Oh, and thread update! It seems @maymind_trax and I have worked out a tentative trade agreement, so I will soon join the Lofi12 owner group! Hello all! My name is Funk. I make beats, write raps, and take naps. #fuxwitit
Edit: my real name is Matt G.
G., what kinda name is that
Moral of this story, you might be wondering? If youâre thinking about buying a sampler, talk about it aggressively like a deranged, gear-obsessed psycho on the internet about it and someone will try to sell you their sampler! Then, and this is important! Donât buy it from them but offer instead to trade something that is maybe a bit overkill for your particular setup. In this case, that is my newly acquired (and soon to be mailed off to LA!) Red Panda Tensor pedal (Iâm sorry Tensor, we knew each other for such a brief but lovely period, and yet, our affair will last forever on a few beats. Treat her well @maymind_trax. I will remember her fondly.)
@plragde, itâs short for Gangster (j/k itâs Gibson, like the guitar).
Edit: Lol, donât worry, we werenât THAT close.
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Called a friend at work once, got the receptionist who asked for my name, I hesitated (because itâs complicated), gave it. Friend came on the line, laughing hard. I asked him what was up. He said the receptionist had said, âCall from Prabhakar. What kinda name is that?â in a Southern accent. And he said, impulsively, âItâs a slave name.â And the receptionist said, âOh, oh-kay.â These days I just say âPRâ, though even that is hopeless when ordering certain cuisines for takeout.
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Another thing to consider is that the Lofi-12 can only play 4 tracks and the 404 can play 32 samples at once. 4 is cool for a simple beat and sometimes less is more. But even though limitations spark my creativity i maybe would have used a 5th or 6th track to the beats i made on the Lofi-12.
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I am quite excited to get my hands on the Lofi12! I sure didnât expect to get it so soon, but when you put the idea out into the universe, a path towards that idea becoming a reality seems to always follow suit. Oh, the fickle finger of fate is nothing short of fabulous, no?
Nah, your alien was right. If you canât make a dope beat with 4 tracks AND resampling, you arenât a real producer! LMAO.
Lol, plus, Iâm running into a chain of samplers/loopers. I might be losing my shit but I donât see the issue with this limitation at all.
Like, I run my samplers into other samplers, then into a loop station. I have more samplers than anything now, like by far, especially if you count the loopers as samplers, which I do. 
I say to myself, you need less effects and more synths, then turn around and trade FX for yet another sampler. Ah well, I felt like it and that is reason enough right? Still geeking on that tilt effect though.
Edit 23 -25: I just counted my main pieces and I have 14 noisemakers. Out of these 14, 7 are either samplers, sample players, or loopers. There are technically five synths, two and a half of which are drum synths. Only one is polyphonic (and itâs also an FX box). There are six FX boxes (not counting the Tensor, which I just agreed to trade for the Lofi12). Three of the FX boxes are also loopers, two are just distortion/Bitcrusher/SRR.
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My workflow fuckery now looks something like this:
Model Samples>KP3>RC-505-2
Model Cycles/Werkstatt>Lofi12>RC-505 (via mixer w/Bitcrusher and DL4 MKII on FX loop)
ZOIA (as a synth)>Keylab controller> RC-505-2 (via mixer)
Plus tons of microphones running into the DL4, KP3, and RC-505-2
Am I musicing wrong? @Dr.K, I thought you were a medical professional. Help!
Oops, forgot my favorite piece! Nord Drum Indigo! Directly into the mixer then into the Loop Station.
Obviously, I know that there is no wrong way to music, just playing around.
And I also have the greatest sampler ever made (this is debatable, obviously) in my arsenal, the Akai Z4, with FX and RAM. I think I may need counciling. And the 404 and Digitakt and Octatrack havenât gotten any less sexy to me at all. Ugh.
I also have a few volcas, the drum gets occasional use and the beats collects dust mostly.
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Nice crazy setup! 
The Dr. says, itâs never enough if youâre feeling good.
I also had a lot of samplers at one point. Now i âonlyâ have 4, 2 loopers and a lemondrop which can sample as well.
As the sampler freak that you are i think youâll find enough inspiring functions on the Lofi-12 to give it a place in your setup.
