SP404 mk2 production tips/tricks/problem solving/bugs

I’d say roll down the level manually when you want it to fall off. And if that’s crazy complicated in the context of everything else, resample yourself doing it.

Edit: Oh, live jamming. Probably not a good solution then.

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Yeah, I do that, but it’s not conducive to Live jamming. It’s a nice little feature of Koala on the iPad, that it offers a Global release for all your Loop enabled Samples…so when you Stop, they fade nicely…

I was hoping for a similar feature on the SP.

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Really sorry to hear that. Definitely play with curve as well. I’ll try to post my settings later. I originally had it set so that it was impossible to double trigger, but eventually dialed it back because I wanted to be able to leave full velocity off and get some dynamics in my playing. Now I get a pretty rare double trigger because I want it a bit more sensitive, but I can live with that.

I hope it’s just settings for you as I’ve heard other people online say the same thing and they seem to have been able to fix it with adjustments to the settings.

Do whatever makes you feel better about the the instrument and your music. But to help you troubleshoot, it’s unlikely to be a software bug if it only affects one box, and unlikely to be a hardware bug if it affects all pads equally.

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LoopyPro+SP404 MK2

Over the last two weeks I’ve been exploring the nature of combining the SP404 and my iPad. The simple USB-C connection has allowed me to easily capture sounds from synths, drums, and YouTube for use in tracks on the 404. One application that I’ve been using since its release has been LoopyPro…it just binds everything together beautifully.

LoopyPro combines the simplicity of Clip launching with fantastic Loop capture and detection from any source. While capturing perfect loops on the 404 is possible, the simple fact that you can define Clip length and BPM directly in LoopyPro allows me to utilize it as a sort of foundational sample library for music i want to create on the 404. The beauty of this workflow is that I can spend time on the iPad collecting samples and inspiration to either build upon in Loopy or play live and manipulate on the 404.

Right now my workflow looks like the following:

. I load up LoopyPro with an assortment of drums and synths and capture sounds, melodies, pads, drums, fx and the usual suspects in LoopyPro.

. After filling my bucket with sounds, I will either sample direct to the 404, or export the Clips from Loopy Pro and transfer them to the SD Card. I have the 404 routed into a Kingston Nucleum USB-C dongle so the transfer process takes a couple seconds.

. Once I have the sounds on the 404, I go through all the normal steps of Prepping and organizing the samples on my Pads

. After everything has been placed, I then get into that flow state by playing loops, 1 shots and slices depending on where the music is taking me.

This workflow of capturing sounds, and playing them directly on the 404 really allows me to treat it as an instrument that I haven’t encountered on the M+ or MPC. The very nature of all Pads being LIVE and ready to play really lets me be free to explore what I am trying to express with my collection of sounds. In order to capture everything, I feed the audio from the 404 back into the iPad and record my ‘jam’ in AudioShare, and then post to SoundCloud.

Hopefully you’ve read this far…and if so, many thanks. I plan to cover the description above in a few short video clips so be sure to subscribe to my channel, or just stay tuned to this great thread.

Thanks everyone. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any specific questions about what I just wrote (I’ve also done the same workflow on the desktop with Ableton and Bitwig…but I just find the fluidity of LoopyPro to be a better workflow solution for how I like to compose—which is usually in a somnambulistic state of mind if possible).

Cheers,

-echo opera

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I would like to see some tutorials on how you approach this method my sp404 will be delivered next week :blush:

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WOW!

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Thanks for this. I’m definitely going to have another play around with Loopy Pro.

I’ve been getting back into live instruments, particularly guitar, and in my experience loopers are a lot easier to work with (forgiving) than samplers. I’ve always seen them as sort of the missing link for getting instruments to play nice with samplers, and considering how good the integration between iOS and the SP is, I think this might work out well for me.

Cool stuff! I was actually planning to explore this type of synthesis on the mk2 as soon as I have some time :slight_smile:

Did you fix the problem with the pads? I’m having the same problem l tried making changes to the parameters in the trigger settings but nothing worked it must be a bug on some units.

