Yamaha A3000 Sampler

Once you understand the concept of how Samples and Programs are organized, you'll see that it is very easy and convenient to work with this sampler... (at the beginning is hard to understand)

the effects processor built with the unit is reason enough to choose this machine instead other similars. The midi player is not wonderful, but is a nice value added.

definitely oriented to electronic music!

at first appears to be fragile, and knobs at the front still scare me, but I never had problems until now.

only one time I contacted support (asking about the OS upgrade) and they contacted me in a few days

Hardware samplers are devalued in this days due the "virtual PC samplers". Is a pity that many people are giving these machines in auction sites. Is a very powerful machine and a serious alternative to the Akai S5000 series.

version 1,
once you understand that to use this sampler you have to re-think how you work . i have owned emus and akais and a Roland rompular.
The sample wave data" is the starting point (bottom of function tree). you assign each sample to a midi channel (its own) and route it to a output and fx before you "turn it on" in a "Program/patch" (128 available)
no pre-sets, but it samples sound good especially with the on board fx and filters.once you understand how the hierarchy works its easy! took me a few days and endless searching through forums to realise this! the manual which is as thick as a telephone directory is not very clear it does though have a a couple of tutorials that are quite good if you are new to sampling.
the A3K power user guide you can download is more helpful.i got quite a few hints and tips from the harmony central forums...........

the 3 built in fx are quite good and they can be linked together, i am just discovering them ..techmod sounds good especially of kick drums..
re verbs/delays & echo's are OK and usable, phasers, flanger's sound good, distortions good . there a few specials in there too.excellent value for the money you pay now for these samplers as other's in the same price range don't have these features as standard.
polyphony is good and more than enough for my uses.
I bought mine with the optional output board included which i would recommend as you wont be able to track one down as they are discontinued.if i get a AK4/5 i will take this with me as i expect they are compatible with these modal.
memory expansion (128 meg 4 x 32 sticks) is cheap i got mine of a German e-bay seller for ??25. its very cheap to expand and easy to install

this sampler works well for electronic dance orientated music- techno and drum and bass. though i don't see why it would not sound good with any keyboard player in a rock or soul-funk band with the right samples inside it..
the on-board fx are good and you can us it as a stand alone fx unit with up to 128 programs which you can save to disk and load up to use a s a fx unit.
reacts well to velocity, not sure about after touch as i don't use that much...

this unit seems very reliable in the studio and sounds great-
but because it suffers from a few bugs ie the notorious front knobs not responding to every press, a common fault in a3k samplers ( though you can replace these or clean with a contact cleaner) i would definitely pack this up in a flight case with extra bubble wrap at the front to stop the knobs getting broken off.Why Yamaha did not make these more re-sussed ( not stick out so much) is beyond me as there is plenty of free space inside the unit!!!
also the scsi is very slow to save and load, i don't have a hard drive in mine yet and just use a omega zip 100 mb disk drive. i have a few problems with mine.I was able to import akai s2800/emu es12000 samples from Zip disk then all of a sudden the ak3 decided not to recognise them and lock up the A3K with no buttons , knobs active!
not sure what this problem is as I have not owned it long and still on the learning curve.

i have sent Yamaha a e-mail and waiting for a reply- so no opinion as yet.. get more help from the Yamaha yahoo group or harmony centra forums..upgrades are easy enough to do your self , also simple repairs of knobs can be done by novices.

if this was lost or stolen? yes i would get another, but i would buy the A4000 or A5000 as they are very cheap and have better features. in fact i think i will trade my a3000 soon for a a5000 as soon as i see a cheap one i will buy it.
i love the features on this sampler, it has good fx, filters, plenty of outputs.easy to upgrade with ram memory, hard drives which are all cheap now!
i hate the way the knobs stick especially knob 5 which is used for loading and saving!!! i am going to buy some "deoxit d5" contact cleaner and spray it up!
the sampler is a bit confusing to use especially if you have been a Akai/emu user , but once you understand that you first asinine a midi channel to each individual sample along with -FX & output you will be laughing. manual is bit confusing and un-clear.Though has a few tutorials which are good if you are new to samplers.
easy to sample on this unit and it places samples up the keyboard like a Emu does.no wave sample display, but just use your ears! or get the the pc editor and a scsi card if you are that botherd, i started out wit a Akai S950 making hard core and never needed any thing but my ears to trim loops and edits and i think it is good practice to do this !

for the money you pay for this sampler it is better than a akai s3000,and a emu esi2000 .Both of them have there good points especially the Emus have simple os system, but are expensive to upgrade with the optional extra boards.
very good value , good sound easy to use.a modern classic buy one now before everyone realises how cheap and good they are , or better still get the a5000!

I brought this sampler with ver 2 pre installed. At first i found it easy to set the unit up, get my first sample recorded and auditioned. Also found it easy to get sevral samples recorded, edited and keymapped, so this was quite cool. I then tried to create a program for use on a live set; after setting it up and saving it, i found if i loaded another program or restarted the unit, it would not remember the samples, but would recall all the effects and mapping. This was wierd so i looked in the manual and found it very hard to follow and understand. I found editing samples quite tedious, intill i came across a SCSi card and some sofware, which made this sampler a joy to work with, the software also sorted out the program recall problem. i eventually worked out that yamaha was using a diffrent language from what akai used and found that there was not a problem, but yamaha could have said in their manual.
I cant comment on the preset disk, as this was not included when brought the unit.

I have being using the A3000 for multipul purposes, including sampling and effects. Because this unit has three effects blocks, it makes it brilliant as an outboard effects processor as well as being able to sample and process sound. The sound quality is good and the editing features are good. the only thing which lets this sampler down is the screen size and the inability to display waveforms, but is not a problem if you have software. The A3000 has a built in sequencer on board but i have never used it, because i use my keyboards internal one. I have upgraded the memory from standard to 128MB, this has improved the sampling time alot and is faster processing samples and effects. The unit has a built in floppy drive which is, very slow. I have installed a HHD to make life easier, but this also painfully slow and sending stuff from the computer is even slower. the polyphony is good, but low, but not a problem (i can crash the unit from leaning on the keyboard.)
i believe you can get a digital board for this, but i have found that i can channel digital from my pc and the A3000 picks up my soundcards connection (says nothing about that in the manual)

I brought this unit for dance and game music production. it works very well in these genres, but is very good at doing trance, breakbeat, dub, drum and bass and rap and hip hop applications.
i have found the internal effects to be very good, except from the vocal remover, which does not work. the exciter is good, but only good while hooked up to the master channel, in the effects rack before amping.
Ive also found the headphone port fuzzy and the assignable outs give off some noise, but i cant complain because this sampler is over 10 years old.

because of how slow this unit is, the frequencies of system problems and the strengh of the units knobs (i broke one, which happened when i hung a cable off the front, which shows how strongly made this unit is), i would not take this unit on stage. i think this unit is good for studio based use, but not stage use.
i give this a five because of how slow this unit is and the durability of the panel switches.

