SP-606 workstation

[Mr. Untouchable]

i just got the new scratch and it had a small little section on the sp-606

its priced at $829

everyone that thought its meant to compete with the mpc4000 was WRONG

anyway i was wondering what the price was and now im really considering buying it..

anyone else...

[Cruel Hoax]

It's nice except for one huge swollen red raw painful glaring error:

8-voice polyphony.

Eight-voice!

And stereo samples eat two voices each so, in stereo, that's 4-voice polyphony.

Does anybody here use more than four notes at the same time? Like, a kick/snare loop, a hats/perc loop, a funky organ loop, an acid 303 loop and- oh wait- you've run out of voices. Too bad if you like to separate your kick and snare for EQ purposes. No sampled vocal on top, no cymbal crashes, no greasy lo-fi loop to back up the clean drums. No background pads, that's for sure.

I just don't get Roland. They seem to make products that are Almost Perfect yet with a Single Fatal Flaw:

RS-series keyboards: easy to understand for the beginner, okay presets, but a keybed that cracks and breaks with use.

MV8000: Great sampling song-based workstation, but no pattern mode at all. You can loop a section of the song (as in Reason), but you can't set up a verse groove, a chorus groove, and a breakdown groove then switch between them on the fly or in song mode.

VariOS: It's hardware-driven, but features software-style pitch 'n time processing with a great sound, but the rack device must be connected to the computer (an expensive and unportable dongle!), and, though it's a hardware sampler, it only contains 46MB of RAM, so good luck fitting a whole song into it. Good luck fitting a single track of a song into it.

Don't get me wrong. It'd be good for a remix-type producer, especially if you sample from other workstations (MPC, MC909, Electribe, etc.). The synced-to-MIDI sampling feature is really nice, and something that I wish every sampler could do.

It's just not gonna replace an MPC or a 909 or an Electribe.

-Hoax

[Mr. Untouchable]

yeah i get you^^

im just wondering if the software allows you to use more??

[dansgold]

Originally posted by Cruel Hoax
...
MV8000: Great sampling song-based workstation, but no pattern mode at all. You can loop a section of the song (as in Reason), but you can't set up a verse groove, a chorus groove, and a breakdown groove then switch between them on the fly or in song mode.
...

You gotta be kidding ... I thought for sure it had both pattern and linear modes just like the FantomX ... it doesn't?

[Cruel Hoax]

You gotta be kidding ... I thought for sure it had both pattern and linear modes just like the FantomX ... it doesn't?

Not as far as I've been able to figure. I do studio tech support, and have been called on to "figger out" an MV8000. I own the manual for one, and it seems to me that it's pretty much like the sequencer in Reason: you can loop an area of the sequence, but you can't switch between multiple patterns to make a song as you can in an MPC, Electribe, MC909, etc.

-Hoax

[Cruel Hoax]

...but maybe I just need to learn more.

both pattern and linear modes just like the FantomX

Please elucidate. As far as I know, the Fantom sequencer is largely (if not totally) linear, with the ability to loop a single section (again, like Reason, for common comparison). I haven't, however, used one in depth in a recording context, so I can't say definitively.

Does it offer true pattern-based recording? As in: you set up Verse Groove 1, and also set up Chorus Groove 2, become inspired along the way and write Weird Intro Groove 3, and so on. You then do one of two things: enter Song Mode and specify how it all fits together (play Weird Intro Groove 3 one time, then play Chorus Groove 2 twice, then play Verse Groove 1 4 times, then...). This allows you to use time-signature and tempo changes without headache. Just string 'em together, and they work.

Are you saying that the Fantom does this?

-Hoax

[dansgold]

Yep, with the Fanotom X you can do pattern based recording (up to 16 tracks in each pattern) and then just drop those patterns into the linear tracks wherever you want them.

[Mr. Untouchable]

...............back to the sp-606

[Cruel Hoax]

oops.

one of two things...

The other thing being switching live on-the-fly between different grooves. Like, say you're jamming with a guitarist and a bassist and you're acting as the "drummer". Can you switch freely between different grooves -based, say, on your bandmates' body language- as opposed to a pre-laid-out song structure?

-Hoax