Roland SP-808EX

sp808ex v1.0, havent tried the presets disk, took seconds to get sounds from my pc to the samples pads via rca cables and the sampling button, lovely tight editing ,sample trimming and assinging no noticable sound quality loss, havent tried the converter program yet. manual is stright forward, a few areas are harder to read than others as usual with roland manuals.

havent experienced any dramas with polyphony, effects are great, fx setup could be explained clearer in the manual. velocity sensitive thru a midi keyboard but i like to know what volume my samples will be triggered at so i have dissabled it. midi implementation in great, havent used the sequencer yet. this thing can do soooooo much

i play in a band with live drummer and bass player, i trigger guitar ,keyboard and ambient samples on it while playing keys and percussion and it works beautifully, the fx are great, i also use the pedal input to trigger samples when my hands are full, d beam is a nice idea but controlling a synth the shifts in pitch are very digital, not as nice as a very cheap theramin, not bad for drum samples triggering, hooked it up to my v-drums and its great for triggering samples on certain cymbals etc, but its not upto playing back drum samples triggered by vdrums polyphony and response problems with such a fast trigger. tho its not meant to be a drum sampler anyway

no problems yet, tho if you miss a sample pad and tap the top of the zip drive you will get a drive too busy error can be irritaing esspecially if im triggering a nice big long phraze

i always have a back up disc with my sample banks an sp303 with a few crutial sounds and a minidisc player as a last resort

havent had to yet and i have a lot of 2nd hand roland stuff that all works perfectly

its the greatest live tool in my arsenal it adds the icing on the cake with great fx a huge amount of sample time

Bought new from Guitar Center. Mine is an SP808 that I upgraded to an EX. I replaced the zip drive with a 250. This unit is pretty straight forward but it does have it's quirks. Read the manual and you'll figure out the features.

The worst thing about it is that it can only play four samples at once. And to make it even worse you often get an annoying "Drive busy" message and sounds cut out completely. So polyphony depends on how you use it. If you trigger samples from the pads, it plays four at once with no problem. If you play four at once from the 4-track player it will give you the "drive busy" message.

The FXs in this thing are incredible. It's worth buying one on ebay just for the FX. Since I purchased this unit, I don't use it very much for sampling but use it a lot for FX. The bullhorn effect is great for vocals, the vinyl simulator is also very warm and musical. The D-Beam is great for doing weird sound design stuff. Chorus/echo/flange stuff is all superb like all roland/boss stuff. The internal synth is also really cool. It can be edited in the usual ways of a digital analog style synth. Knobs can be assigned to pretty much anything.

Never had a problem as an FX unit. As a sampler, I have received the "Drive too busy error" unexpectedly at a gig. Make sure your main beat is not coming from the SP808.

Never needed to call them but here's an interesting topic. The upgrade to the EX OS was not available from Roland. If you search on the net you can find it but for some reason Roland doesn't want you to upgrade. I guess they would rather you throw your old 808 away and just buy a new EX. Whats up with that?

I'd buy a new one if it ever crapped out on me. Like I said I dont use it much as a sampler but for FX and sound design it is a must have. Also, they internal synth sounds incredible and I have used it on more tracks than my Juno 106. They are cheap on ebay these days ($300.00) so I'd buy another if I had to.

it might not be the easiest instrument to use but i only had the machine for 2 months and i never read the manual past 5 pages and i've already done some tracks that i'm ready to mix down and attempt to press up. i don't know if i'm that fast at learning cause i'm not but this machine is real user friendly and a strong instrument.

i'm still learning how to use the 808ex for its mixing and sequencing capabillties. that side of the board seems rough. but i'm not discouraged from trying to learn it. the manuals suck and that's the reason i mess with the machine before i read the manuals. the built in effects are off the hook but it's tedious to go through all of them. they are also great for ambient dance and techno music. i'm into hip-hop and acid jazz. but it helps that it allows me to fuze different types of sounds that aren't typical of one genre of music. expansions boards are expensive but i don't have one so i can't complain.

