Howdy everyone. I just preordered the Roland SP-404 mkII which I'm pretty excited about. I haven't owned a 404 before but I have a SP202 and SP808 so I know the Roland sampler workflow pretty well, even though each sampler is a little different. The thing these roland samplers don't have is proper step sequencing. I also have a Keystep Pro which I love, but I mostly use that for my 4 hardware synths. I was thinking about getting a BSP soon since they are pretty affordable on the used market, and I would mostly use this for samplers and drum machines. I will have 2 samplers and 1 cheapo drum machine, perfect for the three channels of the BSP. From researching the BSP and comparing it to the KSP, I see there are special strengths in each one which is awesome, they are a little different.
I guess I have a couple questions to those of you who know the BSP well.. have any of you used it to sequence the older versions of the 404? If so did it work well for you? Do you use it on the drum channel or the two melodic channels? I looked at the SP404mkII manual today for midi info, and I guess it's set up so that each bank of 16 pads is it's own midi channel, channels 1-10 respective to banks A-J. So that's a limitation because each midi channel can only access 16 samples at a time. However, that could also be cool because you could also have 3 separate and wildly different sequences going to 3 separate banks, all using the same sampler. One of the banks could be bass lines and chords, one bank drums, and one bank weird samples or ambient stuff, for instance. Also if I buy another quadra-thru box, I could in theory do this and also have my drum machine and another sampler controlled by the same sequences that's controlling banks B and C on the 404, for instance. Then I can bring them in and out on a mixer. The possibilities are pretty wild for a dawless setup like this. Any of you guys tried it this way? I'm concerned about the midi notes lining up properly for the drum channel, but I'm guessing you can change the receiving note range on the midi control center thing.
Also, a weird question for when I maybe get an analog drum machine or some modular gear... Let's say on the drum channel, can it output midi and the drum trigger outputs at the same time? Or does it have to be one or the other for each channel? Same for the sequencer 1&2 channels, can you output the cv and the midi simultaneously? I can't remember how it works on the KSP. Anyway, if you're interested in throwing in your thoughts, thank you very much for your time.
