Yamaha A4000 Sampler

Not very logical userinterface. But even unlogical thing become logical when you work with it a while. It took mee 3 or 4 hours before I saw the light. Did pick up the manual three of four times. The manual isn't very helpfull. I even now don't know how to edit the fx section altough I read it in the manual. Mixed feelings but learning curve is not very diffent from an Akai S2000

loads of and they are very good to. Especially the effects and filters.

Loading a big amount of samples from floppy is annoying. Importing a wav file takes very long, to long, to long. This is a big drawback and costs 3 yamaha points

Good. Better then al my softsamplers (don't use them anymore). Sound is the only thing that counts. Its a musical instrument after all

Its works and din't let me down. No problems with the knobs yet.

Didn't need customer support. Its stabil, its massive

IF it was stolen I would buy another one. They are very good.

I don't know about the firmware version.
Ease of use - no. Not easy! But to other reviewers here: This device has a lot of functionality! It cannot be easy to use. But once you spent a few hours reading the manual carefully, this unit is easy to use. I don't need the manual any more.
The push&turn-encoders might be disturbing. I find them OK. But I see that some people will find them messy and disturbing.
What's badly explained in the manual is how to assign an effect. So, the trick is to set the output of a sample (or sample bank) to the input of the effect 1, 2, or 3. Complicated? Well, at least it lets you use different FX for different samples within one program, free routing...
But other than that, once you read the manual, the user interface lets you work efficiently.

Features? Lots of!

Polyphony is 32, which is not much, but for the time it was produced still is OK.
It has 96 built-in FX, I tried some... the reverbs are very nice. You can edit all FX parameters. They can also be edited via MIDI controllers. There is a detune effect like in analog synthesizers that does not consume extra processing power or an FX slot. (Sounds like chorus!)
Next point: Basically everything can be adjusted live using MIDI controlers. In many places where you enter notes or controler numbers, you can activate the MIDI function and "type" them on your master keyboard. Especially with controller numbers, this saves a lot of work.
There are I believe 20 different filters, ("DCFs") some provide resonance. Additionally, one can have a simple EQ (1 band parametric).
Countless other functions: Volume scaling over the keyboard from breakpoint to breakpoint. Scaling is also available for envelope and filter. The master EQ is 4 band full parametric. There is one LFO that can control various things. (filter, pitch, etc)
Of course it is multi-timbral and can handly up to 128 programs consisting of one or more sample banks, again consisting of several samples. (Samples can be mapped to a program without a bank, though.)
Recording is easy, there is a trigger mode that cuts samples automatically. They will be given the chosen name + a number and optionally can be stuffed into a new sample bank for each "recording session". Looping works well and isn't hard to do.
In general a good thing: It has internal IDE ports, that can handle up to 8GB of hard disk. (Larger hard disks work, but the device only uses 8 GB). I recommend using elderly laptop hard disks, which are quite cheap and silent. (Hint: You need a drilling machine to mount the laptop drive, ... remove the mounting plate _before_ drilling the holes. ;-)
Memory can be expanded using cheap old PC modules. Mine has 128MB, which is fairly enough.
It imports a couple of formats from an external CD-drive (SCSI) and originally came with 8 CDs full of samples. If you plug in an SCSI CD writer, it an backup the other disks to CD.
And there is a lot of features I didn't use yet.

The drawback: It loads very slowly from disks. No matter what kind of disks. This is a design issue, as Yamaha told me.

It sounds what you record into it. No noise, no tampering of the signal.

The sample CDs are not that good. I think the pianos are dissapointing. But there are some good sounds. I didn't test the drums yet, maybe there are some more suprisingly good drums. But as said, the pianos, if not keyboards in general, are not very shiny.

I can't judge about this now.

Yamaha's German support answered e-mails within a day and was very supportive. The person answering was competend and helpful - even though I didn't buy the device new and it is out of production for quite a while.

If it was stolen, I'd moan a lot because I (currently) do not have a CD writer to which I could back up my samples.
I'm using the unit now for about 2 weeks. I read quote some reviews and almost bought something from Akai. But with the A4000, you get more for the money! It just has way more features. This in fact makes the user interface complex. You can't just switch it on and use it. You definetely need to read the manual beforehand.
There's only one feature I miss: Automatic mapping of the original key for each sample. (I'm sampling old keyboards, and every guitar tuner can tell the tone!)
The major drawback of the device is that it loads samples very very slowly. No matter from which medium.