COPYING A DISK SUX! IT TAKES ABOUT AN HOUR IF YOU ARE LUCKY! I WAS COPYING A DISK AND I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT WITH MY GIRL AND MESSEDED THE WHOLE PROCESS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SESSION! probably the only mistake, but definitely the worse mistake (function) on the SP.

i'm just repeating what i said before. i'm real lazy. but it is perfect for my style of producing. (i'm not lazy when it comes to music)...
sound quality is tight if you know sound.

the built in effects are off the hook but it's tedious to go through all of them. they are also great for ambient dance and techno music. i'm into hip-hop and acid jazz. but it helps that it allows me to fuze different types of sounds that aren't typical of one genre of music.

i would definitely back it up.
it's not too expensive nowadays compared to other samplers.
it's definitely something that i plan to use live to therefore i would have to have 2.
COPYING A DISK SUX! IT TAKES ABOUT AN HOUR IF YOU ARE LUCKY! I WAS COPYING A DISK AND I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT WITH MY GIRL AND MESSEDED THE WHOLE PROCESS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SESSION! probably the only mistake, but definitely the worse mistake (function) on the SP. i love cut and paste.

customer service sux.
i learned how to use it myself. there's no online manauls offered from roland except for common sense material.

if i lost it i would probably try to get a machine that can do as much but more then what the SP can do. but that's only if i master the SP and if i transfered all of my samples onto another medium. right now i would buy a new one if i lost it. i'm no pro on the 808 but i think that it is one of the illest machines out there for its price. the price is dropping too. it's great for beginners. i use the MPC 3000, 2000xl, asr 10, GVS 840 <-- i think that's what you call it. i had that machine for more then 2 years and i hardly know what the hell i'm doing on it. i have a hammond xk2. and i tranfer my music onto 20 bit adats at a small studio. if you want to hear my style of producing listed to MF Doom, LP, and a fusion of bjork and D'angelo...

I use 1.00 version.
I bought an used version of the SP 808 upgraded to SP 808ex in $490 on Ebay. It didn't have the presets sounds.
It's hard to edit patches???? This machine is great! it's very simple to edit them, buttoms are soft-pretty-easy to push, sometimes in the dark I get lost with so much buttoms, specially the small ones, but the capabilities to invent mew sounds it's infinite.

The polyphony it's great for a sampling machine, with re-sampling function, U can increase it.
FX on the SP 808 are the greatest I ever heard. I couldn't believe it when I played it for the first time. Where are the limits????
The zip drive makes this machine a very powerful sequencer. I think it beats other sampler machines on the market. And the mixer function adds a n additional functionallity to the sequencer. I don't use PC or software programs to store my music, I use the SP 808 ZIP Drive to sample my creations. What else U can expect from this machine???

The sounds U can create with the SP808 Ex are amazing. The 3d Beam Controller allows you to manipulate the samples in a new way I never heard before.
I have all the groovebox series (except mc 909). I create music with them, and I sample the patterns and work them with the FX of the 808ex and the DBeam. New music, mew ways to transforme it. I love electronic music like trance, deep, acid jazz, etc, but the limits for the types of music are just in your head. If you use SP 808ex 2-4 hours per day during a few years, maybe you could invent new rhythms no one else heard before

I ensured it, because today i think I could not live without an SP 808Ex.
I had four years playing with an Yamaha EX7, ROland D2, MC 505, D2.
When I play SP 808: WOW!!! I started again from 0. I felt like an ignorant. Why i didn't buy an SP 808 before???? I was losing my time.
I love SP 808 100%. If you combine it with a Yamaha powerful and complex sounds, with the thick rhythms of a Korg Electribe, and the melodies and powerful sequenced patters of the MC Series, you can become the king of the electronical sounds.
Use it alwayes, it blows away any kind of musical expressions. A fast ways to traduce your imagination to sound wave.
SP 808: a weird and deep instrument. I never stop to learn, simply amazing.

In this review, I'll try not to repeat a lot of general info or stuff that other folks have already covered in their reviews. Thanks everyone for your input!
I bought mine used on E-bay and it didn't come with the prefab sounds disk. That was fine, cause a sampler is all about making a sound fresh and original! I think it's a fun and useful tool to use. It's deep, I've had mine over a year and am still learning new things with it. Still I had it rocking the beats in a matter of hours, with some patience and the lame-o manual. I use the SP-808 as a cut and paste compositional tool with phrase samples I've recorded/sequenced elsewhere. I love being able to take long phrases and chopping them up into their most enticing sounds. It doesn't do Recycle style chopping up of phrases, but the Wav convertor (free from Roland's website) really helps transfer samples from computer to the SP-808 and back. I still do a lot of editing on my computer, but then drop the best loops into my sampler for gigs!
The SP-808 rocks as a Swiss Army knife of electronic music production. Sampling, FX, synth, and 4 track digital recorder all in a box that's fun to tweak live.

