Boss SP-505 Groove Sampling Workstation

the manual.... good... for nothing. I would have to say that the manual is pretty good for children and grandparents alike. needless to say that the manual doesn't say too much about the midi implementation on the 505 (but we'll get to that later)

let's just say that it crams a lot of stuff into a tiny little box. sampling, sequencing, effects, etc. well, that is nice if you want to pretend that you are a producer with everything you need to make tracks, or mabey a beginner. if you ever plan on using this in a midi setup, your sh** out of luck. because the pads cannot be assigned individual midi channels and the note numbers are not what you would think. the only thing that you can really do is assign the note numbers to the onboard sounds on bank one. and im not kidding. unless you have to download new software, but that's poor business. so don't plan on using an external sequencer to trigger your samples. buy an akai s20 if you want to do that.

not too bad i guess. its 16 bit or something, i don't know. but the effects can be tweaked pretty good. best for making dance samples. i would suggest resampling into another sampler though.

nothing to break except for some crappy knobs that seem flimsy. you gotta use the knobs alot, so go ahead, break em.
oh yeah, its cheap plastic. i would laugh if i ever saw anybody giging with a little toy like the 505

uh...no

I would never buy one again, as a matter of fact, i sold mine. and its not like i didn't give it a chance or anything, i kept it for like 2 or 3 months. i don't like much about the 505, it kind of makes me sad. good idea, but overall a crappy product. i wish that it didn't have such stupid midi features.

The layout of this instrument is very well done. The information in the LCD display is simple yet adequate. Almost everything you need is within the reach of a few button pushes. I think though that assigning effects to pads is a hassle, since I love to switch effects a lot and tweak them in real-time.

What I hate is how you have to program sequences. It's totally counter-intuitive and cumbersome for everything but simple beats. I reckon it would take ages to program an extensive drum & bass track on this thing. Points off for that.

This thing has a polyphony of 8 mono voices (or 4 stereo), which is a bit on the low side. Time-stretching loops doesn't work either, since the sounds get distorted very soon. I think the chip in this machine is simply too weak to do such things adequately within a reasonable amount of time and I do wonder why they put it in.

It also should have more outputs than just one, so you can do more post processing. The pads are not velocity sensitive, which can be good (for simply triggering one shot samples) or bad (no dynamics when recording beats).

The MIDI-implementation has some serious quirks that should be ironed out. The SP-505 refuses to retrigger sounds when you play samples from an external MIDI sequencer (like Cubase). It simply chops off the sound without playing it again, leading to gaps in the performance. The internal pattern sequencer doesn't seem to have that problem. This is a true bummer, since I usually program very complex beats with lots of retriggered drum sounds. I wanted to program those beats in Cubase and record them into the SP-505. Now I find myself recording simple beats and tweaking them in the SP-505's awkward internal pattern sequencer, which takes too long for my taste.

It uses a SmartMedia card which in itself is pretty neat. It would have been nicer if it also had a serial or USB port for obtaining data from your PC or Mac.

Boss should ditch the internal presets and sounds, since they are mostly useless and even lead to problems when they can't be loaded (more about that later).

It's a sampler, which means: you get out what you put in. I do get a hunch though that the sound quality is not quite up to par, especially on a big system. There are some pretty neat effects for the experimentalists among us; I personally love to twiddle around with the tape echo and pitch shifter, since they can lead to sounds reminiscent of Autechre and Squarepusher.

The case is not as sturdy as, for example, a Yamaha SU700's. This may not have to lead to problems, since the machine is fairly light. You shouldn't drop it though (which is usually a bad idea for electronic equipment anyway).

I do wonder how long the twisting knobs for the effects will last, since I use them a lot.

One of the first things I did was upgrading the the OS to the latest version. This was a BAD idea. The upgrading procedure (though MIDI) did not only erase all user data (as mentioned in the README file), but all presets as well. Since the SP-505 will not load without its presets, it was useless right away. I spent the next week trying to get it to work again, which led to quite an extensive e-mail correspondence with Roland support in Belgium. Finally they sent me a set of preset files that I had to put on a SmartMedia card to load in the SP-505. The only problem was that I needed to make the card write-proteced, for which you need a special kind of sticker that I couldn't get anywhere. Finally the store where I bought the machine offered me a card that I could make write protected, so now the thing is up and running again.