Hey. One thing I havenât really seen in any of the demos is how well the Lofi 12 works as a module. For example, I know that a lot of the parameters can be edited by MIDI cc. In particular, I see in the MIDI chart that âstartâ is one of the parameters, which I assume means the sampleâs start point? So like, what would happen if you pointed a MIDI LFO at that?
Iâd also be interested in knowing how good of a job it does at controlling external gear since I see that it can transmit MIDI, as well.
Any info would be appreciated.
The Lofi-12 works great as a module. All knobs and buttons have ccâs. Itâs 4 part multitimbral.
You can access the 4 tracks with midi channel 1-4. It also has autochannel like the elektrons, which controls the currently selected track (default ch5).
Havenât really used the midi-out side of things.
What I really like about it is that the sequencer reflects the swing value, it does not run linear anymore, but âswingyâ, if that makes any sense.
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So controlling the lofi 12 from a better sequencer effectively removes the limitation on the internal sequencer having a forced 16th note grid with only the options to quantize or adding swing to the quantized pattern.
Did you have it following program change? Also, do you know if it responds to velocity over midi?
It responds to velocity. Not sure about PC yet, but I suspect it to work too. I will test later.
Iâm sequencing mine from the Mpc or Polyend tracker. It is amazing to use the Perform mode on the tracker to sequence 4 Lofi-12 tracks.
Just discovered the newly added remix function, which basically is a retrigger fx applied live on the last played note. It responds to ccâs to, so looking forward to sequence that with the Tracker. Loads of possibilities.
So each track can be assigned a midi channel from within the lofi 12âs ui, thatâs how you have acess to all 4 tracks? Or like, for example how digitoneâs 4 tracks are on 1-2-3-4, so itâs easy to set it up as a module?
Since Iâve never put hands on any of the Liven series (I know theyâre all physically the same) does the build quality feel solid?
Yes, out of the box, it responds to midi channel 1-4 and 5 is the autochannel. You change it in a menu on the Lofi-12.
(I donât have a DT, so donât really know how it works there).
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Itâs more or less the same as you describe but out of the box autochannel on digi units is 10. And the limit of 4 seconds is per sample and so far itâs not expandable because there is no memory card slot, correct? thanks for the information by the way.
I saw they did some recent firmware upgrade that added some functionality but I thought it was just adding slice and resample. Maybe just resample and not sliceâŚ
Built quality is debatable. Feels a bit plastic and is very light, but still solid, so probably ok. A bit like the roland aira series.
Buttons are squishy and donât respond that well on the edges though. Not a problem for me as I will be playing it from midi keyboard. Overall it is just ok, but it has the pricetag for it.
Sound above all is great!
It sounds really close to my old Roland S-10 sampler. What still bugs me is that the 12-bit mode is a toggle, which can be turned on/off afterwards. I would have thought 12-bit was applied when recording and was permanent.
There is a recording setting of 44 or 22khz, which is applied during recording.
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The mode thing seemed a little sketchy to me, rather than an actual 12 bit sampler I think thatâs closer to a bitcrushing effect. So the normal sample mode is 16 bit? or is it higher. Does it have adjustable sampling rate or is it fixed even when in 12 bit? It would seem it has to be fixed because thatâs the rate at which the sample is captured.
It does have an LFO per track, correct? Have you played with that much?
No memory cardslot
There are 8 banks (4 factory and 4 user, all overwritable) of 16 samples, each 4sec. It always fills those 4 seconds, so basically its 8x16x4sec sampling time. So you can sample loops if you want, longer ones if you pitch them up beforehand.
It can chop samples since the last update. But only to a fixed grid. (Drum mode is poly. Chop mode is monophonic). Also phrase resampling was introduced in this update.
Some other things: Sequencer got conditional trigs (in %) and a dice mode, which shuffles the notes around.
All parameters can be p-locked, also the samples, so you can use more than 1 sound on a track.
Backing up sounds only works via Sysex. I use my ipad to store sounds this way.
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Sample rate is fixed at 44100 (2sec) or 22050 (4sec) during recording/sampling. Normal sampling is 16 bit. 12bit can be turned on/off afterwards. Iâm puzzled by this too.
I mostly have 12-bit mode on, because it sounds really good, not like a bitcrusher fx. I never ever heard a good bitcrush effect before.
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