Only 4 polyphony is fine since you can resample with no noise added (if you do it right).
Effects rock! I use them all the time in my studio and in DJ/live P.A. gigs. Filter is cool as well as the synth (when you spend some time editing out the cheese factor).
Very MIDI capable. I hook it up to my sequencer and Hand Sonic to create beats bliss.
The step sequencer is very useful for slapping together phrases and tunes. Too bad it doesn't have a cool MIDI sequencer, but I'm not a big fan of Roland's sequencing anyways. I imagine if you mated this thing with the Yammy's RM1x or RS7000, you'd be invincible...

I create my own brand of dub, psy-trance, jungle music with live instruments and electronics. The SP-808 is helpful in so many ways. It rarely is unused at any point of music making in my studio, even if it's just as an FX processor...
I think the sound of it is pretty decent for only 44.1k. At least it's 20 bit A/D/A convertors with 24 bit internal processing. NICE! Some cats have said it has a bassy sound quality compared to other digital recorders. It still doesn't sound as nice as analog tape, but it does have a very clear, defined timbre to it. You don't have to work hard to make it sound cool.
The pads aren't velocity sensitive, but they respond to it via MIDI. The interface is awesome and very manipulative/tweakable with knobs, faders, D-beam, alpha dial, and lots of little buttons!
I think this is the most expressive sampler for the money. Very inspiring!

I've played a lot of gigs and traveled quite a bit with it with no problems whatsoever. Never had a backup, but am planning to buy a second one to mix with!
It's a sturdy piece of hardware with some upgradeability. Zips are cheap and plentiful. I hear Iomega just came out with a 750 meg Zip drive. Imagine with one of those installed: over 3 hours of sampling time? gasp!

Roland make some fun and good sounding products. Their manuals bite and they don't support a product for very long. I hear their customer support is abysmal...

If it was lost, I'd definitely get another. I'm planning on getting a second one to mix in live shows and have twice the options in the studio! For the money, they are an incredible value. I wish the disks played regular WAV files without doing the conversion. I wish the SCSI could download staight to a computer rather than just other 808's. I wish it had a real MIDI sequencer, but that's a whole other ballgame.
I love my flashing lighted little purple, black, and clear plastic box :)

The learning curve is a bit steep but once you get your basic functions down like learning how to sample and editing what you've sampled, youve won half the battle.

If youve ever wanted your own studio but passed out when you realized how much youd have to spend on equipment, this is an excellent way to go.Its a basic all in one unit and if youre on a budget, you cant go wrong with this unit. The price for a new one is around $1000 at the moment but you can probably score one in good to great condition for $600 or less on ebay.

The effects on this whore are the shiznit. I do a majority of my production work on a pc and run a fair amount of apps with vst effects. Even with the increasing improvement in soft apps/effects (especially top of the line effects like the WAVES series), soft effects get bent over compared to the available effects on the sp808ex. The delay effects are by far my favorite mainly because they are easily adjustable and sound phenomenal.If youre into dubbed out techny sounds, this unit is a dream for creating them.

Works great. Ive never had a problem and the thing is built like a tank.

Never had to call them although that doesnt necessarily mean they dont suck harder than a hooker at midnight. Especially with alot of the CS reviews Ive read the past few months about Roland. Apparently, they be sucking.

If it was lost or stolen, more than likely I wouldnt replace it. Its not that the unit is not worth the money, it actually is an awesome piece of hardware for the price, but I recently sold almost all my hardware and condensed it to just a sampler, a synth module, tube compressor and a pc with lots of software. This is mainly out of personal preference because I needed to simplify the way I work in the studio, but for someone who is on a budget, the sp808ex is hands down one of the best ways to go.

At first, the presents are a cool thing for you to jam with, but when you want to start to make your own stuff hell beaks loose, you must breathe heavely before hitting your head against the manual. It takes time to adjust, specialy if you don't have much experience working with digital recording and sampling. The time it takes to understand how the SP808EX works does pay off after a few weeks. Still, its a complex machine and I would not settle for another, 'cause you have effects, digital mixer, 4 track stereo recording and sampler all in one box. The one thing I got working right after buying it was the editing functions - it is very, very easy to use (copy, paste, cut, insert) as well as helpfull to get that first tune recorded right away.

Its great having all-in-one-stand-alone-machine. Once you get used to it! The 250MB works well. It's to bad the tracks are only 4, maybe 2 more would help a lot when recording and editing (mixing tracks mostly). There is this expansion board (expensive) but it has only, as a main feature, outputs, not inputs. If it could record 2 tracks at the same time it would be so cool. Recording and sampling are easy. You can add effects while recording or make a re-recording adding a second new effect. Used little of MIDI, but it worked fine. The 16 pads are very usefull for ideas or maybe in live situations (never used it live yet, wish I can do so soon), they can sync' easy, you can mix 4 pads at once, what it is cool to try compositions or new music ideas without having to get to the recording procedure. Haven't found much use for the D-beam, looks more like a toy, if I were to use it live I would disconnect the thing, can never tell when someone gets near you and triggers a pad or an effect by accident (scary stuff).

