I was on the fence between this and the blackbox, I went for the 101 as it suits my immediate needs more. But the next step is to start re-incorporating samples into my music so saving up for the black box next.
After selling my digitakt I must say I don’t find myself missing it terribly.
I think the approach to sequencing on the 101 is more immediate and intuitive.
I was worried myself about the menu diving reports but 10 minutes with it put those concerns to bed, those who are on the fence about it for this reason should really try one.
“Shit, this thing is so useful in so many roles…” I think It can easily fill a “gap” in any given setup, whether it is a synth or sample based job;
The presets. Digging through them is really worth it. Many gems are to be found around the banks, a lot of fun to play;
Seeing names like “Juno” this, “Jupiter” that, is like having your best friends coming to your party… Great “representations” of the original sounds but, of course, you are not getting a real SH or Jupiter here;
The sound engine is very clean and crisp sounding, better than several of my other devices of comparable value;
The FXs are a cut above. The filters models do wonders with “ambient-type” samples for example.
Minuses :
Roland, you need to take care of those bugs;
The FXs cannot be accessed directly without “menu-diving”. (Although, thankfully, it is possible to assign at least some parameters to a control knob);
Without an arpeggiator or other control device, it feels a bit limited in term of “live-performance” potential;
Roland, can you please put some random waves (SH or “smooth” random) in the LFOs and modulations !
Again, this is a super fun and portable box. Decksaver is working on a lid BTW !
I like the new Fantom Roland a lot. Great workstation and can play an entire set including drums, bass, pads and melody. More capable than any Elektron box yet but very large footprint. I’d like to see Elektron come out with something that can compete with MPC and Fantom for a complete all in one box workstation solution without a computer. The Analog 4 and Octatrack that I own are nice but not quite there yet.
What’s the sampling like on the Fantom? I hear it’s very bare bones, but for a workstation at that price, I do wonder what barebones mean. I don’t need much, but I would expect it can do everything the MC 707 can do, and possibly something more.
Is there something equivalent to the Scatter track on the Fantom as well?
I had a go at the new 101 for a few minutes at a local music dealer a little while ago. I must say i didn’t get the instant hands on gratification/action like with Elektrons’ puppies. It’s not that intuitive and obvious. (Though it will definitely have some nifty features in there/under the hood to make heads spin) So i guess i need to read through a fancy few pages of manual to have some basic fun fiddling about with it?
On a sidenote: I’ve grown allergic and dislike having to read/learn pages and pages of manual with each new ‘tiny’ box of pandora in my minimal setup. I’m no rocket-scientist and have probably grown quite lazy considering, don’t quite catch up as easily as i used to do when i was much younger.
I also didn’t like the plastic feel, i personally prefer a more rigid steel construction/casing (being ‘hufter-proof’, meaning: indestructible to idiots)
But @ Roland Corporation, i’m open to properly test these great new boxes to the limits if you’d send one over/lend me one (i’ve got some prior MC505 ownership experience and have been enjoying that old dog for quite some years)
had the 707 for the weekend.
I make experimental music, far from dance music beats and was drawn to the 707 for its loopers and the effects.
I will return it for several reasons…
Pros
The quality of effects is very good as is the amount. Some are very useful and allow sound experiments… That I liked very much.
Synth engine sounds great
Cons:
Saving only in stopped state
Manual is close to unusable… too much information unstructured, not easy to look something up, some stuff is missing and the two column layout is a pain to read on a small screen if you are searching for something… Either you fill up the screen with one pdf or you end up scrolling in all directions…
Sequencer for drum is different for tone or looper
No mute probability for tone tracks for example… So if you record some chords you cannot control if they are played or not…
Scatter effects are great for their customization but you either assign that to one track or the mix but not to track 3 and 5 for example… I was hoping to do some gated, sidechain like effects for pad like tracks… Works, but only for one track…
If you want polyrhythm like effects in different metrics you have to sacrifice a drum track for each metric… Either that or I was not clever enough to make several metrics on one drum track.
As it is possible to import sounds from other projects I was hoping this would work including the assigned effects. I tried that for a distorted drum set and it was clean after import… Don’t know if I made a mistake or this is intended…
There might be some updates coming, fixing some of my issues but I return it as I was hoping I could get my head around of the state the 707 is right now…
just for information: currently scatter works only on tracks assigned to Main Out, but not on tracks assigned to Assignable Out, so this is the workaround (of course, with its own downsides)
for me it’s not a problem, because i use 3 stereo pairs of 3 possible for output (and OTB multitrack recording), but YMMV.
Any hip hop heads using the 707/101? Not necessarily sampled hip hop. Real interested in the 101 but I’d like to see some nice examples of beats made with it. YouTube barely has anything right now aside from one gentleman doing west coast hh covers.
considering how much stuff like korg triton was used for R&B and hiphop, I’d imagine 707/101 being up for the job, as they have a lot of rompler sounds
Most folks speaks of the mc707 as a replacement for their OT (don’t really know why… the looper part?) but I can totally picture an OT + mc707 combo as an allmighty combination.
(i’ve got some prior MC505 ownership experience and have been enjoying that old dog for quite some years)