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I picked this up recently, out of a pile of old sequencers and drum machines at the back of an electronics store, and I immediately loved the idea of a Game boy-like sampler that runs off of batteries and retains its samples in flash memory. I have a long train commute, so this thing is fuckin' awesome for me. I set this on one knee, a discman on the other knee, and there I go. It's portablity is it's most desirable feature for sure, but there are lots of nice things about it. The looping section is flexible and quite precise, and allows you to do some neat things like set a short loop on the end of a vocal clip and the sweep the filter on it. It's nice that it tells you what BPM your sample is, but it will only go down to 80 BPM, so if you have a 75 BPM it displays as 150 BPM. That's just a minor problem. It's a bit surprising that they only put 380 kb in it, but that was almost ten years ago, and I find that the sound and the 54 seconds of sample time on extra long sampling mode is great. I like the lo fi sound you get at 11Khz, which actually is much cleaner than you get off of an old sampler like an Ensoniq EPS at the same sample rate. But the SU10 is a bitch-godess. It gives, and it takes. Like, why can't I adjust the pitch of the samples? Thats really annoying when you're trying to match two beats that're just a bit off. Four samples at a time is pretty limiting as well, so you have to be creative in the way you arrange the samples and also program how the pads trigger. Putting in the sequencer was good idea, but it's just too stripped down. I would have liked a step function, the ability to overdub, or at least a click track or some way of setting the tempo. But for putting together loops and hits it works, and then that frees your hand to add more hits from other banks of samples. What you can do is trigger the samples from a drum machine to get a much tighter sequence, and you just check what tempo your sample loop is and then set the drum machine to that. And it's really easy to change which note each sample is assigned to. You could sequence it from a computer, but it's good to find new uses for your Dr. Rhythm. I've enjoyed this little blue bastard so much that I'm thinking of getting one of those little QY 10 things as well. I give it a 4 because besides it's shorcomings, I just love using it, I can kind of fit it in my pocket almost, and I've also learned alot from using the SU10, sitting there on a train trying to make something out of nothing.
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