Terrible user interface, but it's Yamaha, haha, lesson learned. I can't think of 1 or 2 Yamaha products that had sensible UI's. Get with it, Yamaha, your user interfaces are clinical, nonsensical, and not conducive to creativity. I'm not sure what OS I have, but I can tell you that many processes in the manual (written in Engrish) are INCORRECT. The sample cds that came with the sampler are very good. The manual, as I've said, is terrible, written by some japanese lab coat.

Polyphony is 64 I believe. The effects are excellent, almost worth the pain and price alone. Even the reverb is better than your typical Japanese Crap reverb. Expansion sucks, I have to pay how much for more outputs and digital in/out? The Emu E64 came with all that factory! Once upon a time samplers came with 8 outputs standard, but 4 outputs is decent, and at the price these go for, you can't complain much. There are alot of good tools for multisampling and sample mangling if you can get past the terrible OS. Memory is more than adequate, it's pretty easy to upgrade this path. Loading samples is PAINFUL, banks take FOREVER to load, it's unbelievably slow. Why was my E64 which is way older than this thing 10 times faster and easier to use? It is really nice that it's compatible with so many formats, but trust me, this sampler is more for sound design, not AKAI/EM U functions.

As I've said, the Yamaha sample cds are great, and if you just used the basic waves on the Aseries you could still have a ripping synth. The filters, lfos, and envelopes are excellent. The effects are very musical and deep....at the used prices they sometimes go for, it's worth getting a basic, factory A4000 or 5000 just as an effects processor alone. I may keep mine around for that, since I hate actually, you know, SAMPLING with it. Har har

I wouldn't depend on it and I wouldn't gig with it. I have my reasons. The rotary knobs are HORRIBLE, they jump around if you turn them too fast, which inhibits speed of use. All A samplers have this issue to some degree or another, chalk it up to Yamaha using cheap/inferior components (like the SCSI bus).
This is a STUDIO ONLY piece if anything.....if for some reason you had to reload your sample banks at a live show, you'd be lynched by the audience before Eeyore4000 loaded everything. The fan is NOISEY too, which can create problems if you have sensitive mics in your studio.

Just about every major conglomerate like Yamaha gets a 4 from me. To me, customer support is more than how long you have to wait on the phone for a technical answer (which you should use the internet for anyways). Half of customer support is how well a product is supported with O.S. upgrades, compatibility in the future, and like Roland, Yamaha flunks this miserably. Remember the Ex5? Neither does Yamaha. MLAN what? Here's a couple of token O.S. upgrades, now deal with it, suckers. It happened with the A3000 v.2. Instead of working on the sampler we sold you, we'll just sell new samplers with the o.s. we should've given you. Feel sorry for anyone who paid full price for the original A3000.

If lost or stolen, I would hope it's the only equipment the thief had to use, my revenge would be sweet. Compared to stuff I used to work with, this thing's way more powerful, but nowadays, I'm more impressed by workflow than how many bells and whistles something has. If I had nothing but a sampler, I'd rather have an ASR-10 or barring that, an Emu or Akai sampler and a good external effects processor than the A4000. Not to mention all the software options like Kontakt that exist nowadays. Part of the demise of hardware samplers is software, but alot of it has to do with manufacturers releasing samplers that are whack.

Overall, A4000 is not very easy to use, and one needs to make work one's brain to use it cleverly. It is a professionnal studio sampler, not an "easy to use rompler". If you want to buy sth easy to use, go to AKAI. If you want sth professionnal with outstanding sounds, stay with A4000. Owner's manual is not easy to read and won't help a lot.

In-board excellent 3 effects and outstanding filters. Superb convertissors. Very flexible studio tool... Once you've understood how it works. Complete MIDI implementation, flexible modulations, good polyphony... If you want to store datas, you'll need to add an Hard Disk, or a ZIP 100 Mega drive. Unfortunately, A4000 uses old-SCSI, which makes of it a quite slow-to-store sampler.

Superb for techno-new'age-house-Hip'hop-synthetic music. A must-to-have for those kinds of musics, really! Warm sounds!

Well... buttons in front pannel work bad after a few months of intensive use, and my HD seems to store sometimes wrong datas. It is a rackamount-studio unit, which does not seem to be very solid. Not for a live use...

Very professionnal studio sampler, with excellents effects, superb convertissors and filters. Not easy to use, but very, very powerful!

