a while. Used to be they would be crackly and awful in a matter of months sometimes.

 

I had a microbrute for two days and the jacks seemed fine on that, come to think of it. Too bad I got a defective one and so much else didn't work (sequencer was completely nonfunctional, pitch wheel was defective and just jumped from zero to full as soon as you moved it, keyboard was loose and nasty). I really like the sound of it, I wish they would make a desktop module that got rid of the keyboard and combined the functionality of the mini and micro with maybe a few more patch points. I still kind of want another one some day. Ended up using the refund to get a Mutable Anushri instead and that's a great little synth but has a very different sound.

 

All the Arturia stuff I've tried is fantastic for the price, for sure.

Edited July 3, 2015 by RSP

Aaand, I just realized when the Axoloti finally arrives, this would pair with it really well since it works as a USB host. That would save me the money and effort of making some kind of custom interface. That's the last straw, one of these is in my future for sure.

remember seeing that demo a couple months ago, forgot all about it. pretty good demo.

Man..... Feels greeeat when hardware developers create something that actually makes sense (as opposed to horrible creations that are so bad... and despite being based on ancient concepts, are still garbage *ahem* Akai Timbre Wolf *ahem*). Gives a glint of hope for humanity.

  On 7/3/2015 at 9:16 PM, peace 7 said:

Man..... Feels greeeat when hardware developers create something that actually makes sense (as opposed to horrible creations that are so bad... and despite being based on ancient concepts, are still garbage *ahem* Akai Timbre Wolf *ahem*). Gives a glint of hope for humanity.

 

glad you mentioned the timbre wolf.. i watched a video and got a good lol out of it. guess i won't be buying anything from akai anytime soon.

 

the beatstep pro appeals to me because it supports CV and Gate. lot of neat controllers out there, but only a handful offer this.

Something to be aware of though is the support that Arturia provides for these products. Firmware updates aren't released very often and sometimes the bugs are pretty hard to live with. I don't personally have any problems with the beatstep or microbrute, at least the way I use them, but a look at the forums suggests that others have been pretty frustrated with their products.

  On 7/3/2015 at 9:16 PM, peace 7 said:

Man..... Feels greeeat when hardware developers create something that actually makes sense (as opposed to horrible creations that are so bad... and despite being based on ancient concepts, are still garbage *ahem* Akai Timbre Wolf *ahem*). Gives a glint of hope for humanity.

 

the timber wolf can get bent at some point in the future though

It being a usb host and all, does that mean I could just plug in my korg microkey and nanokontrol and use those without a computer? Cuz that would be really nice.

  On 7/4/2015 at 10:44 AM, skibby said:

 

  On 7/3/2015 at 9:16 PM, peace 7 said:

Man..... Feels greeeat when hardware developers create something that actually makes sense (as opposed to horrible creations that are so bad... and despite being based on ancient concepts, are still garbage *ahem* Akai Timbre Wolf *ahem*). Gives a glint of hope for humanity.

the timber wolf can get bent at some point in the future though

It'll still sound like shit, though. MC-303 has better acid capability and is cheaper. Analog/digital mean nothing if it sounds like garbage and can't stay in tune. Maybe the Timbre Wolf is good for noise drones or something? But Akai's whole new tingz, are sad. Names are good, though. Tom Cat seems to fix some Rhythm Wolf issues, but still... So many better options. Poor Akai... Long live "MPC", I guess. And their old school samplers.

  On 7/4/2015 at 12:21 PM, th555 said:

It being a usb host and all, does that mean I could just plug in my korg microkey and nanokontrol and use those without a computer? Cuz that would be really nice.

From what I can tell, it's not a USB host, so nope.

  On 7/6/2015 at 1:37 AM, modey said:

 

  On 7/4/2015 at 12:21 PM, th555 said:

It being a usb host and all, does that mean I could just plug in my korg microkey and nanokontrol and use those without a computer? Cuz that would be really nice.

From what I can tell, it's not a USB host, so nope.

If you don't mind buying another piece of gear, the Kenton USB Midi Host should do the job, although I've never used one myself.

I did look into that, but it ended up being cheaper to just buy an old MIDI keyboard (in my case, Yamaha CBX-K1). Even including postage from Japan, it was cheaper than buying the Kenton box alone!

I'm slightly wary of this since all of my experiences with Arturia have been good concepts with some quite major/disappointing flaws combined with shitty costumer support.

  On 7/7/2015 at 2:12 PM, ussr said:

I'm slightly wary of this since all of my experiences with Arturia have been good concepts with some quite major/disappointing flaws combined with shitty costumer support.

 

I'm going to order mine from B&H specifically because of this, since they have a good return policy (no questions asked full refund for 30 days). That should be enough time to make sure I like it, make sure nothing is broken out of the box, and figure out what the bugs are and if I can live with them in case Arturia never fixes them. As far as I can tell fro reading customer reviews, the original Beatstep was build solidly enough for the money, and that's the main thing I'm skeptical about.