The lesson is: DON'T upgrade your SP-505 unless you really need to. And *if* you do, make sure that you save the presets as well on a SmartMedia card with write-protection capability. I was quite satisfied with Roland support though, even though it took a while before the problem was solved.

It's a neat machine for people who want a basic phrase sampler (like me). I usually just put some self-made loops on it, so I can use them with my band (I found that lugging a feeble laptop around is *not* a good idea). I plan to buy me some better stuff (like a Yamaha RS7000) for solo performances, where I will probably use the SP-505 as a simple beat machine. The MIDI-implemetation does need a serious overhaul though... and I do hope that those Boss guys read this review ;)

For the money I *would* expect some better features though, esp. more polyphony and more outputs. I think the former can be achieved by ditching the presets and getting an OS upgrade.

Very easy to use, no need for the manual really, other than for the MIDI implementation chart and a few similar geeky issues.
Very basic visual interface, which in my opinion is a plus, as it helps using your ears in making music, rather than clicking a mouse.

By now we all know what are the SP-505's features.
I will focus instead on what the SP-505 lacks in terms of features, and what I would like to see in a SP-505 MKII, or 606, or whatever the suckers at Boss will bring out in 6 months:

1. limited poliphony: currently it's 8 mono voices at 44.1Khz, reduced to 4 stereo voices. I would like to see this doubled.

2. Preset sounds and patterns: erase them. They are useless. I'd rather have more internal memory to allow, say, more poliphony. More on this topic in the overall rating cathegory.

3. Pads: the feel is not bad, but they are not dynamic. For serious drum programming you'd need and external pad controlled or MIDI keyboard.

4. Effects: basic but, well, effective. I'd like to see a pad-assignable send & return feature, and at least some multieffect capabilities (other than through re-sampling).

5. D/A converters: in my opinion they're not very good. Although the sampling specs. are up to par (16 bit, 44.1Khz), the analog output does not sound as good as it should.

Overall, this machine's features are adequate for the price.

The preset sounds and patterns are bad. Unfortunately, they are protected so you cannot erase them and use these banks for your own samples.
The sampled sounds are good. Not "clinically" good, but adequate in a groove/dance context.
I've had the best results by sampling an input signal through a good tube preamp/compressor.

The system appears to be quite stable. Extensive testing revealed no major glitches, other than a hiccup while setting the start and end marks on a long re-sample at maximum zoom resolution.
The great advantage of hardware equipment is its op. sys. stability, compared to any software setup.

Mechanically, it is certainly not sturdy enough to withstand a typical live DJ schedule.
There again, if the SP-505 were meant to be used that way, we would see a totally different machine: rack-mount, metal casing, recessed knobs etc.

Roland/Boss is a big corporation, perhaps better run than most, but don't expect much help here.

As a musician, this review brings me to say a few words on equipment, reliability, creativity, manifacturer's credibility and industry response.

1. An electric guitar could be of great or extremely bad quality, and anything in between. At both extremes it still is, however, a musical instrument. The same applies to the majority of traditional, acoustic or electro-acoustic musical instruments.

A "non traditional" device, say such as a sequencer/sampler, follows instead a different paradigm.
Besides quality, it can be conceived as a musical instrument or a toy.
A sequencer/sampler, a drum machine, a synth etc. is basically a device which, according to its builder's intention and capability, falls as a dot somewhere on the "Quality (good-bad) / Use (toy - musical instrument) matrix.

The SP-505 in my opinion lies somewhere on the upper left "good/toy" quadrant. It is good, and it is quite close to being a musical instrument.

2. The Akai MPC 2000XL is a professional musical instruments. It was designed, executed and marketed as such by Akai.
It looks like a Russian military palm pilot, it is heavy, it comes with no sounds, and it's been technologically obsolete for the past 3 years.
Nevertheless, many people have built a career on it, used MPC's sell for a little less than new ones, and it is still the standard for this type of equipment.

The SP-505 is Roland/Boss' answer to the MPC, filtered through Roland's executives' business vision. At least this is what Roland tells its dealers.

The key issue here is Roland's credibility as a manufacturer of real, professional musical instruments, hence the comparison with the MPC.