Never had to deal with Yamaha with this unit. but have delt with them in the past and they are very helpful.

I think this sampler was worth what i paid (??90 (I would have paid more)). I have brought other samplers before in forms off keyboards, software and an akai. this sampler does not beat the akai, but it is cool in it own little way. I love the fact that it is lighter than the akai and the effects are better, but i do hate the pannel knobs with a passion. if the A3000 broke i would have to replace it, but with maybe an A4000 or A5000, because they have a bigger screen. this sampler has done me well since i have had it and it has helped me create more complicated music with more indepth samples (using multipul samplers at the same time). this sampler suits my keyboard better and sits in the rack next to my other grey equipment (the akai s4000 sticks out to much(white sampler))i wish the digital board was connected and i wish this sampler was faster.

You should read the manual once, after that and a little practice the interface becomes quite intuitive. The paramter matrix design is adequate, as is the complementary "command" button which allows you to access context-sensitive set of functions.

I bought it pretty soon after it came out (hence the price). It appears to have aged well feauture wise. I forget what the polyphony is but I have yet to run out. The effects are OK, good in some cases and unnucessary in others, but that applies to any effect module out there, so I can't blame Yamaha. Expansion capabilities are good, with extra outputs and digital i/o. Mine is expanded and has extra memory, 66 megs total, which I also find sufficient even though I do work with large samples. The filters are extremely good, and with some settings sound almost analogue.

The disk i/o is notoriously slow, and I take off a point for that.

I did an A/B test many times, with the actual sound and its sampled version. In my opinion, the A3000 sounds very transparent and more so than my K2000. Modulation options allow you to route anything MIDI (such as aftertouch etc) to many paramters of the sound, which makes the playing all the more expressive.

I have a built-in SCSI drive, which once in a while get one of the volumes corrupted. The frequence of such event went down after I upgraded from Windows 95 to 98 on my host PC, with which I do most of the sampling and sample downloads, which makes me think the fault is on the Windows site. Since I back up my data on an external Syjet cartridge (which seems to work very well), this hasn't been much of a problem.

Yamaha as been very good to me in the past, no need for support with this unit.

For the prices they can be had for now, it's a no-brainer -- yes, I would replace it in a heartbeat. I tried software sampers but nothing comes close. I recommens using a SCSI card to exchange samples with your PC, as this allows you to do some very precise sample editing and sound design on a big screen, then dump the sound into the A3000 and add finishing touches.

This was my first sampler, and after reading the manual and playing around for a few hours, i was very familier with the operation. the routing is really easy and powerful, you can send a signal in, through the fx processors and back out again without using the sampler if you want to!

loop/breakbeat sampler is excellent, and the time stretch engine is very accurate and sounds smooth. the "panel play" button which makes the sampler behave like a midi controller is really clever, and means i didn't need a seperate control surface for my onboard synths

i've used this for rock/dance/experimental and in all cases it's worked very well the sound is silky at the high and punchy at the low ends, and the D/A converters produce little or no colouring of the sound.

i've never had a problem with the unit, it's always booted, saved, ran as it has the first time i pressed the power button, and from a Yamaha, i wouldn't expect any less

upgraded the unit to 128Megs of Ram, to use an extended loop in stereo, the instructions were very clear and i was up and running again in no time

this sampler is a Yamaha through and through. quality, sound, reliability and VFM. I would definately recommend a zip/jazz/hard disc, though, as there's nothing more annoying then running out of space on a floppy disc halfway through a save!!
overall this is a better quality sampler then the early Akai or EMU models for the price, and with a lot of possible upgrades (including the software archetecture!!) is definately a good future-proof investment for the home or studio user

Very easy to use. Menus are way more intuitive than those Akai nightmares and controls and editing are more "focused" than EmUs. Recording is simplicity itself and things seemed to be sensibly optimised so you don't have to specify everything for every process but you can tinker if need be...

The features on this sampler are excellent. The Yamaha FX (up to 3 patches can be chained together or kept separate)are really punchy and ...er.. effective. The filter options are pretty good - there's 3 Low Pass type, 3 High pass, band pass, eliminators, 2 peaks and some dual combo filters. A firly solid LFo which is eminently useable but doesn't totally rock my world. Nice rotary controllers so you can dial things in and with practice control performance parameters in realtime. Everything you can think of can be controlled by MIDI which is cool and the Program / sample / sample group structure is intuitive and works well (different from horrid Akais). I have the upgraded expansion board and maximum memory so that's all very good and far more (I/Os) than I need. I wish you could plug in an ASCII keyboard but know I'm being picky!

The ADCs and DACs are very good... really crisp yet creamy on mid-ranges... Filters are pretty good but don't stand up to E-Mu competition. Stereo imaging is excellent and as I said the effects are really useful - Reverb is just OK but more than useable especially in a live format. In all ways better than akia monsters.

Yes - not even a sniff of a problem - all worked without a problem - hasn't got confused despite my best efforts.

haven't had to...

As you may have guessed I really like this sampler. I have used Akais plenty over the years and found them absolutley infuriating - and difficult. It sounds great - it has been well designed and put together in a sensible way. It's intuitive and reliable. I really like EMus but find them a lttle over complicated sometimes. I think E-Mus are better but Yamahas are highly underrated. They are cheap as chips at the moment and I urge people to pick up a great machine!!!

Using anything but V2 OS is no-no. At first it pissed me off, but then it slowly began making sense. Just needed to find out that you can select your samples via the keyboard, which is very nice for fast editing. I was attracted to the tinny led so that the fingers and ears do all the work instead of the eyes. Lots of automapping is nice. Pretty fast to work with, but not super fast. Like this better than Kontakt or all the other software-samplers.

Effects are good. Resampling through them is real fun. Slow disk speeds, but ok. Loading seems pretty fast. Really nice EQ for each sample. The mono to stereo thingy is really nice for example: had a guitar riff in mono, sequenced it and then duplicated the sample and added the stereo thingy and put in a sequence later on in the track - very nice effect. Filters are really nice, use them on every sample. LFO > pitch > filterMOD > amp. Another LFO for example wet/dry control of an effect. Could use 2 more LFO's though. Overall EQ for final output. Sampling trough effects is good, the effects chosen for recording are not the same as playback, which could be dreaded. Pretty capable as a synth also, the lfo > pitch mod and filtermod can produce decent results. LFO-panning is not an option, but there's an effect called autopan which does the same, but then you use a precious effect block.

