Yep, what @hausland said. You’ve done well getting a Toraiz @Claid. Once it’s gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets the legendary status of the SP-303, club style.
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That’s great thanks! I wanted a machine that could chop up samples for a while… The Polyend Tracker is great for chops but having individual outs plus stereo samples plus an analog filter plus pads plus a xoxbox style sequencer kinda tipped my GAS over the edge. Admittedly the MPCs do all of those things but lack the analog filter and xoxbox style sequencer… Plus the screen on the Toraiz looks great with plenty of knobs for controlling what’s going on. Really looking forward to getting stuck in. 
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And I’m back on the Toraiz again, after detours to try out different kits to get the results I want. Man, I’ve been experimenting with rigs more recently than I thought I would, figuring this would be a straight forward approach to just club up my tracks. It was not.
What led me back to the Toraiz (again) finally, was first and foremost the pros we all know about - the streamlined workflow, the high quality output, stuff like that.
But it’s also one of the few kits that while it’s a bit bare boned in many areas, doesn’t cut corners in quality for what’s actually in there (maybe with the Song mode as an exception). And it also covers the entire production chain, including mastering, with the same level of focus. So it’s the coherence of quality and implementation that keeps pulling me back.
For that purpose, it’s one of the kits that makes it easier to exclude satellite gear, as long as you embrace what it does.
I don’t need mastering gear for my purposes if I’m okay with the Pioneer sound the Toraiz puts out. It sounds great as is. I don’t need to play back my long ass samples, if I use the 64 seconds available per sample in enough creative ways to simply yield other results. I don’t need a funkier sequencer if I use the combination of LFO’s, effects and free running loops across patterns to get an idea of poly rythms and similar.
Many kits, it becomes obvious that parts of it just don’t hold up. They’re there to help, but you really know you’re not gonna use parts of it, because you’re just too particular about your sound. I feel the Toraiz sort of has a strong foundation for all the building blocks in ways most samplers don’t have, and if you can accept the more functional limits and find ways around them (and there are plenty), you got a product with a coherence that I find quite rare these days.
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I’ve been catching up on this thread and I agree with everything you’ve said about the sp16. I got a great deal on a used unit a few months ago and have been using it a ton. The only complaint I have about it is that the reverb isn’t the greatest (which doesn’t really matter when you have assignable outs.)
Excellent sampler, It’s in the permanent collection now.
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These days I have refined my two tricks to get around the sequencer limitations:
Sequencing longer samples and percussion with the midi tracks on the DN, can even add A4 tracks if not enough. I just always have the bottom row of pads controlled by the DN 4 midi channels that are always on, muting them on and off from the SP along with the other tracks. Polymeter and probability = sorted.
Another trick is to have a cheatsheet of how long note values and bar lengths are in samples. Makes it easy to set a loop to trigger on the downbeat and loop offtime (like say, 60 steps or 7 bars) but still in sync until you mute it. You can have a tight arp pattern that loops perfectly without dedicating a midi track.
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And here’s what it sound like now, further experimentations of club sessions on my EP:s. I won’t be heading in this direction, but I’ll admit, I enjoyed making this one -
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Nice! You got me onto the SP16, and while it’s no longer part of my collection it is a formidable and underrated piece of kit. It’s built to last, sounds great and has a pretty great UI once you get used to it. Those pads feel as good as they look, and the touch strip is useful for adding expressive nuance to recordings. The filter is great, especially the drive. It’s very good at chopping samples (sample chains anyone?) and the overall sound is superb.
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Ah man, you sold it? What made you drop it, if so?
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Honestly it was me, not the SP-16. I didn’t have enough space for it alongside my Elektron boxes and Virus, plus my brain is hard-wired to the ‘Elektron’ way. Plus I needed to chip away at my credit card debt haha.
Awesome box, can imagine someone using it instead of an MPC and having an excellent time.
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And thanks to @Claid… I’m the proud owner of the very same SP16. Got to find my groove with it but so far it’s a no manual type of box. I purchased a blackbox recently and though I do love its sound and simplicity I was struggling with how to bring loops in and out that have effects baked in without it being noticeable.
Hoping the SP-16 will overcome this for me with having track mutes pre effects… I hope that’s the case… Not checked yet 
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I’m afraid not, at least the FX1 and FX2 per track effects… muting cuts off all audio on the individual tracks.
There are, of course, ways around this with using the sub outs to go to ping-pong delays, reverbs etc, and you can set up the sub outs to still have the “dry” signal going to the main outputs (like how a send on a mixer works.) I use the DN inputs for these type of effects coming out of sub 1.
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For both devices, it seems using the alt outs to send to external FX would work I use the blackbox in that manner
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Gear is great at bringing you down a peg or two! I always mistakingly assume that it will do what other gear does when you take the best bits from each machine.
I turned it on, set fx1 to delay and instantly realised my error. Made me laugh… How many times I’ve been here before?! No big issue as it’s a blast to knock beats out and it does sound sweet. It will definitely lend itself to my endless jamming without an end product philosophy.
I’ll try running some tracks through my Keys as you suggest. Thanks.
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A4 and AK are even better, as you can have each input channel routed to different FX… even more flexibility 
So, my pre-loved SP-16 came without the factory content (did come with a great selection of drum hits, all nicely labelled and organised) and it appears Pioneer have removed the resource from their website. Am I missing anything by not having these? Thinking more about the sampled synth sounds or percussion loops?
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Yeah, I had that issue on this page, which seems to offer the content but upon clicking shows as an error 404. Couldn’t find the Loopmasters content online. Might be worth emailing Pioneer support to see if they have a backup somewhere. This page may help you contact them.
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Selling my SP-16 if anyone is interested
https://www.elektronauts.com/t/fs-uk-pioneer-toraiz-sp-16/158405
Factory content was pretty good, angled to club-ish hits and loops from many categories with high (sometimes overproduced tho) production values. Just enough to go beyond the default DJ loops, but not strange enough to be “WTF am I gonna do with this?” If you don’t have a decent library of one shots, those in particular will cover most of your needs.
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what do you think could be improved on the sp-16?
The reverb LOL
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