Never used a machine that has destroyed my creative impulse as much..i just couldnt GET this one. every thing so slow and not intuitive.. never managed to hear the library on CDrom..as i dont have a scsi cdrom..(whats so hard with putting a built in cd rom in??) no wonder hardware samplers are dying out ..and whats with SIMMS !!! Never recorded one sound from it in 3-4years of owning it.

ive used a LOT of gear since i got my 1st SH101 new in 1983..and i dont mind spending time learning them..but i just gave up with this,as it wasnt intuitive in the least to how i work.

seems well featured...if you can be arsed to sit down with manual and battle to get it to do something.i dont have the paitence...i;d rather be creating music.

heard 1 or two sounds from it..they sounded great...never yet heard the cd libary u get with it :(

no probs...but ...never really used it

i own a lot of yamaha gear..but after this , i refuse to buy anymore yamaha stuff , also where is there loyalty to customer after purchase..?

it LOOKS the sexiest bit of gear i have...and is the only reason i have kept it but its been useless waste of money for me..one day when i dont have to be creative i will sit down and try again with it ..for now i'd rather be playing and not fighting with it , my emu esi-32 under it just WORKS..so it gets used...Although i hate software synth/sampler...i is gonna get new EMULATOR X..

The A4k can be a bitch to use.. The interface is quite logical, but navigation is slow due to the slow responsive knobs. Things are fiddly to map out. I'd reccomend bzone, the software editor (www.bzone.be) .. Of samplers, this is deffo the mammoth.. powerful but slow.

One of the things i love about this machine it it's awesome array of FX. If somehow i chose not to use this beast for sampling i would keep it solely as an FX processor (oh yeah, did i mention you can run it as a standalone FX processor?) You can have 3 FX blocks in combo, or allocated to different samples.. in standalone mode you can have 3 in series, which is more than the average digital signal processor can offer. The FX types are great.. There are some real mavericks on here.. such as the techmod, autosin, jump and flangpan, as well as some nice crunchy distortions and ampsims which stick out to me most. Those are just a few out of i think 100+ (can't remember off the top of me head) FX to play with.. you'll find pretty much anything you need.
Filters are fantastic, plenty of types, great sound and best of all... <<a filter plus 1 band EQ per sample!!>> You won't get that on most software apps will you?

The A4k is more of a synth than a sampler. Unlike dedicated synths, the A4k gives you a whole new dimension on sound design, you start with an oscillator (like or a synth) or start with a sample and put that through the synth process of Filter > Env > FX. You'll get completely different results.
If you want your average stereotype sampler.. basically a rompler.. get an akai. It'll be easier to use the AKAI sample CDs.. However if you want to explore new sonic territory and create wholly original sounds, then consider the Axks, they're synths at heart with huge potential.

I'd say the yammi is v. reliable, hasnt crashed on me once. It can be slow, but provided you treat it with care as far as messing with devices like SCSI, it should be very reliable

The A4k isnt really supported anymore. Yamaha still support it i guess, but unless you can understand japanese, you'll have little luck. I havent had to deal with their services cause the machine hasnt failed me.. Hopefully I wont have to

I love my A4k to bits. I don't care if hardware samplers are going out, This thing has some serious power and potential, and i can always forsee having a use for it.
If you want a bread and butter sampler, i wouldnt reccomend the A4k. Seeing as its past the h/w samplers heyday, modern software apps have much better support.
When you have a bit of cash to spend, pick one up and you'll be amazed at what you can do.

I'm not sure what version I'm using because I just got this thing two days ago. Editing samples can be a pain so do your sample editing on your PC. The manual is the best I've read from yamaha because I had the RM1X years before that was the worst manual to read.

The poly is 64 which is great for me. I'm make hiphop music, and this thing is no joke. Response thru midi is tight with no drift. Comes with effects and you add the outs later for $200 (compare to akai). It wasn't hard for me to just dive in and explore the features of this beast. Before I even used this thing I put a IDE Hard Drive and internal 250MB Zip Drive inside plus maxed the ram. Everything worked flawless. People will jusy have to get use to the Operating System and menu structure that seems simple and well thought out. This thing is what I wanted to make my samples more like a synth. Its miles away from the MPC 2000xl in the sample department. But for drums, I'm sticking with my MPC 2000XL because it has more punch. But remember, I've only had the A4000 for 2 days. I like the way you can change velocity for samples. It has a onboard sequencer but is like a scratch pad so nothing like cubase or MPC.

What you put in is what you put out. But after that, you got all this DSP. The filters are amazing. The effects are tight. Its has LFOs that can sync to midi. You can control velocity and how the sample plays plus a shit load to loop a sample. A4000 seems to color sample the sound warmer. I still have a lot more to explore.

