Who killed the price on this one? It’s starting to look mighty tempting now.
I know, I’ve been itching for one, it seems like a cross between the MPC and a Digitakt lol…looks quite immediate
I think it is very much like a spiritual successor to the older MPCs, with a bit of +/-
I’m only selling mine due to lack of space and I don’t enjoy touchscreens, although you can do most things without touching the screen.
what is the thing you dislike about it the most?
For me the song mode is too limited, no mutes per row, all patterns have to have tracks of the same length, only 16 samples per 16 patterns (although you can use chains/slices) If it didn’t have these limitations I’d keep it. All of these can be worked around, but since I have other machines which allow these functions it is somewhat redundant.
The DJS-1000 doesn’t have the second FX slot of the SP-16.
Mine’s not handy right now but I can look into your other questions over the next day or so.
Absolutely love my DJS. Just one fx slot but no major problem to me objectively . It’s like a modern old mpc . Great file management , can pipe stuff in and out of the daw easy , very intuitive to use , great as a jam machine with a stick full of samples , great for catching loops off vinyl to make re edits with , can resample to your hearts content and sounds really good too, the converters seem to give everything a nice boost that I put through it .
Looping samples. Is there a way to crossfade?
Doesn’t seem so, I’m afraid. I looked through literally every setting on my DJS for sample editing and playback just now and there’s nothing that allows for crossfading the loop end+start.
I’m not into clicks…I wonder is there’s a way around the no crossfade.
It also seems there’s no real audio editor to truncate, fade, etc samples you might record.
These are really focused on performing things slightly pre-prepared
I’ve never had any issues with clicky samples like I sometimes get with the Blackbox.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible, I’ve just never had one in about 3 years, so not sure if that’s down to some other sorcery.
I just get clicks when I try to loop a short segment of a sample. Say the tail of a stab or hit. Like I just want to loop the reverb tail to create some atmosphere or a pad or something. I get clicks as it loops around.
I guess I’d take a snap to zero too
I’ve always been curious on the SP-16 and am tempted now that the price drop has reached my hoods too. But I’m not sure what I’d use it for. I’m currently dedicated to the Deluge and there’s literally nothing the SP-16 can do, the Deluge can’t.
There’d be the interface, then, the way you work it. But even so, I love polyrythms and to swap time signatures and really work my samples into completely different things, and that doesn’t seem to the what the Toraiz is good at.
For sure a real quick and fun machine to jam out ideas and perform with. But I gather the sequencer isn’t as advanced as you’d prefer.
With that’s said, I guess if you wanted to stay in the Pioneer universe, that’s where the Squid would come in.
The Toriaz and DJS are interesting. Because other sampler/sequencers already check most of the boxes, and then some. It seems the value of the Pioneers is in the layout and flow. And they do sound really good. Like, club good out the box.
Too bad you can’t rent them just to play with them for a little bit
All true, mate. On the other hand, I can also appreciate the idea of just jumping ship on streaming, polyrythm stuff and so on, and just embrace bangin’ sound quality and workflow, for what it is.
One of my most memorable sets was on an old Electribe ES-1. One of those summer evenings where the sun wouldn’t set, on the farthest island in our southern archipelago, final stop before the open sea owns the horizon. I guess if I’d done that one on a Toraiz, I would’ve seen only opportunity, not limits.
Here it is, for what it’s worth -
Price is behaving real weird over here. It’s going up again. I’ve found one very cheap now, on a 30 day trial. I’m just about to wrap up my time with the Deluge, so I’ll give this a go. I’m gonna do a little mindful experimenting, and approach it well aware what it can’t do, and not spend time thinking about it. More like - so I got a great sounding, 4/4 banger machine here and samples to go with it. What can I do with that? Rather than wish for polyrythm, different time signatures and stuff. I’m just letting that go now, for awhile.
Most of my favourite albums through the years don’t do any of that anyway. A straight, no nonsense song that’s doing its lovely work within a pretty ordinary structure, is usually what lasts in my head anyway.
I notice this thing has a 12V output. I wonder if it can be powered through a Ripcord, like the Octatrack and the Digitakt. I got one which I’m using for all kinds of things, but I don’t have the guts to try it. No idea what I’m going to fry if I do. But I’ve sent a question to MyVolts to get their thoughts on it.
EDIT AND UPDATE:
Well, I’ll say one thing after playing with this for an hour, I don’t recall when I last got something together so fast that sounded more or less ready to print. And I’m only running 1.1 so far, with no LFO’s or second fx slot and stuff.
It’s pretty obvious already that the breaking point will be if I’ll miss all the deeper sequencing functions from other high-end instruments, or it the groove in this one will just make me forget all about that and play beats till the sun sets. Which it won’t for awhile here, cause I’m in Sweden.
Update procedure is a bit archaic, tho. Had to organise a local search party to find a USB stick just to put the firmware on it.
This is why I am keeping mine. The ease of use makes the SP-16 stand above alot of other units that have far better specs and features.
And it sounds GREAT very unique like modern HiFi but with full tight bottom end (wait am I still talking about the SP or that time in Miami ) ?
if you get into some heavy sampling would definitely be interested in how that and the organization of your sessions go… how much not having delete from the unit got on your nerves kinda stuff etc…
Oh, behave yeah, and the scene and pattern system makes up to the lack of deeper sequencer features. For longer samples, I play a trig and then let it continue over the next pattern, which I leave empty on that track. No problems getting a full 16 bar stem or something just looping when you do it like that.