I want an SP 1200 but damn!!

ahah the sp1200 manual is awesome, written with self irony, i recall a line like "when engineers will see how we made those buttons touch sensistive they'll laugh their asses off"

Phra*DOC wrote:ahah the sp1200 manual is awesome, written with self irony, i recall a line like "when engineers will see how we made those buttons touch sensistive they'll laugh their asses off"

Do you know how they did it? I always wonder how they did it. I mean look at those buttons theey doesn't look like they are touchsensitive they doesn't feel like that and when you hit the button it sounds like a PC keyboard.

any infos?


clint?

peace

Coz, nice video, gonna watch that when i find the time!

Peter, i think it's some type of spring load thing, will read up and report back when i find it again.

peterpiper wrote:I mean look at those buttons theey doesn't look like they are touch sensitive they doesn't feel like that and when you hit the button it sounds like a PC keyboard.

Personally, I dont like those trigger buttons much.

Have no idea how they made em touch sensitive, im no engineer.

Linn 9000 had touch sensitive pads before the SP's came along so who cares what they did...

they dont state it in the manual. In fact, they pretty much try to playfully hide it, hinting that if you take apart the machine and look it up you'll find they came up with a pretty primitive and maybe-too-much-out-of-the-box solution

From the SP-12 Service Manual...

The buttons are dynamic but not polyphonic. This means that if two buttons are played at the same time both sounds will be as loud as the hardest hit button. The dynamic buttons work by sensing the vibration of the PCB with a piezo crystal. This voltage is read by the ADC and used to set the sounds output level.

That is indeed worth a laugh... measuring the vibration of the PBC board... lol!

Clint, you seem surprisingly uninterested about this, in a topic you usually seem very enthusiastic about.

thats a nice way to do it



peace

jibber wrote:Clint, you seem surprisingly uninterested about this, in a topic you usually seem very enthusiastic about.

Sorry, I did post a long reply from my phone. When I got home to the laptop the post was gone. Lol. The summary would be who cares how they did it? The Linn 9000 had velocity sensitive pads years earlier. You feel me?

I also started talking about the 12-bit Roland W30/S10/S330/S550 into the thread as a sampler with similar specs to the SP1200. Don't hear much about those around here and they are from the same period as the SP's. Considering they are 12-bit, have a remote control, mouse control, monitor output, graphics tablet to draw waveforms, SCSI (some models/optional), onboard sequencer, filters, polyphonic outputs ...







And this...





So yeah, I want an SP1200 but damn, Roland were on some next level Fairlight shit!!

Clint the problem is that no one cared for the way the Roland samplers worked or for that matter sounded back then.

You would be surprised at how many people owned and hated the S10, S50, MKS100 etc so they just don't have enjoyable memories of using them.
Even when they made the W30 and the original DJ70 people didn't care for the workflow.

For some unknown reason Roland was determined to make their samplers feature rich but really far from being user friendly.

Even when they could be had cheaply no one cared to deal with them.

There have been some who used them and loved them but most didn't care for the awkward way they went about things.

Specs rarely if ever have any true meaning in the usefulness of a device.

Yes Mr ADVERSARY, a lot of the older gear isn't user friendly, people with time to delve into the OS will often reap some rewards. A lot of people posting in this thread "want an SP1200 but damn". So I'm pointing out 12-bit alternatives of the same period, which by definition, have a 'sound' from the same period. As we all know Roland made some serious hardware in the 80's, the samplers I posted about are proverbial 'sleepers'. They are relatively cheap now, but in 5 years, I guarantee that will not be so. Especially with the remote control and other bits.

Same applies to the DJ70 (MKII) and W30. The DJ70 is 16-bit but dope.

There arent enough SP's, MPC60's and S950's to go around, so it is inevitable that attention will turn to other 12-bit samplers. Any machines that use Quickdisks were not mentioned by me. 720k floppy disks are as far back as I'm prepared to go media wise.

I want an SP1200 but damn!!

The problem with the Roland sampler has always been and will always be the 12 bit samplers didn't really sound 12 bit and all their samplers have extremely annoying ways of doing even the most simplistic task.
That's not to say they sound 16 bit, it's more like they have a hybrid sound.
Remember companies were trying to get the best possible sound not make what people typically call "12 bit sound".

They shouldn't be considered sleepers, nightmare would be a more appropriate description.

The same things that had us hating the Roland samplers back in the 80s are still the same inherent headaches now.

The missing element is that classic gear tends to have a sound as well as workflow.
The Roland samplers don't achieve that.

Using other samplers with Alchemy, the DOS Samplevision or sometimes dedicated editors was better than messing with what Roland was trying to do.

I appreciate your comments, but please let the discussion flow.

You are always quick to shoot down every concept you don't like.

Speak for yourself, make your point, and let it go.

Damn, what a killjoy you are in every goddam thread you post in.

Clint wrote:I appreciate your comments, but please let the discussion flow.

You are always quick to shoot down every concept you don't like.

Speak for yourself, make your point, and let it go.

Damn, what a killjoy you are in every goddam thread you post in.

Ironically enough that's more like where you sit, lots of misinformation.

People tend to forget that a lot of people take what they read on forums to heart, so the same bad advice gets perpetuated.

Just a lot of repetitive me too, instead of people who have actually been there done that or have hands on experience.