Roland SP-808 Groove Sampler

This is a sampler with a DIFFERENCE!!!!!The supplied zip disk will have you jamming for hours before you even think about sampling anything into it.Most of the sample's seem to come from the MC505 which is another bit of brillant kit from Roland,but back to the 808.It's a breeze to edit and the manual is clearly laid out with quick start manuals and a much more in depth one.A lot off the normal problems with sampling a addresed by the 808 it's self it will automaticly work out BPM's,timestretch to match another sample with hardly any input by the user.

It only has polyphony of 4 note's but this is not a problem as you also have on board a 4 track stereo(8 track mono) hard disk recorder which you can record on to and bounce to your hearts content, also it has the capability of being able to resample up to 4 pads at once ie you could resample a drumloop,bass,vocal and strings which would normally take up four pads onto 1! the real gem of this machine is that it can resample thru it's effects and boy oh boy are they good they are a bit on the dance orientanted side but this machince is ideal for this genre of music there are 100 preset and 100 user effects. Pads are not veolicity sensitive but it is over midi. The midi spec is fine and i have had no probs live or in the studio. you can buy an expansion board which increase's the out puts to 10 (8 tracks and stereo master)this also give you an SCSI port for connection off another zip drive you CANNOT conect any other form of SCSI drive which is a shame as being able to connect a cdrom drive would of been the icing on this already majestic wedding cake!!!

it's a machine that the more you put into learning it's capabilities the more it will amaze you. i'v had mine 6 months and i still can,t beleive what it does!!
sample rate can be either 32khz or 44.1khz mono or stereo

rock solid timing,robust never had a problem in 6 months

Roland U.K. are brillant, free software upgrade's and allways friendly
and helpfull. The SP808 man there is a guy called "Mars"

if i had it nicked or lost it i would cry all the way to my local music shop to buy a new one!!!!!
much better than the akai attempts in my opinion i tried the mpc2000 & mpc3000 and the roland won hands down

This is very straight forward to use - learning it though will take a while - I still keep finding things it can do. The manual isn't bad (a big complement for a roland manual) there are the occasional "this was written by a non english speaker" moments. My real complaint is that some topics are scattered about in lots of places - it hasn't really decided if its a tutorial or reference.

this has been covered in the other reviews. The main thing i have to add is that with digital resampling you can get around almost any limitation - I have ended up with loops that contain bits and pieces that are several generations old and NO noticable noise.

very clean, great effects, great performance instrument

Seems good - don't know why people complain about the zip disks I know people who've been using them for years without problems

Not needed to find out yet

This is a mental instrument. In some ways its a shame that its being sold as a Dance machine. I use it for soundscaping stuff. Its great for building great sonic vistas .The effects are clean and powerful. One of the big problems is that it is perhaps too playable - loop making sessions sometimes end up as extended jams lasting much longer than I intended. Would I get one again - well lets just say that last night I caught myself considering having two of them.
This is a great instrument with a huge amount of possibility that will take a long time to explore and get the most of. Don't be put off by the dance merchants who will moan about it and move on to the next "best thing since sliced bread". Like any instrument it has to be known to get the most out of it.

The SP-808 is very simple to use. Most functions are intuitive and easy to learn. Once I learn a function, I rarely have to consult the manual again. The basics of the sampler are very accessible and performance friendly. Editing the patches is straightforward, and the payoff is big, but due to all the parameters it takes patience and a good ear. Since this complexity adds to the overall quality of sound, I refuse to take off points for ease of use.

The polyphony is technically 4 stereo tracks, but due to resampling/bouncing it is virtually unlimited. The sample pads can be assigned to a fader and are responsive and adjustable (different types of triggering available). The effects range from excellent to phenomenal with any parameter assignable to a control knob. Generally speaking, this thing is packed with options. It is expandable, although I have chosen not to. MIDI is velocity sensitive, and you can control mixer volumes, playback, locators, recording and effects via external MIDI signals. The on-board sequencer is 16 steps but offers unique options such as parallel manipulation of 2 parameters, gate settings, and different playback modes. It is a simple sequencer, but it begs to be exploited. It is also adjustable during playback. The internal sequencer does not send MIDI out signals.

For the sounds that it has, the expressiveness and quality is high. It's primary function as a sampler will rely on the expressiveness of what it is sampling. This is difficult to describe, but the synth is more about sonic theory than mimicry. You can make a pulse wave stand on it's head and drink a lemonade through a straw, but good luck in getting it to sound like a classic grand piano. That's the sheer joy of it, though. There are really no rules, just what you can make it do. The internal synth reacts to velocity, but has no aftertouch. But oooo the sounds. If I had a real analog synth, I probably wouldn't gush, but they are soft, warm, fuzzy, buzzacious, and vibrant. Some of the coziest digital imitations of analog I have heard.

It hasn't given out on me yet. I've trucked it all over in just a towel and a plastic bag. It's my most solid piece of equipment. Wouldn't wanna drop it too much though. I would use it without backup. My concern is actually in the Zip disks, not in the SP-808. I've never had a Zip go bad on me, but if they did... I can't imagine how smoke would affect the Infrared D-beam. If it were a problem you could adjust the sensitivity, or just shut it off. I've never had effect drop-outs or glitches of any sort.

I've never had to use Customer Support. Yet.

This is the pinnacle of my sonic experience to date. There is a certain feeling of Zen about this machine. I find that the only limitations of the SP-808 are the ones which people impose on themselves. Some people complain of too little storage space (Zip), but really just need to be more selective in what they are using, and where they use it. One song per zip is perfect. And complying with space requirements is just as fun as writing tight code. For a DJ, one disk can hold several "songs" which consist of nothing more than different preset BPM's for songs in their playlist. Then apply the effects real time with controls. Nice and neat. This machine would have to stoop to compete with other samplers in the same category. No product I've seen has this kind of vision and soul. Most of the naysayers are inflexible people who have no interest in creative solutions or making a piece of equipment perform optimally.