Sound is good. Clean but not super defined, a bit analog/distant(only a little) sounding which I really like - not in-your-face-treble-trash. More lowend than Akai. The optional outputs are lower than the main outputs, which is lame. It's a matter of taste.

My first crash so far, was when saving a program while playing back a sequence, which is a cool feature but can be spared if it results in crashing. So far so good. Gigging with it is an option, but the knobs and digital outputs on the back make it not-so-handy as opposed to a closed rackcase, which would be fine.

dunno

I like this sampler. Before this I used to have a kurzweil K2000r without the sampling option, so I sold it and got this one, which I have yet to regret. This is really a sampler with lots of control over the samples. The K2000r was and is great for LFO-infernos but it wasn't me (probably because of the missing sample option) since I just wanted to do sampling and a bit of mangling. Velocity controls sample startpoint is also nice(it's really a sampler).
It helps me make music because of its (good) limitations and LFO shortcomings; I won't get caught playing with unlimited amounts of insane modulation matrixes or whatever - just sample, trim/pan/(de)tune, EQ, Filter, Effect.
If lost/stolen/thrashed I would get an Akai S3000xl and curse at it: "Why can't it do this? Why can't it do this and that."
It's nice to look at which is for me a deciding factor, since I'm going to look at it so much. The akai's are prettier and faster and tighter(midi wise) but more bang for the buck with this one. Won't regret buying an Akai but you'll be missing out on some cool features. Don't know about the others, since I have to find the casing attractive before I wan't to fiddle with them. Wouldn't mind going on a date with the Akai S3000XL, now that's good looking, screw what's on the inside I just want to turn those knobs. The s6000 is also pretty but maybe too big. I feel like I'm cheating now, gotta boot the blue beast before she finds out.

I just got this and booted it for the first time today. The system looks a lot like on Yamaha CS6r so I'm not totally new to it, but after working with a Kurzweil K2000r for 4 years now, this new machine seemed quite un-user friendly (at first at least). I got it with 64mb, 10 outs (ahh it's cool to have the digital I/O in both opt and coax), 100mb zip and a cd-rom drive for 450E (440USD?) only, me = lucky bastard.

The 64 poly sounds pretty promising and I believe it's enough for my use, I'm gonna use it as a drum machine after sampling several kits of drums, percussions and loops. As far as the effects are by Yamaha and if they are the same series of effects as on the CS1x/CS6r machines, I'm not going to use the reverbs at all. Well, I can't say much on it yet for I have no further knowledge on it yet =I

Hmm no idea but I believe it's a nice beast for electronic dance music =)

Hmm dunno if I could take it on a gig, I gotta try it out a lot at first.. and I'm also afraid the knobs would get f*cked up while carrying it around from town to town.

No idea.

I believe we're going to be good friends once we get to know each other =) And for the price I got it, it's a fantastic machine!

Very easy to use once you get your head round it, more logical than the Akai's IMO, although I have never used a EMU so I cant compare. Dont be put off by the little screen either, everything you need to see is up there no probs.

Good filters (16 in all), just a shame cant link two in series / parralel. Envelopes for pitch, filter & amp are funtional, but Lfo is a bit crap (wont go fast enough). Six matrix routings availiable per sample for midi controllers which come in handy.

Like I said filters sound good, better than Akai (but I havent heard EMU filters), the onboard FX are absolute rubbish so dont expect anything from them, I supose they are usable but I would try and avoid them. The overall sound quaily from the outputs of this sampler is ok, but a bit duller than an Akai (I did a test using the same sample dumped over SCUSSI to both units). The signal to noise is not that great either and on the extra outputs it gets worse, very poor IMO, lots of gain needed on the desk.

all the front dials go after a bit there a bit crap! Go the opposite way. Everything else seems ok.

ok

Well it's took me a weekend to work out this thing. Ive worked with akais in the past, one of which was a 900 so im used to the small screen thing. It's no slower than useing an akai once you know where everything is. If you've got a PC (i'm sure you have) then get a SCSI card and do your wave editing outside the sampler. I know it has a bit of a reputation for being hard to use but I think you have balance that out with what you are getting for the money.

What doesnt this thing have? Only two things let it down the reverbs are tinny metaly yamaha things and as everyone knows the knobs are not exactly accrurate, I tryed cleaning with RS contact cleaner which made them fine for about half an hour but i'm not opening the front end up every time i want to use the thing.
Mine came with the output board 10 outs is nice!

Well this is the whole point of the thing isnt it? It's fab! Filters are great, way way better than any akai ive heard, although the filter envelopes could be a little more 'expressive' and it would be nice if the lfo speeds where a little more controlable. A mate of mine pointed out the simlaritys with his cs1x, he's right this is as much a synth as a sampler.

I've only had it a few days so I dont know, heard some horror stories though but thats the same with everything.

Well i've heard their really bad and I had trouble downloading the v2 manual from the website.

i only paid #350 (about $500 to you slackasses over the water) for mine with the output board 66meg and a 250 zip, I can think of any thing you'll get for that kind of money that'll come close, maybe a cheap esi withe calamri/turbo board. Pick one up before people realise that plugin samplers are not as good as the real thing and start wanting stuff like this again. I can already say its the best sampler I've owned.

Once you get your head round the little matrix its a piece of piss to use. I mainly sample stuff straight into the computer and mess it up using plug-ins, then laod the samples in as wav files. The floppy drive could be a bit faster.

For me the thing that makes this sampler much better than my old esi32 is that you can import wav files....... For me this saves the hassles of resampling everything. The effects are pretty good as well, especially the reverbs.

Sounds slick as you like!!!

I've only had mine for a few months, but before I bought it I used a friends on and off for a year and we never had any problems!

If I lost this magical beast I would most certainly sniff out another one!!! I love its simplicity, its sounds, and its effects. Its the best sampler I have ever used! THE A3000 RULES!!!!!

I just got this thing last week. I tried to sample a sound right away and it worked just the way I thought. I have the version 2 and with 64 MB. It's realy difficult to have 2 manuals to work with. When you sit down with the manual and try to do some stuff you can get confused because the first manual doesn't correspond with the version 2 manual. I think this will not be a major problem, but it takes longer to figure things out. The LCD, though small, is very well lit and looks really cool.

