|
Up...down...up. That has been my relationship with my A4000. When I first got it summer 2000; you wouldn't have been able to drag me off the machine for the fist couple of months. I had a sampler, after all these years! I was overjoyed. A month after I had bought my A4000 I purchased an external CD-ROM just so I could load up some of the programs that came on the nine disks shipped with the unit [specifically the Yamaha Grand, I didn't have access to a piano]. Ok, it arrived and I plugged it in via SCSI and happily loaded up some sounds to try out - it took a long time, but I didn't care: I had never used another sampler before this (besides my HD loading time was quick).
Got to grips with the UI, loved the efx, appreciated the transparency of the sound (what I put in was what I got out), the filters were good and allowed me to get the sound I wanted. I hated the crappy manual, but all in all I was happy with my choice. I grabbed some old EDO 2x 16Mb ram sticks out of an old computer, stuck 'em in and I had 102Mb of memory [although I hated the fact that I had to undo something like 24 screws just to get at the inside].
Anyway I was well pleased with myself, about a year later I even bought the output expansion board, the AEIB1. But even after about six months of use the knobs started to go twitchy on me and it started to grate on my nerves.
A week ago I was seriously considering selling my A4000, trading it for and Akai S5000. The five program knobs are so counter-intuitive. As de jager ward, the reviewer below said, it is the only really bad aspect of the machine. If your anything like me who prefers to have a separate volume for everything, after the 3000th time of jumping back to the start of your volume list while delicately scrolling down, you start to get really pissed.
But today things are different. As a bit of preliminary research I've read all the user-reviews of the S5000 and E5000 and I already feel better. It seems just like all samplers the A4000 has its share of problems...but it's an unbeatable package for the price you can now pay for it.
Advantages: Beautifully clean sound, nice and useful efx, some unusual yet usable features, reliable (in that, it has NEVER crashed or frozen on me), "flexible filters", solid MIDI note timing and the optimise function (squeeze more space for your samples).
Disadvantages: The knobs (which I should really replace - I'm gonna look into it), the fan can sometimes get a little noisy, but with a good slap on the grill its alright again :), some UI oddities, slow SCSI loading speeds.
If I get some better knobs I'll give it a five for sure.
|
listings
