One thing i will add is the nosedive in customer support thats reared its ugly head. Wheras it used to take a day for a response now it is taking many days. You can expect this but its not good practice. Sometimes people have to bombard twitter or facebook for them to respond.
Guess there too busy flogging that haul of vintage synths >.<
1 Like
When I ordered mine recently I contacted them with a question and got a reply within a day. Pretty sure they could spend 30hours a day responding to the public.
1 Like
Could someone screen cap this for those that don’t have Facebook?
Not talking about orders. Im talking about folk who already have one with issues.
1 Like
Indeed 
Ok. As a former sp16 owner everything pales in comparison to pioneer wrt responding to customers!
4 Likes
Heads up for you. As a lot have done bypass support tickets and go to Facebook and twitter as they spend most time on there. They always respond there.
1 Like
I would say for the price points it’s rather limited to features, especially with that you’re asking for. Octatrack is still the king for that kind of stuff but digitakt is good too. Even Maschine+ and I believe MPC can do a lot of what you asked for.
The only real modulation comes in the form of three envelopes that each sound has. In multimode this means one sample can be chopped 8 times and each of those chops have their own three samples. It can modulate pitch, a digital filter, and volume.
You can change bit depth but you can’t modulate it. Same with the sample rate, though the sample rate effect does change based on how you’re lowering and raising the pitch of a single sample so it doesn’t sound like most sample rate reduction VSTs.
There is timestetching but it’s not real time. You have to set the tempo then initiate the algorithm. I’m pretty sure this is how it is on Maschine+ and MPC as well (though, Maschine+ does have a real time stretch mode). I will say, the time stretching is quite good though.
You can play pretty long samples and they do load off an SD card and I’m pretty sure you can plug a USB hard drive into it. You can also use a computer keyboard to name samples if you plug a usb one in.
UI is pretty good though there’s some oddities you have to get used to, like the use of the A and B buttons. You kinda have to unlearn what you’ve learned if you’ve every used an MPC which is closer to the standard I’ve seen from other gear (Ableton Push, Maschine) but if you can separate that from your mind it’s pretty easy. It’s cool having the 8 faders in front of you at all times. It’s like having an analog mixer that’s built into the device, almost.
The big thing you’re paying for is the analog components in my opinion. The analog inputs and outputs sound really good. They were designed to handle that crunchy 12bit sound of the SP-1200 and with the S2400 you can easily internally resample sounds through the analog input and get that sound with a push of a button. What they achieved was not a clone but really an SP-1200 2.0. You’re gonna want to want that SP-1200 sound to make it worth it.
I’d say for most people the SP-404 MKII is a much better buy considering the cost and feature set. Plus it has twice the polyphony. That said, I can’t get any sampler to sound the way the S2400 does. It definitely has the most character out of the 8 or so samplers I own.
5 Likes
Great summation. When i had it i was wowed by the sound. But ended up getting the Rossum SP1200. Same sound but better workflow imo. The timestreching on the SP2400 is pretty lame. The feature i liked the best was song mode which was very useful.
1 Like
I dunno I think the stretching sounds really good. Maybe they changed the algorithm? But it sounds cleaner than an Octatrack I think. Maybe not, I tend to prefer the fucked up sound that stretching can do anyways lol. For cleaner stretching I’m always heading to Ableton.
Its better by a bit than the Octatrack but not much imo. Like you i head for Ableton and Serato Sample for timestretching.
I might be in the minority but I love taking drum loops and stretching them and getting the gross aliasing that shitty stretching can provide. I also probably overuse distortion and shit as well lol. Part of the reason the S2400 is appealing is how “shitty” you can make things sound (more like gloriously lofi).
The Rossum SP-1200 looks dope but for twice the price and half the features it’s even a tougher sell even for enthusiasts I’d say. I know there’s a different workflow and I do realize the S2400 can often get in its own way but having usb streaming audio and longer samples and being able to resample internally definitely makes up for it. Either way, both pieces of gear seem great. I appreciate both of their approaches to honoring the SP-1200, one by staying true to the original and one going in to modernize it.
4 Likes
im still waiting on this clone to be released hope by next year but who knows.
6 Likes
Thank you so much for detailed review! Yes, the most interesting part of S2400 are analog components and overall sound and interface, would be nice to have more options to work with samples, but it’s already very cool as it is.
Have tons of “sample mangling” tools already in modular, DT, Ableton etc… Just observing what other machines can bring. Probably will keep using what I have. But hope to see a “master sampler station” a la old Ensoniqs eventually.
My best hopes Rossum will come out with something…
Yeah, I do wish it could do a bit more but it’s juggling trying something new while staying true to the original. You can do things like sample 8 notes and then chop them up and apply individual envelopes and stuff but it’s still monophonic per sample where the 404 MKII can do polyphony, real time time stretching, has a lot of really great effects (better than MPC by a large margin imo), has twice as much polyphony and 20x the samples per project… and it’s a third of the cost.
But that’s sort of what you get when you go into boutique shit and like I said before, I can’t get anything with a sample reduction to sound the same as how the S2400 sounds with it’s sample reduction. Maschine+, for example, has a SP-1200 mode within its sampler and it just sounds like a static effect. On the S2400 that aliasing sound moves with the pitch in a very lively way.
Honestly not entirely sure that’s worth the asking price though lol.
2 Likes
I thought it was 32 voice now? I agree it’s limited compared to some things but I’m looking forward to using it to sample obscure vinyl on rainy Saturday afternoons. Prob use it with OT sequencer. It looks fun and sounds ace.
The S2400 was originally 8 polyphony now doubled to 16. Honestly in more cases more than enough especially since each sound is mono but yeah.
1 Like
The time stretching algorithm is the same one that is in the Polyend tracker. I think it sounds good too. Brad tried to purchase the The AKAIZER Project algorithm for the S2400 but the guy’s ask was just too much. Anyway the Polyend folks were happy to accommodate, love those guys, and own the Polyend Tracker myself.
5 Likes
Actually it’s 16 stereo sample playback tracks.
2 Likes