I love Roland, worked for a dealer for 10 years, mostly with its products, went to Roland US (a dream come true) and worked as a kind of a "product specialist" for Roland Portugal (miss the stuff). Never the less, the sounds of the SP808EX for the dance/house scene are a bit plastic. Seems Roland is a bit off pace with the dance/house thing, specially when you hear machines like the yamaha RM1X or even the DJX (just as an example) - they have great feel, amazing sounds, still none of them have the SP features, and we are talking about a sampler/record machine. The CD-Rom world is very expensive (at least in Portugal) and that makes sampling a hard thing to do. Another thing is the laws that apply when sampling something from someone else, even the smalest tiny stuff can make you go to court, does it? I mean, I don't want to steel anyone's music, just small pieces and make something new. Aren't we all influenced by one another? - All comes down to the recording your own music. The demo ZIP disk provided with the SP808EX makes you wonder what can you do with it, I think its only usefull for demo and experience the way it all works.

Backups are impossible to do, if you decide to make a copy of a ZIP disk you better rent a 3hour movie and do both at the same time. I ran up of pacient trying to do so,... I gave up after 2hours. Better get something else to back-up your stuff (another ZIP drive or something). I have a mini-disk 'cause it was cheaper and easy to use. But you if go live, probably the best option is the second ZIP (just in case). Althought I never went live with it, I moved the SP around to jam with a guitar player for a while and I move locations now and then with it and, so far, it has worked fine - no problems there.

I have this upgrade that I downloaded from the roland website, but didn't see much difference. The Roland company, as I say before, its worderful, like a family, but when repairs enter the game its a world apart. I hope I will never have serious problems with it 'cause when that day comes I better say goodbye to the SP :( or the money I'll spend in repairs. Around here there aren't that many folks having SP's, so the idea of getting another second hand is very difficult. Most people don't know what the machine truly is. I belive that Roland was ahead of its time building the stuff, its a new concept in music making, performance, features, palying, and so on. (I would give a 10 rate to Roland and a 0 to the repair way of work, so I'll give it a 50/50 rate).

The price here (in my country) is very high, although I got a good discount for it (being a former worker for a Roland dealer and stuff), but if I would loose the SP somehow I don't know what I would do,... maybe kill someone!!!! In the music making I'm trying something different, a mix between a DJ's work and a keyboard player, I don't know what future I'll have with it - its an experience. I own a JV-1000, an FP-8, a Yamaha DX-11 and I'm trying to get a JP-8000 second hand to help me with the dance/house scene. The SP is one of a kind, I don't know anything else to compare it with. It is, maybe the best buy I have ever made, it has helped me with my music, recordings for my girld-friend (she is a music teatcher) that have nothing to do with the "groove" stuff; Making things differently, better, and it has pushed me to my independency as a musician (a small time musician, but a happy one). It is the piece of gear I was missing, incredibly versatile, always ready-to-go. I never bought a sampler 'cause they were too expensive and limited for what I wanted, neither a digital recorder 'cause they all seem to have to many things I didn't need (being a solo act and all), the SP808EX came to solve, almost all my needs and problems and mainly, send me into a new music dimension. I think, as a former Roland worker, the SP808EX is a particular tool were knowing what it is and what it does is essencial for a good understanding of the product, it probably has a bit of everything you need in it, regardless what type of music you play or musician that you are - thank you Roland, as well as for the time I spent within the Roland family from '89 to '99, God bless.

I was able to start making the grooves just after I powered up, with just a quick look to the manual. The manual itself it's pretty good. I hope I can read it all someday, cause I keep finding things i wasn't aware of :P

The FX are great, the control knobs and the D-Beam rock. The 16 steps modulator just like the EX-303 so usefull. Have any of you used the Vocoder? It's very clean.

If you're into the Dance scene this is the right tool. Cause you can throw away drum machines, groove boxes and Midi sequencers and make great music with just this box. Trust me I've done. I just kept a keyboard to input some of the sample drums, etc.

never broke.

Never Used it.

It's totaly worth the pay. I would buy two if I had the money just to have another one to play with when I'm in the bathroom or something.
I love it cause i can use it to perform live as i can use it to make my own tunes at home, enhance it sounds, tweake the waves with it's FX. Oh and it holds 250MB of space on a Zip disk.