I don't know. I hope I don't have any problems. I would not use it at a gig. Its too damn heavy.

N/A

If this thing was lost I would buy another one if I get the same price I paid for it. Its worth the $400 bucks I paid for it. When I bought it, I was like a little kid with a new toy. I've tried software samplers but personally I can't stand them. The A4000 seems more hands on compared to kontakt or halion. The A4000 is not powerful than software but more accessible and since I can use a hard drive inside the A4000 I can get benefits similar to a computer with no hassle. Anyway, for the price, you would be an idiot to pass it up.

Answering the last coment. You must be completly idiot, this sampler is great, the features are great, the sound quality is great and the effects are great. Most samplers come with only a little of memory and what can you espect by 400$ jejejeje. More stupid if you bought it whithout knowing it's specs. It's the same memory that most samplers have ever use, you can conect it by the SCSI directly to the computer, you can control it all by MIDI you can do a lot of things with this great sampler, but you have to be a little inteligent.

Great features for a not very modern hardware sampler. Many effects, a lot of memmory, but a very sloooow SCSI.

As most of the samplers, depend on the samples but you can do many things with it's LFO's, envelopes, effects...

Perfect for all kind of music but it shines more for electronic dance music, I make most of my voyces and drum loops whith this, noth gig with it yet. It have get locked a pair of times whyle loading some samples, but not more.

Not used yet

Great features, great sound quality and many posibilities. Mine have full memmory, internal HD, external SCSI CD-RW and the extra audio I/O card. Very good sampler fot the price.

Bought mine for $400 on sale and returned it the next day.
It is 2003 now! This thing comes with only 4MB of RAM and you are supposed to buy additional RAM, which can be no better than 72pin 32MB. You can't even go to the PC store and buy those today. You have to special-order those because they are so old.
The most important factor to fuel this decision was that the manual explicitly said that I needed an external SCSI CD-ROM drive in order to load all the samples that came on CDs with it. Well, the external CD-ROM is a hard to find thing as well. Nowadays nobody needs those. Besides, I already have a CD-ROM in my PC, why would I want to buy another one just for making this A4000 work?
It's crazy. I figured that I needed to spend a whole lot more money in order to make things work.... Naahhh... Ain't worth it.

I found moving from MPC2000 to this a doddle and more easy than the MPC by miles. The manual can be a little annoying but I only ever looked at it when I was stuck.

The FX's are great compared to the 0 ones you get on the MPC unless you spend another #250. I also bought a 250meg Zip which also helped.

I produce Techno and the FX work really well with vocal snipets and loops I mske up.

Touch wood it's been perfect and i've had it 3 years.

I would buy it again without a doudt.

A number of people gripe that this sampler is difficult to use. I found it a challenge at first because I had never used a sampler before and this is a pro unit. However, after going through the manual I discovered that it is a well designed and powerful musical instrument.

Getting samples into the until can be a pain. I tend to create a lot of sounds on the PC and then use a freeware app to send them over a SCSI connection to the A4000. I was using a zip for storage but found that it was causing line noise so I switched to an internal HDD which is faster.

The A4000 comes with 64 notes of polyphony, more than enough for most users. It can be expanded with the optional AIEB1 card which comes with optical outs. Its MIDI capabilities are very complete and even allow control over fx, filters, etc. The onboard sequencer is simple and mostly for entering simple patterns.

The area where this sampler really shines is the fx banks. The A series comes loaded with many beautiful sounding fx that can be routed in series or parallel to create very professional sounding tracks.

I use this sampler with an electronic drum kit. I find it very easy to trigger and control samples as well as fx and lfo, etc. It is a very expressive instrument.

When I first got it I found the loading times to be a bit slow. However, with the new 1.5 OS it is much faster and easier to use. Though I have not yet done so I do plan on using this live. It is stable and reliable for live use.

In this age of software samplers, if I lost my Yammy I would probably replace it if I found a used one for a good price. Although I use computers to create and edit sounds I like the A4000 for its fast, simple, reliable operation and most of all the wonderful sounding effects.

On the day I received this sampler I was tempted to send it right back. It just did not work the way I did. At almost every turn I was cursing and flipping through the manual. Now, after working with it for a couple of weeks, I can say that, if you are willing to unlearn old habits, Yamaha's OS is, in many ways, an improvement. It's miles ahead of the Roland architecture. It is a little more musical than the Akai method. It doesn't quite have the flexibility of a Kurzweil, but this is a sampler that sells for around $700. I have owned and worked extensively with Ensoniq, Roland, Akai and Kurzweil samplers for the last 15 years. Yamaha has completely rethought the traditional sampler OS. At the very least, it's nice to see a company willing to search for a better road.