The SP-505 is not marketed to musicians. A musician is not impressed by a demo song, and doesn't need useless preset sounds sampled from older equipment he/she probably already owns.
A musician won't appreciate a compact size, which makes the unit unsuitable for rack mounting.

Nevertheless, this is the SP-505, 100% Japaneze flawless business model, all bells and whistles and cuteness, "groovy" and flashing, best consumed before the next NAMM.
Put an MPC and Hello Kitty's full catalog in a blender and you'll get the SP-505.

Finally, all said, let me go back to my Casio VL1 and make some serious music...

It's very, veeeery easy to use, but there is some litle things the manual don't explain well (or not at all), but, whatever, it's really simple to use!

8 notes of polyphony, no key-sensitive for the pads and it comes with 2,6 minutes of sampling memory.
But if you buy a 128mg smartmedia card, you will have 66 min of sampling in mono and 33 in stereo!!!
You can import ".wav" files from PC or ".aiff" from Mac, those is VERY VERY important because that way you can import from Sample-CDs without having to purchase a "big" sampler like Akai mpc-2000. But to do so you must buy a smartmedia card and a card reader for the pc (this is what i've done). Otherwise you can sample directly by the digital-in, connecting your sound card digital-out to it, this way you will have no corruption of the sound.
I wouldn't explain the effects because the other users explains it very well. I only want to say they are GREAT!!! Even if you decide to don't use samples for your music, you will have a complete multi-effector wich can be usefull for voice, mastering(i love the vinyl simulator!) and guitar. For the guitar, you have all the pedals you could wish in one litle machine! just plug the guitar, choose "distortion" or "wah-wah" and thats done!!!

Via the midi-out and connecting a keyboard, you will have key-sensitive feature, but no after-touch.

The pitch function is very cool, it takes a sample of your choice and make 12 samples varying the pitch the way to use it directly like a sampling-keyboard. But i would wish it could make it for more than one octave, in order to use it via an external keyboard... it's one of the 2 bad things of this wonderfull sampler.

The other it's the tempo strech. I'm sorry, but Boss think we are stupid or something else! The time-stretch sucks A LOT! it's impossible to use it EVEN in a live sesion with friends because of the POOR QUALITY and the strange noisy effect it do!
And, be sure that Boss is conscient of the problem, because you can find an option in the System configuration that makes the sampler recognize it's own standard samples in order to do a better time-strech for the demos!!!!!
This way, even if you test it in a store, you will think it works quite good, but, when you buy it and use it with your own samples, it SUCKS! The auto-tempo sucks too! so, if you thought of this sampler to use this function, forgive it!

However, I have a very good impression of this sampler, because, even if the time functions are useless, it doesn't make it worth.
The sp-505 is a sampler with TONS of effects and VERY GOOD QUALITY OF SOUND, and with a smartmedia card you can record 66 minutes of audio and you can import directly in Wav format.
You can even use it as a multi-track recorder with those time of sampling!!!!

The sp-505 looks like a toy, feels like a toy, smells like a plastic toy... but it's REALLY NOT A TOY! IT HAS REALLY PROFESSIONAL FEATURES!!!

The sp-505 is designed for dance music, but I use it to do New Metal and you can use it to do whatever you want to do.
44.100 Hz at 16 bits (with the low-fi effect, you can down your samples to 4 bits and 4.000 Hz)
The sound is impressive and I never thought it could sound so well for that price!
But, keep on mind that, even if it can do one octave of notes with a sample (wich it do very well even with electric guitar!) you will never be able to do a whole song with just that...
It's a SAMPLER not a sampling-keyboard, and it does far well his work, don't try to do complex music with it, you will waste your time, purchase a Synth for that work or a used MC-505 or even a MC-303 and plug an external keyboard on it, it will be powerfull enough to do Techno, trance or Goa (for Goa, use the 505) if you don't have the money for an e-mu and a computer with Cubase.

Well, this is a bad point for the sp-505.
The sp-505 is build in plastic and, even if it's good-looking, it wouldn't resist a DJ live or a gig. I'd never use it without a backup.
But for home use or even studio use, it's good.
The pads are very good-looking too, but be carefull, I don't think they could resist a daily use making music in a pub...
This is probably the reason of the low-cost of the sp-505, it's not build to resist along years...