The features have been reviewed many times. Everybody knows the SCSI is slow and that the effects are pretty good. And that the RAM must be carefully tested etc.
I must buy a SCSI drive for it yet. I dunno exactly what to buy, but I think I will buy a SCSI external drive.. I'm not sure yet.
I use it in combination with cubase, but I still have to figure out how to set the midi-controllers and stuff. But I don't think that will be much of a problem.

It sounds really good! You hear what you sample. I cannot hear the difference and I think you cannot too! I don't have the expansionboard (yet). But I can tell you that it doesn't produce any form of noise whatsoever

just got it a week ago.. If it had broken down allready it would have been crap. hahaha

see the reliability

I like it! I paid litle and got much...

I have to put some time in to it, but it seems this thing has some really good features. If you can get it for a good price. GO FOR IT!

This thing is a piece of chocolate cheesecake with a side of strawberry sauce! Oh, wait, its a sampler! Either way, it did the same thing, in that it made me happy with how simple I figured out its use. I had never owned or even used a sampler before, and now I'm samplin' in style, and eatin' some cheescake.

As far as samplers go, you will be hard pressed to find one that comes from the factory with as much stuff on board. The effects give me nightmares (thats good!), and the brown tone is easily attainable.

This is NOT your mom's sampler. Her's smells funnier... but honestly, this is the closest you can get to a synth with a sampler, without adding a damned patchbay to the poor thing.

My only frustration in this area is that without an external storage device, like a SCSI Zip or HD you are in for some seriously long load times. Use this time to go to the bathroom, or to look at porn on the net.

I heard that there is a company that makes these, and that the samplers did not appear here on earth from distant worlds. Seriously, I do not like dealing with the Yamaha Tech people... I have the Version 1 Yamaha MD 4 track, and when my drive went out of wack, and no one could tell me what to do (they named the problem after me!) I gave up on Yamaha tech support... not on their equipment, though.

This thing rules. It layed the ground for the 4000 and 5000 which I heard rule too. The only thing that could make it much better is if it could give you a freggin back massage.

This machine IS easy to use! The manual gives a very good description of the overall layout. I've had it for just a week and I've already completed three tracks, and I'm not talking about simplistic stuff. The knobs are what make this machine so easy to use. As far as I'm concerned, having a software editor wouldn't make operation much faster. I find the front panel so intuitive that using a mouse would actually slow me down!
Sometimes, if you turn a knob too fast back and forth, it gets confused and changes the parameter in the wrong direction! This is initially very annoying but you soon learn how to control it. But it's nowhere near as bad as some people make out.
Then there's the infamous SCSI issue. I have mine connected to a Zip100 drive and yes, it can be slow if you use big samples. I tend to work with lots of smaller samples and it's totally acceptable for me.

Polyphony is 64 voices, which I find to be more than enough for even complex tracks, remember you can resample very easily. The onboard FX are mostly very good, as good as any mid-price stand alone multi-FX unit. Most really need to be worked on before they sound good though. Again, with resampling you can really make the most of these.
I have the output expansion board but I haven't made use of it yet.
Er, forget the sequencer. If you're serious (or even sane!) you'll use a software sequencer like Cubase or Logic.

The sound quality is utterly great. In fact I often find it TOO good! I regularly use the lower bandwidth sample rates to make things a bit dirtier. In fact, sampling at 5khz through the Exciter and 3-band EQ, you can get a very respectable high quality sound!
The filters are fantastic. There are 16 types (I think) from basic low and high pass to dual filters. They can be utterly evil or warm, whatever you want.
I would say it can do any kind of sample duty you would want it too, but for big samples the SCSI might put you off.
If you like Warp records and similar stuff, you'll really love this machine.

No problems so far. Only had it for a week.

Never dealt with them. They have a bit of a bad rep though.

I would buy one again without doubt. I use it with an AN1x and it's all I need! The only "bad" things are - the knob response, the slow SCSI.
I think if you use a lot of big, realistic piano and string multisamples then this isn't the sampler for you. It can do these things as well as any other sampler, but the slow loading/saving would become very frustrating. However, if like me you use a sampler to make totally original, unheard-of sounds and you like to be creative and inventive, you will totally love this instrument.

I got this thing very soon after it came out (about 2 or 3 months) so I had to buy the ROM chip ($150!!!!) to upgrade to V2 software. not good on yamahas part. but really, I don't know how anyone says this thing is hard to use!!! I think it's very logically laid out, it's just different from other samplers out there. I've only glanced at the manual a couple times in almost 4 years!!

64 notes poly, but gets cut in half with stereo samples. the FX are acually pretty decent but what's great about them is the routing. there's 3 independent blocks and you can connect them together in every possible manner. very nice. comes standard with 4 outs but you can and 6 more plus optical and RCA (both stereo S/PDIF) on one card that costs around $150 or so I think (I can't really remmember). every one complains about the level of the aux outs, but really it's not that much of a problem if your mixer has quiet mic preamps. SCSI is slow but managable. it's a world faster than the akai s950 though, and we lived with that for 5 years didn't we?

well it is a yamaha, so it does sound a little thin. but that can be fixed with tube or analog FX/dynamics processing. it does have a fair amount of crispness and punch to it though. the filters are pretty aggressive and not all to digital sounding and are good for sweeps as well as general EQing. which brings me to one of my fav features, the single band of ONLINE (or realtime) parametric EQ! not offline like every other sampler on the market. you simply have no idea how usful this really is untill you put it into regular use. and I haven't even gone into the envelopes. there's 3 ADSR (hardwired to amp, filter and pitch) with time AND level for attack, delay, sustain and release.

well, the knobs did get a bit loose and the audition button broke, but I've been rather rough on it. there's also some minor timing problems but only when you're pushing it as far as it will go. all in all it's been fairly realiable.

about as helpful as my cat. don't even try.

if it were lost or stolen, I'd get an A5000 or an E-mu E6400. at the time this was pretty hi end but technology has moved on. for the price this is goin' for now though (around $600-$900) I would definatly recomend it.

Very hard to use i had for three months i still can control,it would be easyier to use if manual 1 & 2 was a single book, editing patches is very hard

polyphony 64 note
yes expansion capabilitiesit & have an on-board sequencer is easy to use

Expresiveness/Soundssome
instruments very realisti

Reliability

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Customer Support

Overall Rating

The A3000 is so easy to use I almost couldn't believe it... Once you spend the 5 minutes necessary to read the tutorial section of the manual (which, btw, is quite good, although it is organized more as a reference than as a "manual" which can lead to problems) to figure out how things are laid out, you will be making sounds happen.