64 voices is plenty of polyphony for my applications. (This sampler supplies dedicated drum kits in my studio.) The built-in effects are fun. If I was a techno or r&b producer, I could find plenty of uses for these effects. The reverbs and delays are too weak to use when you have access to good quality, dedicated units. I expanded my A4000 to 100 Meg of RAM, a built in Zip disk and an 8 Gig IDE drive. Everything works great. Whatever god-awful SCSI controller Yamaha used on this unit should be scrapped. However, the IDE load times are only a fraction of the SCSI times. (Go figure.) If I had to use the SCSI bus for loading work, I would have to return this unit. Single, large, contiguous files seem to be alright, but large numbers of small, scattered files (i.e. drum sounds) take forever to load over the SCSI bus. The on-board sequencer was only included for playing demos in music stores.

The sound is excellent. The sample quality rivals my Kurzweil. (And that says a lot!) It has a low-mid, almost analog fullness that I prefer to my Akai for drums.

Well, I've only had it for a couple of weeks, and it does not travel with me. However, the build quality seems excellent. I've had to replace the power supply on two Akai samplers. The A4000 seems to be somewhere between the Akai and the Kurzweil in terms of the neatness and logic of the internal layout and sturdy construction. It does run 24-7 in the studio and (thanks to an internal fan) is one of the coolest running units in my synth rack.

I dealt with Yamaha's service department on several occasions in the 1980's. I ordered parts for a KX88, TX816 etc.. They were always very helpful. I don't know that they have maintained this level of service. However, the Motif site and user forum are very helpful so I'm sure that they are capable of giving good service. Of course, no service department is ever better than the weakest link. All it takes is one moron to mis-handle a single customer . . .

For the price I paid, I really can't think of another sampler that would compete. I'm happy. BTW - Four outputs should be the minimum standard for all samplers. This allows me to have a stereo spread for toms and cymbals, and one individual out each for kick and snare.

I have been hearing a lot of complaints from people having a hard time figuring this box out. Maybe I am just a backwards kind of guy, but I thought after about a day with it, it seemed like the easiest sampler I have ever used. The knobs can be twisted and pushed, so navigation of menus is really easy once you get the hang of it. Contrary to popular belief, the manual is really very well laid out, and you shouldn't have much of a problem finding what you need if you have even one ounce of flexible logic in your skull.

The polyphony is just fine for my purposes (techno). The effects are some of the best I have ever heard, and it covers the full range from standard 'verbs and delays to more exotic combinations. They are arranged in blocks which can interact in many interesting ways, opening up some cool fx routing options. It comes with 4 standard outs, to which you can add 6 more. You can also add an ide or scsi internal hard drive up to 8 gig in size. The memory goes up to 128 mb in simm pairs. Make sure you get the 16 chip kind. I have had no problem mapping my rm1x knobs to control all the functions in the a4000. The midi function editor is top-notch. There is an on-board sequencer, which is just a plain vanilla scratch pad. Pretty easy to use.

Everything about this sampler makes me very happy. The sounds you can get out of this thing will blow all you techno-heads' socks off(it DOES color your sound, making it a bit warmer: Contrast this with emu samplers which sound colder imo). The outputs aren't noisy, although the fan can definitely be heard. This isn't a problem for me as I don't do much work involving a microphone.

I have gigged with it many times, and had no problems whatsoever. Everyone has a problem with this sampler being so bulky, but honestly that is one of the best features. This sampler has been through a LOT, and not fucked up once.

Never had to deal with them (a good thing).

I would buy it again in a heart-beat. This is simply the best rack sampler I have ever had the pleasure of using (no, I don't work for Yamaha). I am using it with a pc (running reason and some mastering software), an mx1804x mixer, an rm1x sequencer, an ultrafexx pro maximizer, and a midiman 8 controller keyboard. When I compared this to other samplers out there, I figured that the s5000 was its main competition. Don't get me wrong, AKAI KICKS ASS!!!! But, for the money, I decided that the a4k was a better value.

Well..it's not so easy to understand how it should be..
Akai does these things 1000 times better.

Features are good. in this range of money, no other sampler
gives as much as the yammies do.
Expanded outputs are easy to install.
Effects are good.
Sound is good too.

I use it in the Dance/Club industry.
THe sound is as far as i know the only thing which i like about it.