(for gigs and lives, use a Boss sp-303 wich is more resistant and less expensive but less powerfull)

I've heard very bad story of Roland and, because Roland bought Boss, you can imagine the rest... but i don't really know.
(but i think i will know in few years because of the reliability of the sp-505... ;-) )

If I lost it or were stolen, I think i will break a bank and purchase an Akai MPC-2000 XL... but I really love this unit and I think i would purchase it again one day, just for the fun it gives me!

I give it a 9 because of the enormous possibilities of this machine and the quality of the sound. I don't go up to 10 because of the time-strech and the restrictive pitch function.

I baught a Demo Unit off ebay for 300, so It should be version .98 1.0. There are some decent banging samples to work with. Its very easy to switch to any 16 preset sequence or 100 user sequnce as is easy to switch between 5 Preset Sample banks, 16 User Sample banks (x16backup), and 16 Card Sample Banks (x16 backup)Its very easy to find the effect yyour after too, and everything can be sync to midi!
I do wish that effects section would make it easyer to select witch parts are EFFECTS on/OFF instaid of ALL BANK on AND all Bank off SW, (But you can turn off effect on any sample at anytime.)
Sampleing is a breaze! Laoding Samples is just as easy but takes a lil bit of time to load. Resampling is also sorta time consuming, but this is one of its most very important features!

There is 8 Sample Polyfon, and thats more than enough for most situations with this machine. Too bad the pads dont transmit velocity or aftertoutch control, because editing each samples velocity manuly can be quite time consuming.

Theres also a clumsy Wave Editor, yes its visual and all, but setting loop points manuly and trimming unwanted waprts out is a long process, and there is a limited undo, so if you accedently deleted a certain part of the sample that you need, its biebie forever (Unless you resample it of course :) Do yuorself a favor and do your wav editing on puter, then transfer it to your 505. Other than that, this thing is really fun to use.

The effects range from Analog Tape Delay (ptchshift) to Digital Delay (No pitchshift), to Awesome Distortion, to Analog filter, to flanger and the list goes on, but most of the effects are subtle compressor/gate/EQ ish type, witch is very good for shaping your sound to resample!!! You can also Use it as an effects box, its possible to send the effects only to the input (theres 3 of em!)
You also get 3 knobs to conrol all the effects,, there arnt more than 3 edit parimaters for each effect, witch is good (or bad depending how you look at it._

You can resample from 11kh;22k;;44k respectfuly for Phono/Vocal/or CDQuality Type sounds. resampling is Easy to do, but the process takes some time,(The loading --> resample --> back to pad part) you are able to tighten up all the samples with compression and eq or whatever you like! resamples is also good if you wanna say, Delay a distorted Autopan sampled or vice versa.

There are only two outputs, and this is a shame, because id like to assign samples to at lease 3 sub group outputs. So what do I do? i assign all my Vocal/Sourse samples to left side, and Drumish loop, effect loop, and Hits to the right side to overcome this problem. This way I can process say, a drum part seperate from a vocal sample part.

Theres also a fature that lets you slipe your sample or loop or whatever, and I do enjoy its randomness, this automaticly Splits a sample into as many as 32 bits, and you can recontruct those bits in the sequencer and record it as another sample, lotza creative potential here.

note that the 2 RCA outputs have a much hotter signal that most 4th inch connections, there is a mild distortion in the signal at full volume (witch may be desireable at times).

It does support up to 128 megs smart media card, witch I happen to have :), so I can have as many as 32 (x10 backupx16) sample banks with 16 samples each, so you have up to 512 samples at any given moment after card loads one of the backup banks. there is about 3 or 4 Minutes Hi Fi time Standard!, witch is not bad at all! with 128 meg card, I got over 40 minutes of Hi Fi Sampleing time and 500+ minutes of Lofi Time!

Midi is so-so, theres no hardcore sequencing going on here, the sequencing mode is like a psudo MC-505, XP-50ish, without the NOTE# and CC/NRPN Information. Recording is a snap, you cant record the effects, and there are 4 parts per pattern.
So you got 100 Patterns of any time signature and leignth with 4 parts, so you can make it a 400 singe pattern mode sequncer. I havnt figured out how to make it sequence other gear other that Pad Bank note #'s, But im sure it can transmit loops and NOTE# to any midi channel if you want it to, but it wont record and NRPN or CC info., Other than that, sequencer is vwery easy to sync with external gear. Theres also a Dedicated retrigger button to start phrase over again and again and again, lotsa fun with this one!!!