The Midi capabilities of this are pretty much amazing. 8 external controllers per sample, 4 per program (or is it 8?) - ridiculous. The polyphony is way more than necessary, the effects are actually not that bad (for effects that sound like digital effects)... Plus the expansion board stuff.
Nota bene: disk transfer rates and midi dump rates pretty much blow for this thing. You've either got to get your whole sample set in early on or spend time waiting around while you load it up.

The A3000 sounds excellent, but a little bit dry. It is possible to beef up the sounds, but I find it's quite difficult to get them as full sounding as I want. Not too much of an issue though, if you have some nice offboard analog effects.

Hasn't crashed on me yet...

For the money, I think it was the best choice. I was also considering an akai s3000xl for $750, and I think this one is more user friendly, more expandable, and a lot cheaper... Haven't had a chance to compare sounds though; maybe the akai is thicker.

pretty easy to use (V2)buttt,
lcd screen is too small when you`re working with loads of samples!
using a cool editor like b-zone for PC helps a bit but doesn`t fix the glitch :(

64 P which is fine (for me)
effects are ok but not incredible as some people say
give me some real good reverbs insted of all these `techno-toys`
although some are usefull, most of them just sound crappy and remind me of the mc 303 groovebox from Roland
the-sucker-victory-machine :)
so I ended up not using the effects a lot
the effects are definitly not a reason to buy this sampler!!

good thing is the fact you get 3 blocks and they`re standard
and pretty flexible

`the A3000 comes standard with a scsi interface`
they made a mistake, scsi = slowsci
horrible slow

sound quality is very good
no complaints about that but even here the a3k has a sucky side,
yes I am talking about assignable extra outs,
the signal of these is much lower, less expressive as the main outs
so you`ll need to do a lot of extra editing to level all your outs..
bad bad baby!

reliabilty is the reason why I sold it in the first place!
jesus, just take a look at www.a3kcentral.com and
you`ll find a lot of people with HD crashes etc.
I will not dive into this now but my HD has crashed (losing all my partition, and samples!) 3x times since I got it (1 year ago)
this is just not acceptable if you store a lot of samples and use it as your main instrumento
maybe a scsi zip is a better solution, but even with these I saw people having problems

never dealt with them

sold the A3k recently and went for an Emu
costs bit more but you can find some pretty good secondhand deals on the net
it`s just better, much faster, more reliable and flexible

if this is an extra add of flavour for you
the a3k is ok but
using this sampler as a main instrument though,
is not a smart idea..

Using V2 software, when I received the machine I was utterly confused - tinny screen seemingly illogical menues etc, spent two hours looking in the (pretty good) manual but I hate manuals so I gave up entirely, looked at it again, realised it wasn't an EMU/ Akai sampler and suddenly everything clicked. Once you figure out its logic (which if you approach it with an open mind is pretty obvious) this thing is FAR essier to use than the Akai or EMU samplers. In fact, the manual is almost unnecissary, if you don't know howto do something -guess, you're probably right. Only complain is that the 5 (very useful)Jog dials are the clicky optical sort which means the speed at which you turn them doesn't exactly corralate to how fast data scrolls (if I'm controlling any variable for recording I use my Fatboy) and those little button are just way too little.

Polyphony? Voices? not sure - way more than I midi channels / ram.
SCSI implementation really isn't that bad!! (reletively) lots of problems but then alot less problems than with any other SCSI using instrument I've tried. Only comes with 2 pairs of outputs (+headphone) but an expansion board giving another (i think) 4 plus digital outs is availible. Can take up to 128mb of ram (I only have 34 but will upgrade soon - standard 72 pin is used so this can be pretty cheap). You will need to buy a SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM to make it usefull - floppy is slooooooow. Note - mount the Hard Drive EXTERNALY (if internal it not only makes alot on noise through the casing but it seems power noises are passed to the outputs!!) Another good feature worth mentioning is it can import Wav files through the floppy drive.

Samples sound perfect, maybe too perfect - I often reduce the sample rate or use the effects to mess them up a little, otherwise they are just too clear!! Some of the onboard effects are pretty good - others are completely useless but there are lots off them and while only 3 can be used at once they can be strung together in any which way. This is also (unless you mount the hard drive internally) an extreemly quite machine - puts out less noise than anything else in my studio.

Never have had the slightest problem.

never needed them.

I got this for $600 in mint condition and then spent another hundred on 32 megs of ram (only came with 2mb ram), 2 gig hard drive and antique CD rom drive. For $700 this machine is rediculously good - it is way better than the Akai S3000s and older EMU syths, the 4000 is not sigificantly better so the only samplers you are going to find better that I know of are the S5/6000, and the new EMU samplers - and now you're talking 2~3 times the price

I had version 1.something
Okay to use (considering the small display), but when you have more than 20 samples it becomes really difficult to have a good overview of your song.

SCSI SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I put in a 4 gig hard disk and had to wait 30 sec before I could acces it!!! HOW CAN YOU WORK WITH THAT?????????
importing a sample from my computer also takes 3 min/mb
The scsi is a SCSI-I interface connected through the SERIAL PORT of the A3000 mainboard!!!!
It is the most STUPID, CHEAP implementation I've ever seen

Now this isssssssssss something to buy the sampler for. The sound effects are REALLY amazing

It's pretty reliable. I had some crashes/bugs, but I could get an update for most

calling calling again again.... NO ONE at Yamaha knowing ANYTHING about the hardware VERY BAD

I had mine for a year and am glad I sold it. 128 mb is useless with a slow processor. It is really a great sampler to have on the side, but if you really use it a lot and want to use its SCSI, buy something else!!!

i have part 2 of this motherfukka

the basics of the a3000 are very easy to use...but i want more ram and a cd-diskdrive when i buy something if you are a midi freak, it will cost a little bit of your free time...but if you don't understand the logic of yamaha...you're an ass

F*CKING GOOD...if you can't get the sound that you want out of this thing...STOP, and become a farmer

she does what i say...every day...but she can't cook

i don't know and i don't care...i hope she will do her job

I would give it a 10 but for it's small screen and lack of graphical waveform editing. As for the rest, it is very easy to use. There was a rumour that it is hard to learn but only for Akai fans who just need to forget what they know.

It has lots of features that are made easy to use. It allows you to use your MIDI keyboard to assign mapping etc which is a breeze. It will also sort samples and do automatic multisample mapping according to root notes.

The manual is good, clear, concise and covers it all.

64 note polyphony, 4MB RAM expandable to 128MB, 4 ouputs expandable to 10 (incl. digital), stereo Mic inputs, 4 assignable rotary-encoder style knobs, 3 FX blocks, loads of FX, 19 filters, individual LFO per sample, EQ per sample, EG's for everything. Everything is MIDI controllable. Whole machine is editable remotely via sysex. Onboard sequencer is just a MIDI player for live work or arpeggios.

v2 has Beat Remix, which is a per-beat style Recycle type tool with automatic key mapping.

