finhiphop's Reviews
17 reviews Back to finhiphop's Equipboard
577
one flaw
works great, good amount of IO, and the loopback input is a great feature, but JESUS, why do you have to use their app to change the gain setting? was it really that much cheaper instead of just putting a button where it says inst? the lower end Scarlett models all have buttons to change from mic to instrument level, so why is this one different? what were they trying to achieve with their garbage proprietary software that only works half the time?
577
cool, but mine is flawed
Sounds great, but mine has a really irritating issue. There's a high pitched ringing whenever it's on, and it gets higher the lower the delay time is. At the lowest setting it's about 12khz. Through a guitar amp, it's not very noticeable, but when used as a aux send on my mixer, it's prominent enough to be annoying. Maybe it's just an issue with my unit?
577
skip it, unless you love awful 90s GM sounds... like me.
The sequencer on this one is really janky, and the sounds are pretty crap, but I love them. Reminds me of PS1 era game OSTs. Plus, you can always shove some guitar pedals at it or run it through a sampler and make some pretty cool sounds. If you want a fun toy pocket sequencer, definitely go for one of the later QY series, like the QY100 or even a QY700, if you wanna go full Squarepusher. I paid like 50 bucks for mine, which was probably a bit too much, but I just wanted something to make some terrible MIDI metal guitars. (a la Noriaki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofp_ffk0LM4)
577
yup, it's an analog delay.
Super cheap, and sounds pretty good. Not really much to say about it, it's an analog delay doing an analog delay's job. My only real gripe is that the repeat rate doesn't quite go as low as I'd like, but it's not a huge issue. Also, the build quality is pretty crap, it's made of plastic, but as long as you don't stomp on it with your Doc Martens, it'll be fine.
577
absolute classic
There's not really much I can say about the MPC that hasn't been said. It's a fantastic workhorse sampler and sequencer. I picked mine up for 250$, and while it's definitely not in amazing shape, it works. Dealing with floppy disks to save is a headache, but I usually track my beats into Ableton to mix anyway, so it's not a huge deal for me.
577
lowest of lo-fi
I've been looking for one of these for a few years now, ever since I heard the music in Homestar Runner was made with one, but the prices on Ebay and Reverb are just way too high because of circuit benders and hipster indie bands. 75 dollars for one of these is fucking crazy, but if you can find one at an antique/thrift/junk shop, get it! The built in sounds are pretty typical of kids Casios from this era, but the sampler is so crunchy, it's great. It only has about a second and a half of sample time, but if you pull the classic SP-1200 trick of speeding a record up to 45, you can just barely fit a drum break in there, which sounds great under house drums, a la Fresh & Low's Wind On Water (https://youtu.be/e1X59TH8IxI)
577
my favorite sampler
The prices on these and the 404s have been shooting up lately, (probably because of the whole lo-fi hip hop scene that's gotten so popular lately) but they are so worth it. I think I paid around $265 for mine, which was probably a little too much, but I had been looking for one for a while. The sequencer on it is pretty terrible, but I just use it as either an FX box to color my samples before they go into my MPC-2000, or sequence it with the MPC. I borrowed a 404 from a friend a while back, and while it's basically the same as the 303 with more memory and a couple of extra FX, one thing the the 303 has over it is the long/lo-fi sampling modes. The 404 only has the lo-fi mode, which gives that really crunchy SP-1200 sound, but the 303 also has the long mode, which gives it just a bit of downsampled crispiness, which sounds great on drums. I haven't even mentioned the vinyl sim, godDAMN, just perfect on drum breaks.
577
nice turntable for the price
I picked this up as an upgrade from my old Audio Technica LP-60 for sampling from vinyl, and it's pretty good. I'm not much of a turntablist, but it works ok for simple scratches. The torque is pretty weak, though, so it takes a moment to go back to full speed when you stop the record.
577
just a word of warning
if you're gonna buy one of these, make sure all the buttons work! these things are majorly prone to issues with the contacts, and that makes the buttons really tough to press. I heard it's pretty easy to fix, but I know nothing about electronics, so I just sampled the sounds from it and use them in an Ableton drum rack.
577
really nice controller
I got this to use it with Ableton how I saw artists like Baths and Shigeto using it in their live sets, (pretty much just tweaking effects on a few tracks of stems.) and it works great. I've heard the stock pads are pretty mediocre, but I bought mine off a friend who upgraded them with fat pads from mpcstuff.com.
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41016
or it can do mono/poly style leads with the oscillators detuned, it has the mono/poly filter... want a 303? get a bassbot, this is cheaper and does more
41016
hypothetically you could use it to cover "good vibrations" by the beach boys, right? That synth sound is a moog with a ribbon controller.