Edit; l just figured it out you have to run a factory reset to all the data make sure you do a backup first.

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Hi guys, anyone ran into this issue?

I found a major gain difference between the usb out and the line out.

Using the same pad playing and recording to my phone. Usb out to phone is much quieter than line out to behringer UCA 202 interface to phone.

I have been posting stuff on insta and was always a bit frustrated that the usb out videos always seem so quiet compared to what I hear in headphones so thought I’d do a side by side test with UCA 202. Also the latter doesn’t let you adjust the gain so it’s definitely tested in similar conditions.

Let me know your thoughts.
Cheers

Also both line out and usb out gains are at 0db on the SP.

Workflow question for the experts:
I don’t use chops, so for my drums I’m getting used to let go of control and resample, most of the times redoing it until it’s right…
But how do you create your bass or synth loops on the sp-404? Do you load or sample a sound, copy it, pitch up/down and resample the loop?

So if I’m getting it right the 404 flow is about building loops then play a track by triggering/layering them and maybe finger drum on top?

I have been just playing a full line from one of my other instruments until it loops. I don’t worry about chopping the end or anything because in the sequencer I play the loop on the first beat and when the pattern loops back around it chokes the sample anyways.

But yeah, that’s what you would do with samples that you’re pitching. One thing you can do is set it so that samples are muted on the master out but not the cue. With this you can play your pattern, press Shift+ Remain and tap all the pads you want to mute and then play your bass line that way you can still hear your beat but you’re only resampling the Bass notes. Then just add that to the pattern.

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Not sure I understand this process, if I press enter CUE mode I can’t resample. I thought I could have a kick/snare loop on cue and resample a bass line while hearing it?

Yeah, it’s a little confusing. Starting with firmware 1.14, you can set (in the utility menu) what outputs pad mutes mute. Main and headphones, or just main.

If you set it so that pad mutes only mute main, then you can pad mute anything you don’t want to resample, but still hear it over headphone out.

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Awesome, it makes a huge difference, thanks!

Is there an official place where I can report bugs for the SP-404MKII?

They just released a new firmware version and basically nothing got fixed, there’s just two changes.

[ Ver.1.15 ] APR 2022
Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug in which selecting the MFX “Tape Echo” would freeze under certain conditions.
  • Fixed a bug in which the MIDI IN jack would freeze when receiving a non-standard signal.

There are still a lot of bugs in this thing, most of them I found within the first two days I had it.
They are easy to find and replicate:

  • Vinyl pitch mode has a limited upper range of +7 when using the pitch parameter. This makes no sense as it has a +12 range when playing chromatically.
  • The pads don’t work in secondary FX pages.
  • Holding a pad > going into a secondary FX page > releasing the pad doesn’t work.
    It holds the pad.
  • Holding the FX screen with remain is buggy, it holds the pads in the mode like remain is still held down.
  • FX settings are not saved on power off, only the secondary pages are.
  • Input BPM doesn’t match project BPM or any other BPM on startup and doesn’t get saved on power off.

There is also some annoying stuff:

  • Moving the end point of a sample also moves the loop point when loop is enabled, even when the loop point is set at the end of the sample.
  • Secondary FX pages can only be reached by pressing the encoder, any other button would have been so much better.
  • 12 Channels for the MIDI implementation is insane, I had to remap it to 4 channels with Bome Midi Translator Pro to make it a bit more usable.
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Try their customer support? Not sure but with the Korg OpSix it helped

New mk2 user here on v1.15 firmware. I’ve run into a bug a couple of times that I can’t reliably reproduce, but the gist is to enter Pattern Select mode, play an existing pattern for a few loops and then press REC. An error message pops up and says “Sequencer memory full” and then the system deletes the pattern. It’s frustrating but also a bit of a landmine because I don’t know how to avoid it. Anyone else experience this?