Product rating for Roland SP-404MKII

Anonymous

4 months ago • purchased this product

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purchased this product

Patience required

I really wanted to love this device, but it took some time... It is an extremely versatile, portable, and unique device, with lots of potential and possibility. I hope third party pads will become available. If you have the patience to learn it, you will be rewarded.

First - the pads... I returned the device twice - the third device had pads that were usable. I did not, and still don't 100% find them reliable. Sometimes they would not trigger a sound, sometimes they would trigger a sound twice. There is a difference between pressing a pad in the middle and pressing on the side. Even if I changed the pad settings, I still could not find settings that would work reliably (I have used Novation, Akai, and Native Instrument pads, all without problem). In earlier version of the SP404, some companies made custom pads to resolve this problem. Another alternative would be to connect an external launchpad, but that seems excessive.

Second - the menus. With such a compact interface and simple display screen, there are many many many shortcuts, and lots of menu diving. Most/many of the pads/buttons are not marked with the full list of shortcut functions, so you have to memorise most of these shortcuts in order to make full use of the device. Even after several weeks and make a list of shortcuts, this was difficult and not intuitive to use, often slowed my workflow significantly.

With that being said, I still cannot stop using it. It's a great way to make music away from the computer
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