YAMAHA A4000 Sampler

Hey guys, i'm currently rockin an mpc2000xl and a Virus B. I'm considering either buying a new Yamaha A4000 or selling my G3 ibook and getting a g4 ibook with audio and midi interface to use as a sampler/sound module.

Can any of you tell me what the A4000 is like? The Specs seem pretty darn good to me.

Please help me out

i use the A5000 which is basically the same machine but more fx routing and double midi inputs tec.

The machine isa great sampler - no probs with the os. filters are a bit too digital sounding at the exctremes though. excellent sound shaping facilities and synth like control. responds real well to midi controllers etc. bzone PC editor speeds things up the mapping etc, but it can also auto-map.

Can be hooked to recyle (pre OSX) w/o too many probs.

Biggest downfall (no joke) is the knobs. They are optical, and so are really unresponsive. this may or may not be a concern of yours, but to be honest I F********** hate it. They cannot be changed afaik.

Got mine hooked up to MPC 60 and the pair make a great combo (but in gods name what where they thinking with the knob thang - it can really slow down productivity and be really frustrating sometimes (rock on Akai wiv their good knobs!!!)


If yo ugot more specific qs I'll try to answer them. BTW what price you looiking at?

Yeah i got quite a few questions. You see i want to be able to contort sounds and create really crazy stuff. But i want to be able to make live tweakings.

Can i tweak the filters, and use midi to say tweak the effects in real time, say while i'm playing a sequence as i would on a synth?

I live in south Africa, it's going for 7000 Rand....i think its like R6,50 to the Dollar at the mo so that makes it around $1000. It's brand new though, only seen 4 hours of use. Has a 20 gig hardrive. Fully rammed out.

I'm trying to decide between getting that or going the whole laptop sampler route...

Realtime control is no problem with the yammy - full midi control of just about every parameter yo ucan imagine, inculde FX. I got a philip rees c16 controller hooked up to mine. It is real easy to set up too.

Obviously with a laptop you can do a lot more (recording etc...) and with some of the progs. today you'd be way more flexible if you only got one or the other. I got a desktop mac but havent moved over to software sampling yet. not sure if I ever will, but the EXS is kinda nice to use. I like the hardware route for some reason - especially cos I can take it out live without any problems.

With a laptop you got no probs going out live either.

1000 seems a bit much for the A4000. have a look at www.soundonsound.com and check the prices there... I think they would go for around about 300 quid (600 dollars?)

But the Yammy is a great sampler. Can you try it for a while - that's what I'd recommend.

also the a3000 goes pretty cheep there days!

Thinking of getting one myself...cos of the filters

The problem with buying from Sound on Sound is support. Shipping stuff outof South Africa is ridiculously expensive and there are apparently only two Yamaha A4000's in South Africa, the guy who i'm buying it from is the supplier, and he offers full support. It's also in mint condition. He used it to demo to clients.

Aparently no one caught onto it because of the lack of sample packs that supported it, but i've been told that as a phrase sampler and sample mangler it's onlt really supeceded by the Roland VP9000

Can you tweak the filters of a bunch of samples by assigning different imidi controller numbers to different filter cuttoffs, Resonance etc.?

Also what is the Pitch shift like and those instant remix functions and all that stuff? Is it good for freaking samples?

Can you tweak the filters of a bunch of samples by assigning different imidi controller numbers to different filter cuttoffs, Resonance etc.?

Yes

Also what is the Pitch shift like and those instant remix functions and all that stuff?

Pitch shift is OK, but I would not rely on it for fully blown shiftings of more than a few cents.

Instant remix - OK - can give interesting results, but because it does not detect transients, can end up with clicks (good if you like Click Hop!!!)

Is it good for freaking samples?

Yes!!!

The effects are really top quality, plus being able to manipulate in real time via midi opens many possibilites. If you like to experiment with sound, this sampler is great, almost like a synth if you want it to be.
Don't overlook it's waveforms either (sine, Saw, Tri etc) cos these can be great for creating new synth sounds (esp. for bass and pads).

Only prob. for me is the knobs! I hate them!!!

What kinda music you making?

I used to make a lot of big beat stuff, fat boy slim-esque, when i wrote on the computer, but i didn't have a clue what i was doing and gave it all up.

Then earlier this year i started buying hardware and have started getting into the whole theory of electronic music, learning about midi and synthesis etc...it'w a whole damn science!

It's slower to get the stuff done but it's less synthetic, i've been experimenting, but mostly just learning as i go along

Been writing millions of bits and pieces, from all sorts of genres, but no full songs.... yet

I'm really critical of myself, but i'm also a little uncertain about exactly what it is that i want to do. I've been experimenting a lot on the electronica side of things, i love the soundscapes that that type of music creates. I want to find a way of fusing that with hip hop - i love the rhythmic, raw essence of hip hop....just havent gotten there yet....

What kinda music you write?

The A4000 seeems like a pretty damn good deal then....It seems like its not too far off what the computer samplers are offering in terms of midi control and the ability to sculpt your owns sounds...

Does it intergrate well with a computer via SCUSI?