Yamaha have arranged it like a synth. You start with a Sample, you assign it a MIDI channel, filter settings, it's output (stereo, aux or FX), it's envelopes, LFO, loop settings, EQ etc and then you can choose to turn that sample on in any particular Program. This makes is unbelievably flexible. Each sample on every key can have different settings!

The file handling is the weak point, dealing with samples, program and volumes can be time consuming as can loading samples. There are also very few native sample CDs available so it is not the best choice for someone who just wants to load up a grand piano and play.

Using a SCSI CD-R drive, you can only load audio samples or A3K native ones. You can only burn A3K native CD's using 3rd party software (A3KDisky). The only drive that will accept Windows formatted disks is the floppy so transfers from PC->A3K really need to be done via SCSI (which comes as standard).

I doubt that a sampler could be much more expressive. The effects are excellent and you can use 3 at once for a single sample. The filters are varied and range from subtle to nasty. Any sound you load into it can be changed to beyond alien in seconds - it is a techno dream. It is much like playing with an analogue synth but using your own samples instead of waveforms.

It actually comes with 2 pulse, 2 sawtooth, sine and triangle waveforms as standard v.2 allows you to design your own "oscillators". Even just using these you can come up with some convincing Moog basses!

Every aspect of the sound quality is pristine although I hear that the expansion board is noisy.

It seems very reliable although the SCSI connection can cause my OC to crash but that is SCSI for you.

Can't comment

If I lost this I would cry and go buy another one (unless the A4000 had dropped in price!). It totally wipes the floor with the similarly priced Akai's and Emu's.

I have version 2.

Some people say it's hard to use, well it was my first sampler so I didn't have any Akai-like expectations about the OS. Basically, It's very easy to use. Just put a sample ON and select a MIDI channel for it, then play.

About the features..

Filters are quite good and there's plenty of these.

Effects are good for sabotating the sound, compressor for example sounds surprisingly good for those pumping beats. Reverbs are quite shite.

You can assign four effect parameters to MIDI controllers so you can control effect parameters in real time via MIDI. There's another six controllers to assign for filters, sample start point etc. You can also assign some pitch bend parameters if you want to "scratch" a sample in realtime.

Loop remix function is nice for creating some random drum loops.
Loop divide is nice for slicing a sample in different sections.

The feature I particularly like is that you can duplicate a sample without losing memory. You could for example duplicate a drum loop to
20 different keys and add different filters, different lfo:s, different starting points and whatever without consuming any memory, there's a catch however:
Parameter momory bug; A3k use only half of it. If you load a couple of drumkits and many sounds with many parameters tweaked, you'll propably run out of parameter memory. Very annoying.

There's two LFO's, one per sample and one global. Global LFO is okay, not many complaints, except the square wave isn't completely sharp.

The sample-level LFO is terrible. First of all, it snaps and clicks and you can't make it to "run on". There's parameter sync on and off. When it's on the lfo starts every time you trigger a sample from the same position but when it's off it starts from random positions, it doesn't run on "freely" and "steady". I hope you understand. With the program lfo you can however do this.

Optional extra outputs are noisy as hell and lower level than the main outputs.

You can't assign effect send for every sample invidually, sends are global.

Sounds are as good as you put in it. I have no complaints about the sound quality from the main outputs.

MIDI timing is problem. If you use complex multisample and lay a drum track on it there's a noticeable timing problem. If you don't hear it, you're on the wrong business. Complex beats are also hard to handle.

It's for electronic musicians. If I would like to make classical music I'd buy a sampler with clean outputs and with an orchestral sample CD, like S2000.

I've changed my internal hard drive once (IBM) because there was so many errors. Now I have Quantum and the errors still exist sometimes.

Zip drive or some other is more reliable. I wouldn't do anything without a backup.

It hasn't tilted often, though. A couple of times.

I've send e-mail once and got a reply.

I got this when it first came out, so I still have OS 1.0. you can get the upgrade from you're dealer but it's a pricey($100-150 USD) EPROM. anyway, this sampler is far easyer to use than any other unit I've try'd(EMU, akai, ect...) everything is right there on the screen and on the editing matrix. theres is a slight learning curve for those who are used to EMUs or AKAIs, because this is laided out differently(much more like a synth than a sampler). but as soon as you get around that its great. no parameter is more than a button press and 2 knob turns away. which makes it very easy to get what you want very quickly. I give it 9, only because of the learning curve.

it has 64 notes of poly, so don't worry about running out. the output board is a must, and includes digital outs(for all you guys that have digital mixers). and you can set the knobs to transmit MIDI control messages too! so you can use it as a real time controler for modules and such. very handy live.

the sound quality is right up there with the top of the line EMUs and AKAIs. although not 48khz(it's only 44) its still very good. the onboard FX are great. some are a bit cheesy (like the turntable noize, ect...) but 90 percent of them are very useable, and don't require to much tweeking to get what you want. and you can change the sampling rate, all the way down to 5k! and theres a lofi setting that takes off the lowpass filter on the 22, 11, and 5khz rates for some extra grit. which is very usefull for dirtying up the preset drums on you'r synth.

I've never had any really problems with it. it lags a bit when you have alot of sounds playing at once, but thats reportedly been fixed in the newer OS upgrades.

all my questions where answered within' a week, which is very good for a company the size of yamaha.

I'll never part with mine. I know it so well know now that there isn't anything I can't do on it. incredible value for money, especialy now since the price keeps goin' down(it was $1800 when it came out, I got mine on sale). get the latest OS though, they've added alot more and fixed alot of the bugs.

I've got version 2, fully expanded with 128MB, 2 Gig hard disk, output board. It's quite easy to use; the thing that takes time is actually finding your way around the menus. The thing that really pisses me off about this sampler is the 5 knobs on the front. Every paramater is immediatley controllable from these knobs - a good thing. However the knobs on mine are extremely crap. Sometimes I'll be turning one to the right and the sampler thinks I'm turning it left. When it repeatedly does this I'm sure you can imagine it's very frustrating.
Also the screen is small and the disk format is crap - you can't stack folders inside other folders so often you end up with 100's of samples in one folder and it can only show them one at a time so it takes ages to scroll through them to find the one you want.

Good effects. Good filters. Good polyphony. In fact all the features are good. I've got the expansion board which adds digital in/out, which has proved very useful.

