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Alesis SamplePad Review Things to like and things to hate
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=wFeI8MUoza4
Buy one - http://bit.ly/SamplepadonAmazon • -Review notes if you don't want to watch a whole video- • But you should really watch at 4:39 if nothing else • Things to like: • Cheap. • I paid 148 and they're already down to 138. The next best thing is the Roland SPD-SX Sampling Pad -http://amzn.to/1w6d2cJ • or • the Yamaha DTX Multi Pad - http://amzn.to/1By3Tgw • Both of which are 7-800 new and even if you can find a used one it'll still be more than 3 of the Alesis. • Easy to use. • There's 4 buttons, 4 pads and a volume knob. Not a lot to get lost in, although you still have all the usual drum brain options like sensitivity, level, panning, tuning, reverb and midi out. Pressing the two left buttons at the same time stops all samples which is useful when a long sample accidentally gets triggered. It also takes a standard SD card which is cheap and easy to load and replace. • Small. • Weighs 4 pounds and doesn't have much of anything protuding that will break off easily. It feels sturdy and I don't worry about it during transportation or load in. • Things not to like: • You can't play a beat on it. • It will only allow you to trigger one sound at a time, so you have to either lag one of your hits and play all flams or really love linear beats. I got around this by making custom samples that had the snare and kick with the hi hat on top so it sounds like constant hi hat in a 16th note beat, but it's no substitute for polyphony. • SD card sticks out. • It doesn't stick out much, and it hasn't shown any signs of breaking yet, but... I don't like it. • Specific and shitty sample requirements. • Your files have to be under 5mb to work reliably in my experience, and you can only have 14mb across all 5 pads (there's an external trigger that holds a sample as well. I haven't figured out how to set it to empty yet, so it takes up some space.) Not only that, they have to be mono 16 bit .wav files. If you don't have a program like Ableton Live or possibly Audacity those files are hard to make. • It also means that despite being stereo out, it's only stereo between mono samples within the unit. • Slow. • Start up takes fooooooreeeeeeeeveerrrrrr to start up and when you switch kits, it has to buffer all the pads and you're stuck with silence throughout. • Terrible builtin samples. • I don't really care much, because I got it for the sampling capabilities, but I think it's hilarious they didn't include a basic drum kit worth of sounds. No hi hats, because you can't play polyphonically and you notice quick once you add a hi hat. • • Why I keep it. • It works for what I need it to do. For playing drums, I layered the samples for the one beat I really needed the polyphony on, and I play live hi hat while using the kick and snare samples to make a beat generally. I also don't have a problem switching during songs, so the lag only gets me if I forget and go to start the next song, but then have to sit there for a few seconds like a dummy. • For triggering samples, I've had to chop up our samples a bit and we're working on when to switch kits so that it's smooth, but it seems like it will work out. CHINGSOUND.COM • Someone may be able to tell me what about the other pads is 4x as awesome to make up for the price and I'll consider it, but for now this works all right.
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