B A D.
I had it for one month...and the ROM was empty.
This happended by some SCSI error Yammy said.
THis makes me nervous...i need a sampler which is reliable.
Yammy is not.

Yammy support is bad.
one word...;-)

I have it here...pumped up with 80mb ram, expension board..
But i am gonna sell it, and buy a Akai Z4. Again...Period ;-)

presets are useless.
editing is tiresome.
the manual is difficult to understand.
You never know which knob to turn; sometimes the first, sometimes the second, user interface absolutely Yamaha: like never tested on a real person;)

polyphony: ok
effects good but unclear how to use
expansion is oldfahioned: floppy disk standard: if you built in a zip drive you miss the floppy, no smartmedia orso

sounds on the CD's are ok, but sooooooooo slooooooooow to load even with a built in scsi harddisk that I never tried more than a couple.

owned it a year, used it a few evenings, than got to tired with the waiting, so I don't know really.

downloaded a new OS version via internet hoping it would speed things up but alas: no difference whatsoever.
Never needed support though

I sold it after having owned it for less then a year, used it only a couple of evenings, because after some trials I found this the most unusefull midi gear I ever had, wishing I never bought it in the first place. sold it for far less than half the price paid, just glad to get rid of it.

Decided never to buy anything Yamaha ever again.
I bought a Roland XV 5080 instead an instantly knew that this was the perfect tool for almost everything I want; plays samples as well, very fast loading, speedy, user friendly etc.

playing now for approx 20 years on all sort of gear: Kurzweil, Roland, even own a yamaha sequencer Qy700 (like this quit well) and one of the first digital mixers from yamaha: DPM 11 ( so much noise in the output that it is rather useless....) Roland JP-8080, Roland 1680 Harddiskrecorder ( full blown version w 2 fx), Roland PMA 5, Alessis drum unit, smte box by steinberg.

he only thing about this A4000 i liked was the quality of the sound, the rest I hated:
-noisy fan in the power supply
-verrrrry BIG unit, Heavy as well difficult to reach the backside to connect cables.
-Incredibly SLOW in everything as if they used the motherboard of a IBM 286 computer from 15 years back
-incomprehensible user interface: which knob to turn? you never know.
- tried to build in an IDE Harddisk: never worked.
- did actually build in a scsi Harddisk: worked but nearly as slow as a 1 speed CD rom drive!!!
- connected a 24 speed scsi CD-rom drive: SLOOOOOOW loading.
- Memory can be upgraded to 128 MB: but only with oldfashioned slow and expensive SIMMS instead of the newer and much speedier and above all very cheap Dimms

As you can see: I would never buy this again, moreso: even if I got one for free, would not use it.

Weird manual! Better to just start messing around. You'll learn ot as you go along even though it might seem hard at first.

Nice list of features. The best are, in my opinion, the effects, the Loop Remix funtion and the Loop divide function.

Includes 10 very good sounding sample cd's (1xaudio/9XCD-Rom)

I've had mine for about 8 months now, and i've had it returned for repair twice so far!

Even thogh I don't think that much of it's reliability, it's a fine machine that sounds really good.

Yamaha uses a very peculiar hierarchy for arranging samples and programs: A single program can be multitimbral, yet the same program can be slotted into a multi-program setup. A sample itself contains filter/eg/lfo information, and that sample can be assigned to a sample group which may also contain filter/eg/lfo info, which can be assigned to a program, which ALSO has filter/eg/lfo information. This is at once both very flexible and very irritating. There are fifteen ways to do the same thing. Some people might like this, some may not. One fine point is the ability to directly import wav/aiff files, meaning I can do edits on my PC, drop them to a floppy, and pull them into the sampler, all without SCSI.

The A4K is loaded, for sure. The effects, the filters, the editing-facilities... For its price, you sure get a lot. It doesn't do any particular thing well, in my opinion, but it's truly greater than the sum of its parts. Yeah, the distortion effect is kinda lame, and the low pass filter sounds a bit digital, but pair them together and you can get some really wanky, wailing sounds to resample and use again.

Haven't touched a sample cd yet. The sound quality is impeccable for straight reproduction of a sample. As noted before, the filters sound a bit digital, particularly as you crank up the resonance/Q. Then again, few samplers don't sound digital, save the old Roland S-series. Not exactly the best sampler to try to recreate heavy filtery Daft Punk-style house riffs; probably better suited for stuff like d&b, techno, and trance.

So far, so good. It's only been a few days but it doesn't appear to have any hiccups, short of painfully slow disk transfer times.

