Will the upcoming Pioneer TORAIZ SP-16 be the one sampler to rule them all?
Personally, I feel that not needing a laptop is a game-changer. It’s what the Maschine Studio should have done. We might finally get to see bigger artists do live controllerism routines more frequently.
Dave Smith is a gangster.
Wow…looks pretty sweet! Excitement building for this…
I’ve seen Dapayk perform live without a laptop together with Eva Padberg as a vocalist. Live sets without laptops are not new, but the Toraiz could make it easier to the guys who played livesets with laptop before to leave the laptop at home. But it actually does not matter whether you have your patterns prepared in your software or hardware. Just like with DJing, CDJs or software? Just make the most of it the way you like.
But one important thing to notice: This might be the first Pioneer product with a filter that will probably sound really good.
People who want that kinda rig are still using MPCs and similar. The newer MPCs and Maschine are using software not as a way to cheap out but to expand so you can use whatever VST you feel like and have no real limitations on the amount of groups you can use and such. Maschine Studio, as it’s name states, is targeted to the studio environment and not as much to perform with altho you do see quite popular acts such as Coldplay use it live.
That said, it’s probably what the MPC Touch should have been.
er, no.
Yes it samples, yes it has a sequencer and yes it has ProLink, so on that front it is what is says it is on the box.
Does it integrate seamlessly with all the ProLink Players? will sample an accurate bar or two? hell no.
After reading up on it and viewing the pioneer videos my expectation was that its gonna be awesome for sampling in the background and playing everything in sync to the master player. A week on and looking back this actually makes me laugh.
The sampling is a workflow nightmare, the shortest sequence being. Select Pad → Select Edit Sample → Press Record → Select Save Option → Select Save & Use → Enter/edit recording name → Select Home… all this before you can play the sample.
That isn’t the worst bit… when recording you select what time length you are going to record, select 1 bar, 2 bars or up to 32 seconds. Record a seamless 1 bar of 4 beats in sync with the the help of ProLink, nice touch huh? nope, but if you like to record almost at random but keep the length of the recording the same as 1 bar then you will love it. Hit and probably miss is an understatement.
I hear what you are thinking.. want to sample a bar, then record 2 and edit it down? not to mention the cumbersome way of doing this when trying to be creative when mixing but heres the thing, if you do manage to do just that, the damn thing changes the tempo of the sample to half and plays it with MasterTempo and then back you like you filtered it through an old mangle.
As a pre-edited drum/sample sequencer it works, infact it does the job well, but thats not what I bought it for and probably not what a lot of people are going to buy it for. If it worked exactly as Pioneer implied of their stand-alone sampler/sequencer it would be awesome and worthy of selling yer granny to medical science to pay for it.
It needs to be able to sample and instantly be able to play/loop it, no fussy around with saving, tapping in a file name etc, (damn thing won’t even let you over write an existing sample file).
It also needs to be able to sample a bar or two from a sync’d player, preferable starting at the start of the bar and not at some random point near-ish to the beginning.
It also needs to stay in sync with the player nominated as the ‘master’ without wandering off on its own as if its just lost interest. I have to go to SETTINGS → EDIT SYNC → change it and then change it back again before it sits up pays attention for another half hour.
Theres a few other minor buggy things, but they are all things I can live with.
So if you like sampling and want to give your sets an injection of the authentic ‘galloping elephants’ filter then buy it, if you like banging your head square-on to your mixer every 5 minutes out of frustration then buy it, if not wait for a firmware update… or two.
As for the slightly worried competition, unless pioneer pull their socks up quickly they have nothing to worry about.
That said, it looks pretty and glows up lovely in the dark :s