Roland SP-808 Groove Sampler

The SP-808 easy to use concerning sampling and triggering loops, but there is so much that this little box can do. The manual could have used more laymans terms, but it's cool. For the price.. It can kick the crap out of an mpc, if you have a sequencer already.

This box can only play four phrases at a time. This however is not limiting. All the effects are DJ oriented, they sound professional. I purchased the origianl SP-808, It came with the digital and scsi expansion card already on board. With the extra outputs and scsi, there is nothing you can't remix with this thing

The sp-808 does not come with sounds on board per say, but it does ship with a zip with guitar and synth loops. They really weren't my taste, but they might be helpful for someone who is producing techno, or some other electronic genre. The sp-808 does not have velocity and aftertouch on the pads. but connect a midi controller and you're set.

I've dropped this thing many times. You can depend on it. It is built very solidly. You can use it during a gig without a backup

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I choose the sp-808 because I wanted a portable digital multitrack that could do a little more than just record tracks. I like the remix functions, and for the price.. It's a steal

This thing is great for what it seems designed for which is phrase sampling. Once you get over the intiial learning curve I found it very easy to sample sounds/phrases assign them to the pads and then jam. Moving samples around from pad to pad is simple with a clipboard function. Triming samples by ear is very quick, the machine lets you hit one button to play the last bit of sample before the loop point, to trim you just keep hitting this play button whilst listening to the loop and altering the loop point with the dial. I also have a dedicated real sampler and this is way quicker for this.

Routing of tracks I found a bit harder but overall very ergonomic and lets you get into the flow of making music.

Quick phrase sampling with 4 tracks that you can arrange phrases in step time or real time. Timestretch samples especially longer ones is very cool, ver ergonomic you can go into timestretch mode then without leaving go from sample to sample altering each one. I find these types of facilty very much make or break gear if a facility is buried under submenus or if you have to stuff around too much to get to it- You can alter sequence the timing after with nudge etc. Also bounce tracks down. I used to just jam away with loops and things sampled or which I sequenced, lay down one track, jam over the top then you can resample from the combined tracks if youve made something funky, effects amusing but I didnt get into so much I used it more for combining bits of rhythms.
Sequencer allows step and real time arrange of phrases but this is not really a note sequencer like the MPC2000 good for arrangement on a phrase level.
Max 4 sample polyphony so you have to bounce tracks once this is exceeded, expandable ouputs 4 i think and scsi for connect to zip.
Now ex model with 250mb seems like a hell of a lot of sample time to play with.
Call me shallow but its also v nice to look at I think

Sampler what goes in mostly comes out. Use for rhythm based music i think, but maybe you could use it to arrange songs if you have your phrases already played/sequenced. Sound quality I thought "good enough", sometimes timestrech has a ringing artifact when higher amounts used, you could think positively and call this a "feature" but is sounds a bit discordant sometimes. Effects of the mangling school not much subtlety which may be your thing.
Not velocity sensiive but cando from external keyboard

Yes no problems

No idea

Mine was stolen and Ive bought an MPC 2000xl. If i was rockefeller id have both as they each have aspects that are unique. I found 808 great for experimenting its v ergonomic and throwing together loops and phrases with so much sample time you can just use it like a 4 track and then edit later. But 808 limits on micro timing means you cant really progtram beats. I think to arrange songs beyond a few bars I found I was losing the plot and preferred to transfer to computer sequencer to arrange the big picture, but for coming up with short bursts of funky rhythms I think this is v cool machine for me. mpc is more for making beats and sequencing external modules, also in mpc you can have 64 tracks going then use the "track mute" function to drop tracks in and out as it plays - this is cool for arranging/jamming on mpc - as you can see different ways of working, try before you buy and see which suits what you are trying to achieve

My 808 has been upgraded to EX software - well worth the upgrade, but get the manual. This machine is very deep ! After six months od use I am still finding new things. You need to spend alot of time getting to know this box, to get the most out of it. It can be frustrating at first !

The effects are fantastic, you can totally mangle a sound / loop with these. Very hands on and fast to reasample with the FX.

The 4 samples at one time limitation is a worry at first, but the key here is to resample.

MIDI implementation is fine for what the box is designed to do. It sync's to logic perfectly, and the built in mono synth can be played via a keyboard or sequencer.

The step sequencer is a bit fiddly at first, bit is a great way to line up samples for effecting, eq and bouncing.

Pad to track is a great feature, you can to a live mix to another recorder etc.

If the moneys tight I would recommend this to get started into electronic music for sure, it has all the basic bases covered.

What you put in comes out - sort of ! It uses compression, but its very good, hard to hear a difference from cd's etc. Also it has a pleasing natural bass boost.

The effects as i said are great, and sync to the tempo maps.

The synth and sample pads respond to velocity from external controllers only.

Never crashed

In Australia very good. I rang them and asked about upgrading my classic 808. The guy emailed me the upgrade and sold me the ex manual.

If it were lost or stolen, I would look around first to see what Roland have replaced it with ! They seem to upgrade products fast !
The great thing with this box is that it is very fast to get stuff happening, unlike trad samplers where you have to do a lot of data entry etc. Its a very creative box, so I would probabaly buy it again, as theres not much around at the moment that compares.