The sound from this sampler is NOT very good. When outputting a sine wave from each output, they all sound different and some have some kind of distorted tone present. Basically, whenever an output is 'open' then there is a noise. This sucks when you're using a reverb, say, because the noise at the end of the reverb's tail is louder than the reverb itself! Maybe I've got a dodgy one, but Yamaha couldn't figure it out and the local repair shop is crap so I guess I'm stuck with it like that. It's a shame because it makes it nearly unusable in the studio, and otherwise the effects are very good.

It's never let me down apart from the outputs. Except for the hard disk which I have installed sometimes throws a wobbly - I don't know if this is the A3000's fault but I think it is. It doesn't have a very good disk management system, so when you've saved and 'erased' a lot of stuff it becomes really slow and sometimes crashes. A total re-format sorts it out but.....

The technical support people at Yamaha UK are very helpful and although they haven't been able to solve all of my problems, they've tried to. So I like them!

I'd like to try the new A4000 and A5000 as hopefully Yamaha have sorted out some of the problems with the A3000.

Sound on Sound (the mag) said it has a difficult to use operating system, but I think it is actually very easy to use. The menus are all very logical. And it is also very straightforward to sample something: just go to the REC page, press GO, and then press START.

Well, my A3000 v2 has an output expansion board and 64 mb ram and has a polyphiny 0f 64, which is much better than the standard Akai S3000XL. The a3000 has also a lot of filters, like LPF, HFP, BFP and much, much more. You can also easily assign midicontrollers to, for example, Filter cutoff by just selecting filter cutoff in the controller menu and pressing the knob. Then you can move you pitchbender, and the A3000 recognises it as the pitchbender!
The onboard effects are also great, especially the special effects (lofi, modtech, jump etc). The reverbs are also nice, but a little, well, cold or something..

The sounds are just as good as the soundsource you're sampling from. The effects are good. The only minor problem is that the Output Expansion is a little low on volume, but if you have a descent mixer it is not a problem!

Perfectly reliable, it never crashed during the period I have him (5 months now).

Never dealt with it...

I think the A3000 v2 is the best sampler around (for it's price).
It's really a pro sampler!
If you are looking for a good, allround sampler, look for the A3000 v2!

I`ve been using a V2.0 model with output expansion, 98 Megs of Ram and external CD-Rom + harddisk for about 2 months now. Its matrix user interface is very easy and fun to work with; you hardly ever lose your way. The 5 realtime control knobs are great for getting "in touch" with parameters like cut-off frequency, pan, volume or ADSR envelopes (far better than having to enter values by pushing knobs in single increments/decrements). The feel of the knobs (they`re opto-controlled) are a matter of taste as they`re quite sluggish and don`t feel stable. The LED is very readable (especially in darkness) and IMHO offers enough information (the lack of a graphic display is not an minus at all). What really is an advantage of this box is that the Yamaha guys seem to have designed it from scratch with lots of innovative ideas without the necessity to maintain downward compatibility to older models and thus many of the traditional junk features Akai and Emu are still sticking to.

-64 note polyphony -2 Meg Standard (way too little nowadays) upgradable to 128 Megs using 4x32 Meg 72 pin modules (vs. 2x64 Meg with the Emu ESI-4000) caution: the A3000 is very peckish about RAM modules; try them at a computer store or let your music stuff dealer do the job. -16 part multitimbral -3 Effect processors that can be chained in different configurations or be used in parallel mode with the possibility to rout the effect output to individual outputs. Sound quality is good in general, although I find most of the praised lo-fi effects pretty useless. Reverb algorithms and modulations are nice though. Really aggressive distortion effects. Very good pitchshifter/beatchanger. Eciter and compressor. The problem with the effects, however, is, that since these are insert effects, you can only determine the dry/wet ratio globally for all samples passing through the effect but not for each sample individually. There is, however, a rather complicated workaround for this. You can find it in the excellent FAQ at A3KCentral (Teklab homepage). -Pseudo-effects on sample-level: detune and de-phase, very useful to fatten up a weak mono sample -built-in SCSI interface (external 50 pin sub-d half-pitch jack, internal SCSI connection using 50 pin internal flat cable, option for internal 3,5' SCSI harddisk (built-in power supply) One big minus about the A3000: its SCSI interface is reeeaaally slow. When saving or loading data via CD-Rom or harddisk I feel warped back to 1990 working on a slow 30 Meg harddisk on a 12 MHz 286 Pc. I use a 6x Toshiba CD-Rom drive and a 1.2 Gig Quantum harddisk in external enclosure. Although the CD-rom drive is capable of reading about 900 KB/s and the Quantum HD about 2000 KB/s, both drives read about 400-500 KB/s when used with the A3000. Saving time takes place at about half of that. So only go for the A3000 if this is not too much of a problem (I`ve got used to it). -SCSI import of Akai, Emu and Roland formats, Floppy import of Dos-formatted disks containing wav and aiff files, Floppy export of aiff files -capable of SMDI sample transfer to and from a Computer equipped with a SCSI interface using sound-editing software like Wavelab or Soundforge -16 Filters with resonance (one of the best features of the A3000 -they sound great, I mean aggressive and harsh, yet transparent) -individual 1-Band EQ for each sample -synth section using basic waveforms like sine, square, triangle and so on -LFO modulation of Filter, Pitch and Volume (sorry, no Pan modulation here) -Master-4-band EQ -Program LFO: modulation of all samples assigned to a program (that is, one parameter is modulated for all samples at the same speed) -Loop modes: forward, backward, one-shot (+reverse), loop+release, unfortunately no alternate ("ping-pong") loop -destructive loop crossfading -very cool feature: Duplicated samples refer to the same waveform data and thus don`t eat up memory, yet they can be modified in every regard, e.g. different waveform startpoint, different loopmode -ReCycle-like drumloop split function: ideal for breakbeats -very easy sampling procedure: auto start/stop (by threshold), auto-mapping to successive keys, automatic placing of new samples into a samplebank (great for drumkits/multisamples) -stereo resampling with filters and effects: -optional AIEB1 expansion adds 6 individual analog outs (usable as 6 mono outs or 3 stereo pairs) and SPDIF coax i/o + optical (toslink) i/o.

The overall sound quality of the A3000 is superb. If you sample and play stuff without change, you hear what have sampled, no more, no less. Once you start adding filters, modulations and effects, you get an extremely cool, aggressive and modern sound. This is what I especially love about the A3000: it sounds so electronical, I can make so many weird and sick sounds with it. I think this sampler is great for all sorts of electronic music: techno, trance, house, drum`n`bass, hiphop, industrial, ambient. It sounds so modern, just great. Using parameters like velocity to cutoff or velocity to Envelope or Random pan, you can both add distinctiveness and randomness to your music, making it more lively and less static.

