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As a UK DJ far away from my decks & vinyl, I bought an SP202 because it was extremely portable, pretty cheap ($A700) & enabled me to make music in the absence of a PC or turntable. (I'm now using it for an instrumental project with 2 guitarists.) As per some of the other postings, I love lo-fi, weird kit & hip-hop, so a lot of the common gripes about this unit just don't concern me. However, I have found an excellent way to work around some of the SP202's limitations; using a recordable mini-disc player as the sampler's 'memory'. I set it up like this: Run the line-out from the SP202 to an A/B switch box, send the A output to your monitor, the B output to the mini-disc line-in, and the mini-disc line-out to the SP202 line-in. nice...
This gives u easy access to some handy techniques:
1. In a live setting where you're sampling on the fly: when the sample banks r full, flick the switch to B (routing the output away from the main out & into the mini-disc). Record samples you want to keep to MD (monitoring on headphones). U can free-up memory without having to lose material or disrupt performance. (I've found that there's a negligible lose of quality when re-sampling back from MD).
2. FX: as suggested in another posting, record effected samples to MD & re-sample them back to free up polyphony. The A/B configuration just means u can do this quickly, with having to re-patch leads, etc.
3. Bounce-Down: record 2-4 samples playing together onto MD, then re-sample back to 1 pad. If you can get the levels right (ie. no difference in volume between the individual samples played together & the 'bounced-down' sample playing on 1 pad) this gives you 'extra polyphony' when creating songs.
4. Archiving: once I've finished a 'song' I record the 'sample-set' to MD & use the mini-disc Track Name function to make a note of the BPMs, sample rate & record level for each sample. You need to check the record level required for a balanced mix by sampling each sample back to the SP202- this is a pain & the most time-consuming part of the process. However, once I've got it right, I've found that I can 'load-up' a perfectly mixed set of 8 samples from MD in about 2 mins. I can arrive at rehearsal with 2 songs already loaded up, then clear the memory & have another 2 songs ready to go in the time it's taken the rest of the band to have a smoke break.
So anyway, if you're thinking about buying one of these, it definately helps if u have an MD.
(I haven't been able to find any (cheap) 5 volt Smart Media cards in Oz - in their main area of use (digital cameras) they've been superseded by 3.3 volt cards...)
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