This is the most versitile piece of equipment i have ever owned. Editing is a breeze because it tells you the BPM of the sample. The manual is typical roland gibberish but it can be helpful sometimes.

4 track digital recorder/sequencer, doesn't sound like much but you can just bounce the tracks back and forth with little or no noticeable sound degredation. I've done 16 tracks this way and it still sounded great. Built in DSP synth is cool but you gotta tweak the crap out of it. built in effects are fabulous, but that's a matter of taste. Make sure to get the I/O expansion board to link to a computer, console, etc.

Pads play perfectly. Selling this as a dance machine is selling it short. It is stuck in there with the "groove approved" Crap factories, but this machine can do anything from soundscaping to track making.

I would (and do) depend on this machine to work perfectly. I have had no problems whatsoever and no complaints either.

Nevr dealt with roland.

If somebody stole this from me, I would hunt them down and wear thier skin as a trophy. I value this machine so much that I just bougt a second one in case something happens to the first one.

This machine is the most intuitive sampler I've worked with. Sample editing features are all designed based on musical concepts, like tempo, beats, etc, and you don't have ever to deal with the miliseconds BS (You can, though, if you want to)
I've done a lot of tweaking and reprograming on the fly, live, during a gig, things I would never consider trying with other gear.

Again, this is such a cleverly designed machine!
The concept of having a four-track, a phrase sampler and a great effects module (even its limited synth and analogue step-sequencer)integrated inone unit is awesome. You can do incredible things with everything running in sync.
I miss a real-time time-stretching and pitch-shifting "Acid-like" capability.
But, as with all Roland samplers, it's really stupid that their file system is not compatible with any other system in the world. Transfering files from your computer to the 808 is a drag.

Triggering samples from the pads work flawlessly; The on-board effects are the best, but having to switch pages to tweak the three knobs is confusing. I would rather have all the six parameter knobs available all the time.
The I-Beam controller is fun to use, and very good to impress chicks... I was afraid it wouldn't work well under stage lighting, but I had no problems so far.

It's very reliable.
The only problem I had was when we did a song using it's four track as a long playback, and for no apparent reason the unit would crash. I still don't know if it was due to stage vibrations (this was a very loud heavy song)or possibly the zip disk was corrupted, but fact is I had to actually boot up again.

It's an amazing piece of equipment. It helped me develop a very personal sound as a keyboard player, and it is very easy and intuitive, so you can be really fluid while creating.

This item is relatively easy to use. This is my first sampler/four track unit. I figured out almost every aspect of sampling (and editing them) without looking at the manual once. The effects were the same way. Look up how to turn them on and away you go! A lot of great choices and many (up to 6) editable parameters for each effect. I haven't looked through the manual yet. It's rather large, but I'm sure it's very informative.

It takes Zip disks which are a great way to store your info. Each disk holds 24 minutes of samples/tracks. The only problem is that you can not transfer samples from one disk to another without another Zip drive connected via SCSI. The unit is laid out in an easy to understand fashion and all of the buttons/knobs are labeled. It would be nice to be able to use more than 4 samples at once, but for such an affordable unit sacrifices had to be made. Also the effects affect every sound that you have playing, which can get annoying.

This unit offers a wide variety of effects (I think 100) so almost every type is covered.

I would play live without a backup. I have seen many bands use this piece of equipment in their touring arsenal. It's pretty heavy duty (although I wouldn't want to drop it and see what happens).

I would buy it again, but probably the newer EX version. I've been creating music for 1 1/2 years and I own the MC 505, a Yamaha PSR6, and a Nord Lead 2.

Ohhh..... Do not purchace this item unless have a good deal of time to learn the nonsensical layout and editing methods. I've spent as much time with the manual as with the sampler (and i've used this thing for 3 months).

More features than you'll ever find use for.

Pretty unique. Also, the medium is very bass friendly. I work with very bass-heavy material and it seems to get richer and tighter when it's run through the SP-808 vs many other digital formats. The mixing board EQ is quite harsh though.

Sometimes fussy. It tends to stall with even as little as 3 tracks of recorded samples playing at once (i have the origional black model).

Not the best place to get in-depth questions answered.

Major pain in the @$$. Confusing and rarely handles everything that i need it to. However, it has great sound and features.

This machine is extremely easy to use and very intuitive. Plug it in, put a zip disk in, hit a button and the sample plays back. Simple, hey?
The manual is typical roland - really good for basic operation and really bad for technical aspects. I still haven't figured out the four-track, but I've got a VS-1680 so it's not like I would ever use it anyway :-)

Polyphony is four samples at once. You can add one insert effect that is in serial with the main outs, so it's applied to all the samples that are playing back. The effects are really cool - you can do quite a bit with them and almost all of them will sync to MIDI. This machine can be completely controlled by MIDI, which is great if you want to use a sample as a drum beat or a loop.