This box is built very stable (all-metal casing) and I haven`t experienced any problems with it so far. I would deem this thing suitable for live use.

I called the German customer support several times before buying it, asking them some technical questions. They took the time and were quite friendly.

The Yamaha A3000 is a very powerful, versatile, great sounding and easy-to-use sampler that I would buy again if I had to. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to make electronic music, espacially weird/innovative stuff. Import of foreign sample data via CD-Rom is uncomfortable, so if you`re planning to read a lot from Akai/Emu sampling CDs, the A3000 might not be the thing for you. However, if you`re into making your own samples from movies, old records, software synths or borrowed equipment, this is THE sampler for you, as you can f**k up every sound to an impossible degree. It`s really unbelievable, but this box makes your music really unique if you take the time and mess things up.

The Yamaha A3000 is a 64 voice sampler with 128 MB max. RAM, internal effects, optional internally mountable SCSI disk, two stereo out and optional output expansion and S/PDIF.
Get the complete specs i.e. from the Yamaha web site.
My comments are based on the operating system version 2.0, after working with the A3000 for about half a year.
Whats cool about the A3000:
- sampling audio sources is very comfortable. The A3000 can automatically trigger record and stop based on an adjustable threshold level and map the samples to note keys (allways same, white, black + white). It can also normalize automatically. This way sampling off an audio sampling CD is fun, as well as taking a series of performances. Only triggering by MIDI note is missing.
- though it is said to be a matter of taste, I find the user interface very intuitive and fast to operate (i.e. compared to the ESI4000). When trying out the A3000 in the store, I could almost instantly play with effects and even resampling in a few minutes without the aid of the manual.
- The flexibility (not the transfer times) of the disk storage is great. Every kind of structure (sample, program, sample bank) can be loaded into RAM or saved to any volume on the disk.
- the three effect devices offer much of the stuff I need. Compression, distortion, amp simulation, kind of ring modulators, real time time stretch and pitch shift and of course the standard ones like reverb, delay, chorus and so on. There are lots of others, like vinyl simulation, lo-fi and something called 'noise delay' which is really cool and there's much EQ everywhere.
- The organization of programs, samples and sample banks turned out to be very flexible and intuitive. There have been critics that the A3000 can not switch 'instruments' for each channel using program select in multimode. For me this is not a problem. I create a separate program for each 'song' where the channel/instrument settings are saved and keep them throughout the song. The good thing about this is that the effect settings are stored with that program and thus are exactly reproduced when switching to that program. Thus, all the individual settings for a 'song' are stored in a single managable unit.
- The filters are good and effective. There are low/high/band-pass, mixed, dual 'peak' filters and others, a total of 16. Especially the 24db low-pass can turn the A3000 into a 303 because of the high resonance and filter overdrive.
- The pitch wheel can even reverse the sound (i.e. for scratching) if you like.
- There are several ways to process loops. The A3000 can split loops into a series of rhythmic slices, map them automatically onto adjactant keys or rearrange them randomly to a new sample following different algorithms. Some samples may even be reversed during this process. Cool for remixing, this seems to be what people are doing with ReCycle!, but the A3000 does it in stereo.
- Sounds can be easily fattend by subtle changes to pitch and phase of the stereo channels.
- the envelopes are fast and can be well adjusted.
What's not so cool about the A3000:
- the knobs are sluggish and sometimes go one tick further after releasing them. One can get a bit used to it, but this one is a minus.
- the disk transfer rates are quite slow
- it was disappointing to realize that while resampling the max. polyphony is limited to four and that MIDI controllers don't work. Resampling is however ok for recording single sounds with effects.

I think the A3000 makes the ESI4000, which I've got too, look old. The ESI wins only in the disk transfer times discipline and maybe when creating crossfade loops.
In fact, the A3000 has become my most important sound device, because it sounds good and is fun to work with. It also has been stable all the time, no crashes, no loss of data so far.
Also the service from Yamaha Germany was excellent. When my dealer failed to get me the manual addendum for the OS version 2.0, I called them and the next day I had a manual in my mai

Software version 2. The simplicity of this machine is superb. The matrix system means that all the commands you want are there in front of you for easy access. Pushing the first knob on any page calls up the sample menu, and that's really useful. Editing is simple, setting up sample banks is simple. Sure, you can get lost within some pages, but this shouldn't put you off - after all this machine >>is<< a power house and some operational quirks are to be expected. The manual is massive, but to be honest with you, I hardly ever touched it - the interface is >>that<< intuative.

64 Note poly, 16 part multi, up to 128Mb RAM, SCSI as standard, 4 outs, Loads of filters, three effects units, HD Support up to 8Gb (Partition size 1Gb), internal HD mounting supported - and these are just a few of the features. The effects are great and relativley easy to use. There are some you'll probrbly never use (e.g. Turntable) but the Auto Wah is wicked, and the reverbs are of top quality. Expansion capabilities (apart from RAM and HDD) are pretty good too. The AEB1 output expansion board adds 6 futher outs (taking to 10) and digital I/O. Costs 149 UK Pounds (comes/w V2 software if you don't have it on your machine). It's got a scratch pad sequencer, but it's not really worth mentioning. Sample rates are 44.1kHz to 5kHz Lo-fi and up to 48kHz with the digi I/O.

The AWM2 tone generation system still holds fast. Once your samples are in there, they sound identical to the source (at 44 / 48 kHz). They can also sound completley dirty and contorted using different sampling rates, filters and effects. The sounds will have that "Yamaha" edge to them, which makes them punchy (but may not be to every ones taste), and so this is a sampler well suited to the dance market. Responds to Velocity and Aftertouch pretty well.

Built like a tank, although is very big (about the size of your average video recorder) but is quite light (about 6.5Kg). This thing should last for ages, although watch the knobs at the front, they could well get damaged. Live work would be no problem with the A3000. Front knobs to have a specific rate at which they mush be turned to get maximum response (due to internal optical sensors), but its never been a problem for me.

I've never had a problem, so I've never needed to ask for support!

I'd buy it again, and again, and again. I've had it for a while now, and it really is the best piece of gear I've bought for ages. It's worth what I paid, and is probably worth even the RRP of 1299 UK Pounds (Street value = 900 to 1000 UK Pounds). The A3000 is central to my set up, and It really does enable me to get on with it and make my music. My only wish is for a better quality Time Stretch, but the A3000's time stretch is still one of the best I've come accross. Please do listen to it before you buy any sampler, it may change your mind!