The preset Drums Are awesome, Im impressed, I'd use them, theres a 909 Sample bank, 808 Sample Bank, and Rock Rap DNB drum Sample banks. They have some real Bass samples!
I really like the effects on this one, Kudos to Roland!, errr BOSS!!! this thing will sound as good as the effort you put into it, just remember my motto, "The more shit you put in this thing, the more shit you put out!" So make sures its good shit and not bad shit!
And another thing, Mr SP-505 doesnt like Velocity, or Aftertoutch.
But give a 9 cuz of mild distortion at full volume. (Yes I did cheak if my mixer fader was too high or my gain or eq was too high)

I like this thing, and i think it is dependable, its very sturdy and stong, and like all roland stuff, built to last.

When you mess with Roland Support, you'll eather hit or miss, I mean, some people got idiots for customer support that costed people lotsa $ while other fortunate people got the smart guys. Roland, you need to fire all them idiots!

Id buy it again, Its not a bad unit, I use it live, and I did play with Su200, witch I didnt like, Sp 202/303, witch I used to own but didnt like, and korg Electribe S, witch I liked alot, but I think the SP 505 is a much better value for the $.

I think I am using version 1. There is a version 1.01 available on the Roland website (www.rolandgroove.com), but I have yet to upgrade, and am not sure what benefits this will bring.

The presets are mostly 808 and 909 hits, plus some intrument pads, which are OK.
The manual is pretty good - it uses a series of "learn by examples" to get you into using the machine.

It takes almost no time at all to be playing back samples and patterns, constructing patterns, and creating and editing samples. The interface is pretty easy to work out, although I am not sure it is as 'performance-oriented' (i.e. sitting next to a turntable in a nightclub) as Roland intended it to be.

Polyphony is 8. I haven't approached this yet, and initially thought I was having trouble with it, as I was finding that trying to add some samples to a part (four parts in a pattern) there was some strange sound degradation. However, it was actually the samples stretching to fit the BPM. Thanks to mothra for the note about sample mode (Phrase and Single).

The keyboard is sixteen rubber pads, that I fear will soon lose their markings. They seem a little sticky and unstable to me (annoying when you are using them to enter notes in realtime).

There are a great variety of effects. Each effect is adjustable in realtime by three knobs, which control three parameters. The reverb is excellent. Effects can be assigned to a single pad, or to a few pads, or an entire bank BUT only one effect can be used at a time. Therefore if you want to have more than one effect on a sample you need to get used to resample.

BPM sync - haven't used this much at all yet, BUT be warned - the timestretching capabilities of this machine are not good - nowhere near the specified range IMO.

Expansion = SmartMedia. I suggest you get a Verbatim SmartDisk Flash Path SmartMedia Reader, which is a floppy you can put your SmartMedia (3.3v) cards into and then into your PC's floppy drive. The machine supports AIFF/WAV files. There appears to be confusion about what size SmartMedia the machine supports - up to 64Mb or 128Mb? There is also a suggestion that since 55 minutes is a lot of sampling, you could quite easily fill up all the pads before you ever get to 55 minutes, and so a 64Mb card may be wasted.

MIDI - In and Out. Haven't used this at all. One day...

Sequencer - Pattern based. Anyone who's used a Roland drum machine will know what's going on here. Patterns then form songs (20). The preset patterns are mostly sucky hip-hop. Destroy them. The micro-edit feature is good. 15000 events.

Sampling = extremely easy to use. Just set the source, set the recording level, and go. I use the feature that starts sampling once the source hits a certain level. Excellent. You can edit the start and end points, without losing the unused section of the wave, or you can also delete the unused portion to free up memory. This is excellent.

Realness of instruments? Doesn't matter - it's a sampler.
I sense that there is a lot to this box, and I think to get the most out of it I will really have to get into the BPM sync and the Micro Edit function on the sequencer. Oh, and dump in loads of sample.

The sound quality in the most memory intensive mode is pristine. What a great word. Pristine.

Plastic and aluminium construction. I suspect that once you approach the limits of its memory it might freeze up a bit, but I haven't got there yet. Don't drop it.

