When I went hands-on with Roland’s SP-404 MKII again in October I stated it was “becoming” my favourite sampler. Fast ahead just a few months and it’s firmly entrenched in that spot. Of course, no piece of drugs is ideal, and there is all the time room for enchancment. So Roland is pushing out a 2.0 firmware replace that solely additional cement’s the 404’s place on the prime of my record.

Perhaps the largest addition is a brand new TR-style (as in TR-808) step sequencer. While the SP sequence has all the time appealed extra to people who need the unfastened really feel of stay instrumentation, with the ability to punch in a fundamental four-on-the-floor kick that is proper on the cash is all the time good. That’s very true in case your sense of rhythm is simply so-so, nevertheless it additionally makes the 404 extra helpful for genres which can be all about being proper on the beat like home and techno. And in some methods, it is really extra versatile than your common TR-style sequencer since patterns could be as much as 64 bars (or 1,024 steps) in size. 

In addition to with the ability to program beats by manually punching in particular person steps, you can too now document to patterns in chromatic mode: load up a pattern of a single notice and simply play a melody right into a sample. Previously this needed to be accomplished through resampling, i.e. creating a completely new pattern of the melody you performed.

But wait, there’s extra! Now chromatic pattern playback has three totally different modes — plain previous monophonic, legato (nice for sliding bass traces) and polyphonic — so you may flip a single piano notice right into a chord. And, I am unable to consider I’m saying this, nevertheless it will get higher nonetheless. Roland has vastly improved the time stretching algorithm. Frankly, it was borderline ineffective earlier than. Now, along with the default “vinyl” mode of pitch shifting (simply enjoying issues again quicker or slower), there are two Variphrase modes (these change pitch with out altering playback size): Backing, for issues with distinct assaults like drums and guitar; and Ensemble for sustained feels like strings and synth pads. Backing continues to be a bit tough sounding, although it handles drums decently sufficient. But Ensemble is lightyears past what the 404 beforehand had, and is vital to creating that new polyphonic pattern playback mode useable.

Now if this was all Roland added, it might be a fairly large deal. But the corporate additionally included 4 new bus results: SX Reverb, SX Delay, Cloud Delay and Backspin. Plus there’s now a Harmonizer on the enter FX menu and a second model of reverse playback borrowed kind the SP-303 for people who actually need to lean into the lo-fi heritage of the vary. And, on prime of all of that, the Skip Back characteristic can, at any time, recall audio from as much as 40 seconds prior to now the place its prior iteration had a 25 second most.

In brief, Roland took what was already a reasonably nice piece of music gear and made it much more alluring. Now if solely they weren’t utterly out of inventory in every single place.