The Ugly Gear Topic (Page 10 of 11)

wow that sp-555 looks like it was developed by 5 different teams. Also makes me think of Eurorack.

It's called a remixer because it's a non-linear pattern sequencer, as opposed to the bulk of all linear-oriented hardware and software sequencers that came before it. That and the fact that it featured groundbreaking real-time midi-manipulation effects such as delay, time-stretch, grid-groove, clock-shift, harmonize, etc.

I'm more or less familiar with almost every midi sequencer ever made and I still consider this box to be a paradigm-shift - regardless of its garish 90's colour-scheme

good question brian,
maybe look @ the spectralis, never owned one but tried it a couple of times and it worked very naturally and stuff making patterns and stuff didn't go further then that don't know how it goes beyond that in sequence and track muting and stuff

I'm selling my e-mu xl-7 and I'm thinking of replacing it  with an rs7000.  The were some things that bothered me about the xl-7, although overall its very capable sequencer.  On paper the rs7000 looks like it would suit me better.  Anything in particular that you find it lacks?

It would be nice if someone could start a single thread for rm1x/rs7000, as I own one too.

When it comes to the Roland Sh-32 we don't have to forget about this beauty: 

that's a harsh critique -anyone would think its hopeless! am enjoying my new RS. it is pretty chunky and dated looking tho

Let me respond as a RM1x user since 1998 and RS7000 user since 2001:

"What is a bit silly is that the shift button doesn't function as an 'octave' button. You can transpose a single pattern, but you can't quickly go from C1 to C7 when you're editing a step sequence."

To be fair, it's 3 button presses instead of one: it jumps by 10 semitones when holding the shift button (instead of 12).

"Also I would have liked it to be possible to not only enter- and leave the record mode without stopping the sequencer (which it can), but to also change the record modes without stopping; thus switch from step mode to notation mode or whatever you call it."

I rarely need to switch between recording modes, and never during a live performance, so this was never an issue to me.

"It would also have been nice to be able to turn off the pattern hold function without stopping the sequence. No major problem but still a little annoyance for me, especially in a live situation."

Do you mean pattern BPM hold? What kind of situation would you need this for?

"Also it annoys me that sound adjustments are recorded per track, not per sound. So if you fiddle with a preset sound, change the filter and what not, any new sound you load on that channel will keep those filter settings. Kinda annoying when you're looking for a nice bass sound, try a few settings and decide to look further."

I actually find this more useful than irritating from a sound-design perspective. I start sculpting a sound's parameters then I can scroll through other sound to see if anything else fits better, like when I'm using a modular synth.

"And there's also no dedicated voice memory. "

For voice memory, just copy the voice to an empty track on that "Style" (aka song) or another one and it's saved.

"Despite what you might think after the above point, not all knob movements are recorded on a track. That's no big deal for me, but it might be for others."

1. The master FX aren't recorded, but you can actually generate the appropriate midi commands to control them in a track.

2. The midi fx aren't recorded as midi cc's, however the effects changes that you do are hard-recorded into a track, eg. if you record while changing the midi-delay, the actual delayed notes that are generated get recorded. So you're still technically recording the results of the knob changes. Not ideal, but not a deal-breaker.

"sometimes it can be a bit of a pain have the sequencer trigger sampled loops. It's probably me tho, I think I once even  got an answer on the RS700.org forum when I mentioned it there, but I forgot. Should look that up actually..."

Sorry Brian, this complaint is not valid in any way, shape or form. Sampling and playing back samples is a breeze on this machine.

"No flash memory, not even just a few mb's."

On one hand, it would be great if it had sequencer memory like the RM1x, but on the other, why bother if you can't store samples too? The bottom line was that in 2001, multi-megabytes of flash memory was stupid expensive. The latest Motif XF finally has it and it's not a cheap solution.

"you can not audition samples before you load them "

That would be nice.

"no layering of samples"

Actually... there's a black-magic trick for this that lets you multi-map and layer samples using Awave for Windows:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/RS … sage/14493

"the effects are only audible over the stereo outs, not the individual outs."

The is irritating, but probably impossible to implement. First of all, if you assign a kick drum to an individual output (and not the rest), then you send the kick drum to an effect, then the sound of the kick in that effect return goes to the main channel too :-/ It becomes sort of pointless to have individual outs if you're "polluting" the main channels with that sound as well.

The only solution would be to take the effect *out* of the regular signal chain and dedicate it to just one of the individual outputs.

I think the argument is that if you're using individual outs, then you likely are doing outboard fx processing too.

"128mb smart media is obsolete"

Yes, they're slow, but at least they haven't gone up in price compared to 5-10 years ago. They're still available new.

"some of the edit functions can be a bit tedious. But it can often do what you want, it just could have been a bit more user friendly."

Maybe tedious in some cases, but the midi jobs are also extremely powerful, even compared to modern software sequencers.

What drives me crazy when copying a phrase is that you can't automatically copy it to the next empty slot... you have to manually scroll through the phrase list to find the next empty position.

Would you please stop hijacking this very constructive topic with your yamaha nonsense...

realy? it's pure plastic, very cheap... but imagine it with wooden side panels and it would be the hit and twice as costly I try to get rid of this silly cunt since years, but something in me says "no". i just don't get it. now it disasembled, one key non functioning.
do you like it more this way?