I'm just scratching the surface - there is a lot to this machine.
Like I said - the only downer is the time-stretching, which from my initial thoughts, sucks majorly. But if you are using a lot of gated samples in Single mode to construct your patterns, this won't matter.

The Chop and Pitch functions are good too. You can spread a sample out over one octave (13 semitones) - there are 2 banks dedicated to this. The Chop function will take a sample (e.g. drum loop) and slice it up over a maximum 32 pads.

I chose this because at the price (on sale - post-Xmas) it was the best buy, and a great intro to hardware sampling. I think that it has good expansion capabilities too, in the sense that if down the road I bought something like an RM1x, it would sit nicely with that as a great sampler. As a sequencer I think it will prove to be a little limited, but for the price...

this sampler is pretty easy to use/figure out. its pretty basic with alot of flashy extras. there are a few things that the manual does not mention that i think are very important for first timers or hobbiests: there are 2 modes(play types) that the sample can be in 'phrase' or 'single'. in phrase mode the sample is automatically stretched to the tempo or the patterns tempo this is mentioned in the manual but if you have a single sample that just needs to be played out when you sequence it it must be in single mode wich is not even touched in the manual. now since i have had to wrap my brain around this with other gear it just makes a sort of sense but i had to calm a friend down who bought one of these and talk him out of taking it back beacause he thought it was broken. haha. anyway its not that clear in the manual. another thing is the 'micro editor' wich is step sequence mode. you can just jump into it from the pattern main page and skip the real-time sequencing and save alot of time, anyway editing samples is easy and cool and the presets are just 808 909 drum sounds with a few basic synth sounds to maybe get you started. mostly just to give you an idea of what this thing is capable of. very spare wich i liked but others may be disappointed in.

it has a max polyphony of of 8 mono 44khz samples. the built in effects are great! if anything the reverb is too good! i was just getting used to all those s#!%%y reverbs that sound clangy, oh well. maybe now i will be more sophisticated. haha. resampling is easy and fun with the effects. it takes smart media with a max of 66 minutes @ 44khz mono(w/128mg card)! that is alot but if you have whole pieces of songs to remix it is much needed. the 2outs are phono wich sound pretty good, the ins are phono, coax and optical digital in. this is a strange but cool feature. midi in out wich syncs nicely with my other stuff. the sample pads are big and chunky and all flashy with the red lights, nice, the other buttons feel ok and don't seem cheap the interface on a whole is nice and save alot of time. the backlit lcd screen i like and is much better on the eyes than most interfaces. the sequencer is pretty basic. max 15,000 events with quarter, eighth, sixteenth, & thirty second note quantisation with triplets and sixty forths. and its easy to use wich is good for getting things done. the step sequencer seems more like yamahas step sequencer wich is cool. it has alot of other features wich i didn't mention but are pretty good. the chop function is actually usable and a cool idea. kind of like a hardware recycle.

the sound is very good. i thought it might be okaaay but i was really surprised at how good it is. it is definitely more geared toward dance music but all you heads could blast with this thing too. i cannot stress enough how good the effects are. they sound good and alot of em' are really useful for resampling. it doesn't have velocity sensitive buttons or after touch but after sequence the samples you can set an accent level wich is easy and useful for more expression.

it seems very dependable so far but i haven't had it for that long so i guess i'll see.

if it were lost or stolen i would buy it again. it is definitely worth what i paid for it. i have been playing for 8 years and have had almost all of the phrase samplers since day one. this is probably the best of them. this is a great roland gem in their sea of groovebox s#!t. its like the sp808's sampler, effects and interface with the dr-202's sequencer minus the d-beam plus 4 more notes of polyphony. its pretty cool and i basically chose to buy this one because it has every thing built in that i need to make tracks. anything it lacks i can import from my computer via the smartmedia. i do wish it could resample while the sequencer plays so you could say construct a beat with its sequencer then resample that beat and chop that. that would be very useful but it isn't really a problem. it has made me make a few tracks but it really cuts alot of editing corners for me that i think you really don't need to be bothered with. this is a good machine. i wouldn't recommend it for beginers like the es-1 or the su10/su200. if you have some detail you need worked out, need alot of sampling time, need good effects with a little patience this is a great machine. its less of a toy than the other phrase samplers.