Each sample can be looped, triggered to play when you press the button, or only play when the button is held down. The big red buttons are super easy to see in the dark (because they're lighted) and clearly labelled so that you won't press the wrong one. You can categorize the samples into 256 banks of 16 samples each, but at 44.1 kHz in stereo the ZIP disk will only hold about 20 minutes. If you sample in mono it's about 40 minutes.

ZIP disks rock! Cheap media that has a good capacity! Woo hoo! I wouldn't bother with the SCSI option for an external ZIP drive. It's too expensive just to back up samples (if you're really serious into sampling then you'd have an e-mu or an Akai S5000/S6000).

I'd like to see a waveform viewer; it would make editing the samples alot easier than just doing it through headphones or monitors.

The D-Beam controller is practically useless. It's neat to impress your friends with the ability to control samples with your hand, but that's it. I've never really used it for more than 10 minutes.

The onboard synth is really, really cheesy. It's not even cool old-school (like a Yamaha DX7); it's just cheesy. Don't think that you could incorporate this in any way.

I write industrial music and I sample from movies, tv, and lots of drones. It works really well for this. It's kind of a pain to loop drum beats and even then it's hard to get them so they don't sound out of sync so I don't do that. But just for sampling vocals and phrases it works really well and I can't complain.

I've played live with it about 15 times and it has NEVER let me down. This machine is well built and has a great, intuitive operating system.

I emailed Roland with some questions and they got back to me right away, so I'm pretty happy with their customer support.

I'd buy it again in a second over a rackmount - it's easier to use and you can use it standalone. It might not have all the features of a $4000 Akai but all you need to do is plug it in and start making some music.

I think one of the best things about this piece of kit is that you can start to use it within minutes but that there is real depth to the functionality which you can just pick up over time. I didn't use the 4-track recorder for 6 months because I was developing my skills in the sampling/effects sections. That was one of the things that attracted me to this sampler rather than the rackmounted jobs.

The manual, it has to be said, is badly written - a great deal is lost in the (all too obvious) translation.

It is an incredibly flexible machine and any gripes about functionality would have to be petty. I use it for straight sampling and as a 4-track recorder. It has a stack of screens and menus which are uncomplicated and useful. I haven't bought the expansion board as it is expensive and fairly limited - especially when you realise that there is a PC/Mac utility that converts the Roland compressed audio to wav files. No need for that digital out for mixing on a computer.

There is a built in mono synth, which is a bit of a laugh, but no more. Other than that, of course, it doesn't have any sounds of its own. I know most people use it for remixing and dance-based production, but I think that's selling it short. The last project I did was working with a vocalist who wanted to put a demo together. I sampled her vocals and my backing parts and then resampled the vairous elements with EQ/compression/reverb and other effects as appropriate. In short, I used it like a VS840. Everyone was really impressed with the results and there was very little deterioration is quality, even with 4 or 5 bounces in some cases.

This section wouldn't be complete without a mention of the D-Beam controller. When I first got the machine, I did mess around with it for a while and had a bit of fun. I haven't used it in the last 6 months.

The thing is pretty solid all round and if I gigged, I don't think I'd have a problem using it.

Nothing has gone wrong with it in the 18 months I've had it, although I've only used it at home.

I've never dealt with Roland because nothing has ever gone wrong. In any event, I always try and use web forums to resolve any issues.

In my humble opionon, if a piece of equipment is easy to use, you can channel more of your energy into being creative. I can't imagine picking up an Akai or EMU rack mounted job after using this because it is packed full of excellent, high quality features and is incredibly easy to get to grips with.

Since I bought this, Yamaha have brought out a similar product which I would certainly take a look at if this one was stolen. But with the drop in price of this machine since I bought it, I wouldn't bet against the fact that I'd end up with a new SP-808.

Pretty intuitive---once you perform a function, it's easy to get back to it again, which is more than I can say for the manual which skips around alot and calls out or highlights things in a very inconsistent manner---you can't skip through things---what you may have thought was an extraneous tip could really be a vital step in your procedure! If you do follow it word-for-word, things do work out!

Polyphony is covered in other reviews, but I'll reiterate that with resampling of pads and non-degenerative track bouncing I've built huge sounding pieces(maybe TOO huge!) The effects are outstanding and VERY editable. The "virtual" synth sounds fat and is quite versatile---had no problem triggering it from my little general midi Casio. The sequencer, used for arranging samples works wonderfully in several different input modes.

I'm not using this for dance music, but to create instrumental avant garde pop using samples and real instrumentation. The sampler is great and sound quality is first-rate. I've DI'd my Fender P-bass using a high-end bass preamp/DI, added a little sp-808 onboard compression, and got as good a bass sound as you could ask for(then I sent it back out through my bass amp, and sampled it again, effortlessly combining the two sounds later) This thing can work as conventionally or as whacked as you desire!

I've only had mine 2 weeks, so it's hard to say, but I've got a good feeling. . .

I've called Roland twice, and always got a living breathing person within minutes.

If lost or stolen I would buy it again instantly. It inspires me and opens my head up! There's so much in this box---once you understand the routing, etc., anything is possible! For me, this is truly a studio in a box, with a GREAT sampler!