I think in concept it's a great little device, and maybe the question I should ask first is should I stick with it?
I've played with it for probably more than 12 hours straight yesterday, so that could be a testament to the amount of fun that could be had, but there are somethings that have really griped me with it, to the point of wanting to return it.
First point would be BSP crashed twice yesterday, once saying a message like B_3 or B-p in the LED screen and freezing, 2nd time it just froze completely and wouldn't respond, I'm not sure if I was using it too hard jk, but you'd expect a product to be able to handle it's normal basic operation, especially if it's suppose to be the centre of a live rig, I've gone from Laptop performance to analog to get away from crashes.
Second point would be ties aren't recorded when using the keys, say for instance we are recording and using the chromatic keys, if you were to hold down a note it doesn't record the note off when you release the key, it only records one seq blip.
Third point, and I have to commend your effort on burying this in the manual, "The pads do not map to the scale you selected" just the knobs, which is kinda stupid as I guess you already have a table of numbers for scales, and even the chroma keys are mapped differently to the actual way the notes are laid out, ie bottom row is actually chromatic notes, so you had to rearrange them for the piano layout, damn it just do that with scales as well. Is this a feature Arturia will put in?
Fourth point, Roller/Looper A) Goes out of time with swing, B)sometimes gets lost from original sequence once released and repeats only a fraction of the bar, until you stop start it again, sometimes that doesn't work. Once is bearable for live, stop/start in time to get things back in sync, but twice in a row and it's taking the piss.
Fifth point, there's no obvious way to remap the pads in control mode to a different channel, you'd expect it to work like the other three channels, but if you press chan while on control mode for some reason it seems to spit midi out to the drum channel regardless of the channel/button selected, which isn't ideal if you want to use the pads in ctrl mode for something inside Ableton and don't want to hear the drum sounds from a module plugged in.
Sixth point, Korg Volca Sample doesn't like the clock out with a midi cable or mini jack to mini jack, doesn't work with any of the settings in Midi Control centre 1step, ppq 24, ppq 48. So to anyone out there thinking this is a good way to sync up your Volca boxes, doesn't seem to work with the clock out, also tried sending it drum trigger pulses, trying suggested settings, to equally rubbish results.
Seventh point, the probability function seems to have no regard for triplet timing, not a major issue, seems ok up to around 30% using liberally at the end of phrase, quick up and quick down, but if you're in triplets and go to 100% it's not in triplets anymore.
Eighth point, nearly forgot about this one, when playing the keyboard notes, piano mode or whatever there seems to be a double knock, an extra note on message that double teams my synth and sounds shite 100% of the time.
I road tested this thing, if it's gonna be the centre of a live show you wanna be able to rely on every function to work exactly the way intended, I'm glad I tested it this hard to find out the kinks, I think there might be more flaws in the design than the creators let on and doesn't seem as robust as the marketing makes out.
I'd like to know if the creators are going to address any of these issues, as I don't think I can rely on it's intended functionality. Is it worth sticking around for a firmware update? Or cut my losses and get a refund?