Great combination of playing samples from pads and a 4track recorder that can record pad events or digital audio. Easy to access menus and once you learn the major function they're all clearly marked on the front.

Unfortunately, the more you sequence, the less polyphony you have available from the pads. This makes sense, but it would be nice to have an expansion option. On the other hand, writing everything to ZIP is a great innovation: fast & cheap. FX are interesting, and the unusual ones (like lo-fi and radio static) have already proven useful.

Sounds are easy to manipulate, stretch/compress; resample using effects, and the internal synth fx program (that mimics an analog synth with a 16 note sequencer) is fun, though maybe not so useful. Samples come through crystal clear, though.

Using ZIPs is risky, and I would make 2 backups of anything I put on a ZIP. But they're cheap, so this isn't really a problem; and I've yet to see any removable cartridge system that is 100% reliable.

Roland has released an OS upgrade on their website, and most importantly a **SAMPLE CONVERTER** to load/unload aiffs or wavs from the SP-808 to your Mac or PC computer. This solves what was my only complaint about the unit, and I would whole-heartedly recommend this versatile sampler.

Useful in sketching out ideas, as part of a MIDI setup, taking tracks to a live gig, or just messing things around

The SP-808 is very intuitively designed, although mucking through the interface to find a specific effect parameter is annoying. Most functions can be achieved within a few moment of first booting up with little or no help from the manual (which is written better than most Roland manuals, IMHO). The manual is also quick to point out the limitations of this box, which is more than I can say for their ad slicks. Still, it's a joy to play with.

Basically, you've got 4 voice stereo polyphony due to the speed limitations of the ZIP drive. If you plan on using this as the backbone of your system, that will ultimately drive you nuts. I'm using it as a scratchpad for drum and bass loops, ultimately feeding into a PC based multitrack system. Works well that way, although I see the optional digital interface will be a necessity.
It's effects are very strong and easy to use... and the i-beam is a blast. Using it to control effects on samples and on selected inputs simultaneously gave me new-found expressiveness while playing my key- board. Also of note, the sequencer records touch sensitivity in the samples if triggered from an external source through MIDI, so the pads lack of touch sensitivity is not such a problem.
The sequencer itself is simple enough...

The demo disk that ships with the unit is ideal for learning the machines capabilities. You'll play for a few hours, back up the disk, format a new one, and start from scratch... I can't think of why someone would buy something this capable and end up using factory- shipped, canned loops.
The sampler itself sounds GREAT, especially considering that compres- sion is being used. I couldn't hear any.

My dog has nocked it onto the floor about a dozen times in the last 2 months... no problem yet. I sure hope Roland gives us a quicker, more reliable backup system than ZIP-2-ZIP... storing ZIP images on a standard PC HD would be good enough.

n/a

This is a great -addition- to a setup... it's almost worth what I paid for it for it's mixing and effects capability, in my opinion. To throw the sampling and sequencing bits in there just make it even sweeter. If you're looking to make this the hub of your music workstation, you may be dissapointed...
I like Roland's choice of ZIPs as the central storage of this device... They're cheap enough that you can dedicate 100MB to a single song... and it's instantly available. You can easily switch disks between songs if you're playing live as it only takes a few seconds for the disk to spin up to speed.

This is the new groovesampler from roland. I bought it the very day it arrived at my local guitar center (thank god for their liberal return policy). Sampling is easy enough though your only choice is straight from audio since there is no support for reading AIFs, WAVs or akai format samples. The supplied demo disk was pretty lame though it did have some interesting guitar samples there. The manual was pretty thorough thorough. I can't excuse the fact that you can't save as WAV, SMF, or AIF roland should know (as do Akai , Kurzweil,a nd Ensoniq) that you would probably want to be able to work with your loops in a PC editor at some point. right now there are no tools that will read/decode the roland proprietary format in use on this system. so you are stuck. Maybe they will roll something out or maybe it will be fixed in the next realease.

the built in effects are quite nice. This is actually the best part of the unit in my opinion. they can all be applied in real time (though this can cause drop outs) but they are qite versatile and easy to work with. No complex routing scheme at all. The pads aren't velocity sensitive. As far as expanison, well you can buy a SCSI adapter but you can attach ONLY another ZIP drive !!!!! No support for a hard drive. This is clearly stated in the manual though I wished that they would have put this in the advertised specs. Roland is banking it all on the ZIP drive. See this unit is supposed to be a sampler/hard disk recorder with the ZIP drive being the "hard disk". I don' think the ZIP is up to the task of repeated use. they use a compression scheme to read/write to the ZIP and it works pretty well but there are drop outs when you get too many things going on at once (like real time effects or use of the D-beam controller) the sequencer is accetable. It does its job well.

this unit is good for a scratch pad item if you alreay have other samplers . If you wanted to get into the world of sampling and some basic "hard disk" recording with some neat effects then this unit just might be for you. Flying in a vocal track or a lead guitar track is easy since there is recording available (as long as you don't overflow your 100 Mb zip drive with too many samples)

Its well made though a bit light and the edit wheel is fragile. I don't know if it would do well in a club especially with all the smoke and grit. The smoke alone might make the D beam go haywire. For me this would be strictly for home use.

N/A I answered all my questions myself through experimentation

I would not buy this unit again though I would be willing to check out the next rev (if there is one) of the product. A "real hard dirve" or at least support for a SCSI attached hard drive would be nice. Support for WAV, AIF, SMF would be cool. Maybe Akai will beef up their Remix 16 and offer it as competition against the 808. Then again they might have something else in mind.