This is my first sampler, so I haven't much to compare it to in practice. I have really taken to it, not so much the A4000 necessarily but with samplers in general. I like the weirdness you can get taking random little snippets of songs and filtering them and looping it all together in some strange arrangement. All told, the learning curve was mellow enough and I've yet to find any real limitation to the A4000. That's about as much as I could ask for in a new piece of gear, and I heartily recommend others trying one out.

At first the unit may seem very very confusing and complex...mainly due to the layout of the manual. The manual isn't all that bad and covers a lot of ground but it's definitely not easy to just open it up and find what you're looking for. Newbies may have a hair pulling time figuring things out but with a little patience you'll soon come to learn how pathetically EASY and I mean EASY this sampler can be to use. Good thing I've been doing this for years and am also a computer tech. Was working with it the first day.

I think most of you already know the specs...if not go to Yamaha's web site (the UK one os better) www.yamaha.co.uk I will say that this this is also the most full featured sampler that I've come across especially in this price range. I mean you can add an internal IDE or SCSI hard drive, external scsi drives, 128 meg memory max, expansion board option, etc. Definitely get the most for your money.

This unit is soooo clean I couldn't believe my ears. I haven't checked the specs but I can tell the noise floor is reeeally low. Not a spec of hiss. The effect section just blew my mind. It has so many effects and the nice thing is that it also has unusual non typical effects as well. Sometimes just reverb and delay get reeeal boring and with these effects you can come up with all new sounds. Routing the effects is VERY easy and really flexible. The CD's it comes with offer a good amount of programs and samples but aren't super thrilling.

Built really solid. Haven't had it long enough to tell.

One thing to say... if you're planning on buying a sampler buy this one! Yes SCSI loading is slow, but I have an internal IDE hard drive and despite what some other people have said the internal IDE loads pretty fast for me. It's just the SCSI CD ROM loading that is slow for me (and floppy ofcourse). With all the features it seemed to me to be the only way to go and I'm glad I went with it. But remember...patience with it and you'll see how easy it really is to use.

The A4000 is a bit unconventional and for certain tasks can be cumbersom to use. This is particularly true with the way samples are structured as independent samples rather than a part of a program. This can make editing a selection of samples a bit more arduos than necessary. Also the A4000 in multimode is not as easy to configure as the EMU's E4 series or the Korg Triton. Overall the A4000 is not to bad

The A4000 has very good filters, a comprehensive CD collection, cool processing tools and interesting effects. However, no matter how good these features they are undermined by one big flaw: Slow I mean excruciatingly slow SCSI and IDE transfer. A 4MB file took me over 2 minutes to load and It took me better than 6 minutes to save a 16MB (native A series)file using either IDE or SCSI with the A4000.

To put this in perspective my EMU e6400 can transfer a 16mb file in less than 40 seconds. My e6400ULTRA takes about 35 seconds. This huge difference in data transfer rates is greater than the difference between using a 56kbs modem and one thats 14.4kbs.


Also the A4000's DSP power seemed a bit taxed as it was slow to perform several DSP tasks.

The extensive effects pallette (particularly useful for urban/dance music), filtering capabilities and useful processing tools such as loop divide offers a outstanding platform of expressive and creative sound sculpting capabilities. As with any sampler the sound comming out is only going to be as good as the sounds that have gone in.

Yamaha should do a better job documenting which hard drives work with the A4000 because the first two hard drives I tried did not work.

Excruciating slow SCSI and IDE transfer rates severely limit the usefulness of this sampler. Perhaps I've ben spoiled by the Emu's but having to wait 400%+ longer for a same size file to load on the A4000 than it takes to load on the EMU e6400 is a bit like surfing the net at 14.4kbs after using a 56kbs modem.

Since the A4000 like many dedicated samplers has no onboard sounds, it's usefulness is based in part on how quickly it can load and save sound files. The A4000's extremely slow SCSI and IDE transfer rates makes the loading and saving of sound files a far too time consuming and arduous task for it to be useful to me. It's a shame because the Yamaha A series do offer a great feature set at a relatively low price.

The A4000 is not too dificult to use but as is typical with much Yamaha gear, the OS can get a bit convoluted particularly in multi-mode and often times simple tasks take longer than necessary. It's too bad Yamaha didn't use a more traditional approach in attaching samples to presets than to banks.

