s900

the s900 i ended up getting in place of the asr-x pro arrived.

It.s a bit beat up, case is dented, data wheel is mad wobbly, and im missing my main volume knob, but the thing sounds amazing, just wanted to share my thought so far / ask some Q's.

1.When sampling, im basically running a headphone out from my MPC to the LINE in of the S900...........was looking at a RCA to 1/4 cable to run from my DJ mixer, but am unsure if it will make a difference, at the moment i can still switch between left and right on the MPC.....would a cable like this improve quality or am i ok doing what im doing?

2. Its a lower volume than the MPC, required some adjusting of the velocity and loudness levels inside the s900 but its fine now, just some samples seem to be triggering lower than others..........with full velocity on the MPC......upon switching some sounds to their own output, it seemed fine.

3. can you only hear the sample out of the mix out when your monitoring the Turntable? that shit bugs me, cos its another cable i dont have room for on my mixing desk haha

4. When i turn it on, it says Akia os 1,2 - Does this mean i can upgrade it to OS 4.0? Or do i need to open the unit up to check what eProm kit i have installed?

check out this site

http://akai-s900.blogspot.ca

To keep all the noise out, always leave REC (the knob) on max and adjust your sample source.

Also sampling at a higher speed and bringing it back through pitch gives it a lot of crunch. (sampling a record at 45rpm+8% needs -66 to come back to its original pitch)

You can also try overdriving the sample engine, sampling too hot makes it distort nicely, does wonders for kicks. Its one of the few samplers ive messed with that doesnt clip horribly.

I also love the loop function.



to answer the question about the MPC->S900, you should probably look into getting a Y-cable that makes 2 mono > 1 mono, that way you can make a stereo sample into a single mono sample.

marrelarre wrote:To keep all the noise out, always leave REC (the knob) on max and adjust your sample source.

Also sampling at a higher speed and bringing it back through pitch gives it a lot of crunch. (sampling a record at 45rpm+8% needs -66 to come back to its original pitch)

You can also try overdriving the sample engine, sampling too hot makes it distort nicely, does wonders for kicks. Its one of the few samplers ive messed with that doesnt clip horribly.

I also love the loop function.



to answer the question about the MPC->S900, you should probably look into getting a Y-cable that makes 2 mono > 1 mono, that way you can make a stereo sample into a single mono sample.

Thanks for the info marrelarre, the REC thing was something i was not aware of, appreciate it.

Have not messed with the loop function much, need to get playing with when i find a good loop!

Yeah, i figured a Y-cable from my turntable mixer straight to the unit would be better, though at least i can record sounds i have in my mpc now headphone with guitar lead will do the trick until i can grab a cable.

@Mr Debauch, cheers man, been sussing this a bit

Now, anyone used OS 4.0?

Would love to hear someones thoughts on it

I didn't, because it requires making a disk and I never got that sorted out. Also you need a certain minimum OS version to be able to run that disk... and it doesn't get installed... you must boot into it. The other issue is that the programs and stuff made on it require it (you can't load that stuff on an earlier OS) also, I don't think old OS stuff can be loaded when you boot into 4.0. At least that is what I remember hearing.

I didn't bother because I didn't feel like dicking around with omni swap and making sure I had all the prerequisites to having that work properly.


I am curious about that 12 to 16 bit hardware upgrade though... I think that was for the s900, or was it the 950?

check this page out, bit more informative than the blog page. you are correct in the marion systems board.

http://www.polynominal.com/site/studio/ ... akai_s900/

Looks like you need OS 1.2 to boot OS 4.0 > you can see that when you turn your unit on.

Looks like i have 1.2 and some features that are not in other models, but not the features that are on 4.0 (timestretch and LPF)


What im interested in, is what is that UTILITY function for! ?

^yeah I knew there was another page but didn't remember the url..

I forget exactly, but I seem to remember reading that utility showed you stuff if you had one of those options installed.. i think the ask input board for example would let you set it up (i think the thresholds etc..) I believe fobe has or had an s900 with the input board in it and he might know.

ahh yeah that makes sense!

still getting used to the sample time, and truncating / chopping / copying etc to keep my memory low......LOVE how it makes certain things sound!

yeah.. try messing with looping short samples to fill it in...