The A4000 comes with a VERY generous helping of CDROMS: 9 in all. Overall the sound quality is quite good and all the sound bases are covered. You can manipulate the sounds using the A4000's great sounding filters and with a little editing many of the included sounds can really come to life

The only downside is that many of the sounds tend to be memory hogs so you'll definetely want to extend the units memory above the standard 4 megs

Reliability should be above average

Yamaha could certainly do a better job documenting which hard-drives work with the A4000 as the first 2 hardrives I tried would not work

If you don't mind waiting over 6 minutes for a 16MB sample to load than you have more patience than me. As I stated above my 3 year old e6400 can load a 16MB sample in under 45 seconds.

The Yamaha A4000 offers a great feature set at a relatively low price. That is one reason why this review is so difficult. On one hand you have a powerful work-horse sampler with enough polyphony, memory(when expanded) and sound shaping tools to keep even the most devoted tweak head happy. Unfortunately, Why Yamaha has decided to implement these features on a mother-board utterly incapable of reasonable SCSI and IDE transfer speeds is beyond me. And since A4000 has no internal sounds the ability to import and export samples quickly is crucial. In this regard loading and saving samples with the A4000 is a frustrating and tedious task that imo would be like surfing the net with 14.4 kbs modem.

it was very frustrating for the first few days, but if you can buy from someone that can help you (not guitar center!)you'll be fine. now that i have the hang of it, it's very easy to use.

the manual sucks, in my opinion.

it comes with 9 cds of GREAT samples, which is why i bought it.

the effects are excellent. even distortion.

it has expansion board for dig in/out, more outs, etc.

i upgraded right away to 64m ram, which has been plenty.

it has phrase sequencer, which i haven't used.

many control options via midi.

will work well for rock, pop, dance. strings are great, too.

it reacts well to velocity changes from drum machine or controller

very reliable so far. can't afford a backup!

i've called several times, they have been good to deal with.

i would buy another in a second!

the included sounds are great, and sampling is really easy. it rules!

This is not the easiest sampler to use, and I should know. I've had my share of samplers, and this is not a sampler for someone who isn't willing to sit down and read the manual.
HOWEVER... This is definetly the best sampler out there at this time. Editing is a breeze once you understand the new way of sampling Yamaha has introduced in the A4000/A5000.
The manual is well written, and the large 320x80 LCD screen makes it a breeze to work with this box.
I give it an 8 because, while it is hard to get started with, (even for a pro), the only reason it is is because it's a new way of looking at samples. Beginners and experts alike will be on equal ground learning how to work this.
I was sampling on the first day, but it took me a couple of hours and a lot of reading.

The A4000 is a 64 polyphony, 16 part multi-timbral sampler. Built in 3.5" floppy drive which can be switched out with an internal 100mb Zip drive.
It has 3 effects blocks(units), and one can be used as an external effects source for other audio. Comes with 4mb RAM and is expandable to 128RAM through 4 72 pin simms.
You can also put an internal hard drive in, (8 gigs or less), and has an SCSI port for an external cd-rom/cd-r.
The only difference between this and the A5000 is the polyphony,(A5000 has 126, and no that's not a type-o. I don't know why they couldn't make it 128), the midi (32), and the effects blocks. The A5000 has 6.
4 outs, expandable to 6 more. MIDI in/out/through.
There are 99 different effects including some new and odd ones. All are very cool.
Reads virtually all types of samples, and comes with 9 cd's full of sounds and loops.
Has a mini sequencer on board as well.
As the ads say...
The A5000/A4000 are not merely "samplers" - they are advanced synthesis tools that let you process
samples creatively...and easily. Both models provide abundant features for versatile sound production:
16 Types of Ultra Fat Filters that deliver powerful resonance, 96 Types of Effects for creating
never-before- heard sounds, a MIDI Syncable LFO with fully programmable waveforms, unprecedented
Loop Divide/Remix and Resampling functions, Direct-to-CD Burning capability and much, much more!
And with their Large LCD Panel, heavy-duty Real-time Control Knobs and Intuitive User Interface, these
samplers are incredibly easy to operate, allowing you to give full concentration to creating your own
unique sounds music.

Not much to say here. This is top of the line, so everything is pretty much good to go.

This is a 30lb beast. While I wouldn't want to drop it, if I did it would probably survive.

I've never dealt with Yamaha's customer support. But I here they're pretty good.

If this were lost or stolen I would replace it in a heartbeat!
You need to go to Yamaha's web site and see everything this can do:
http://www.yamaha.com/cgi-win/webcgi.exe/DsplyModel/?gTGN00005A4000
I compared this to a great many products. And while I really like the AKAI S5000 I think this is better.
If you want to see some of the other equipment I have go to:
http://www.users.uswest.net/~buckskinpotato/equipment/equip1.htm