Alesis Sample Pad 4 - Compact Percussion and Sample Triggering Instrument with 4 Velocity Sensitive Pads, 25 Drum Sounds and SD/SDHC Card Slot

Product Information

However, from using it, it feels like the firmware update just automatically reduced the sensitivity of the problematic pads. When I manually increased the sensitivity again, the cross-talk issues persisted for me. The high-end sample pads by Roland and Yamaha are quite expensive and therefore out of the price range for many people. All the features are the same – loop control, mute groups etc and the user samples can be layered or velocity switched. Pict can go up or down by 4 semitones, reverb is adjustable and pads can be individually assigned midi notes and individual sensitivity. Sensitivity: As a drummer, I do not think the SamplePad Pro measures up enough in terms of detecting subtlety, in comparison to the high-end Roland and Yamaha models. For example, if you play fast double-stroke rolls or rudiments with ghost notes, it just feels a little clunky to play. On-board storage is now a massive 32GB, which is double that of the SPD-SX Special Edition (keep reading for more on that), and there’s more than 1,500 kits and sounds built into each unit, covering a range of sounds and styles.

The Alesis SamplePad Pro contains eight drum pads. This includes six pads on the main face of the device, and two on each of the top corners. There are other pads with qualities this module doesn’t have, but overall the Roland SPD-SX ‘Special Edition’ is amongst the best of the best. The combination of high build quality, intuitive design and excellent functionality means this is a great alternative to the Pro model. However, as most of the intense inputting work will be at home pre-gig, when editing pad parameters, naming samples etc, it's not something you would have to do in a live situation.

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Solution home Alesis Support Alesis | Getting Started Alesis Drums | Connecting your Kit to a Computer The SamplePad 4 is extremely easy to use. Load your choice of samples onto an SD card in the correct

Say you’ve identified a particular ambient bird sound from your bedroom window that really adds to the feel of one of your songs. You would record it and program into the pad so that you can then trigger it live, without having to move from the kit. Perhaps you also want a choral part to play over the bridge of a particular song? Queue it up on pad two and, when the bridge rolls round, you can summon those angels with a strike of the assigned pad.

Features

Still with us? Okay, let’s get into it. With the exceptional high quality we’ve come to expect from Nord, the 3P displays a vast array of sonic capabilities. It has 200 sounds and a large variety of modulators, oscillators, reverbs, filters and various other FX on-board. You can use these to alter specific aspects of each sound and save them as your own in one of the 400 available banks. There is also a sequencer app for iOS, called Nord Beat, which will make beat-makers and producers feel at home.

If an item can not be repaired, a similar alternative product or cash discount (as defined in this policy) will be offered Its not often something turns up in the post that makes you go ”Awwww..!” in a new-baby/kitten-on-a-piano type way. Its even more strange when the said item is an electronic percussion instrument. However, this is exactly what happened when the Alesis Samplepad 4 turned up. When a sound is selected on your SD card, you can load it into a specific pad and save a new user kit. It’s a relatively easy process. Two velocity layers per pad The audio files that are supported are “16-bit, mono or stereo .WAV files. Sample rate of either 48K, 44.1K, 32K, 22.05K, or 11.025K.” There are plenty of audio utilities to convert your files to these. You can put these on an SD card and make sure to put them on the root folder of the card.

Warranty Info

Loading Time: Switching between kits on the device can take some time (particularly for bigger external samples). For live performances, this can be a bit of a hindrance. However, with enough planning, you can get away with it. What is it like to play live?

Collection and delivery costs are included for the first 2 years in the event of an item becoming faulty Regarding samples, try to keep the sample sizes relatively small if you’re planning on switching kits often between gigs. Big samples here can mean relatively long loading times between kit changes, but it’s fine if you can plan for it. Play around with sensitivity settings, and if you’re playing this live then do it with your live performance in mind. i.e. you might play pretty quietly when practicing and then smash the pad when playing live. This particular pad can lose a lot of dynamics if you set the sensitivity too high, so keep that in mind. Though it can be a trade-off between sensitivity and potential cross-talk (though this might only be the case in certain older models, I’m not sure about that), so test that a bit before performing! In practice, one key press is all it takes to swap between the user kits and, we don't have to wait for samples to load upon each change. So, talking of user samples, things haven”t got any better in the loading speed from the Samplepad Pro. Transferring a 10 meg sample via USB from my computer to the Samplepad 4 took 73 seconds and then loading it from the card into memory to be played off a pad took another 80 seconds. Its also worth noting that the samples load each time you select a new patch (of which there are only 10) and when the samples are loading, the rest of the unit becomes entirely unresponsive. You HAVE to wait for the samples to load before you can do anything else, including moving to the patch you really wanted to be on. Waiting up to 80 seconds between patch changes can be a little frustrating at times, and because of this, I could not recommend the Samplepad 4 for stage use if you are using long samples – the frustration could cause you to strangle the guitar player… actually, thats not a bad idea…

Success

The six rubber pads are smooth, responsive and a joy to play. The unit comes in at a modest 4lbs (1.85kg) but feels sturdy and road-ready. The downside to the Nord Drum 3P is that it’s priced relatively high when you consider what you can do with it. However, what they are offering is a high quality drum synthesizer for use in live and studio environments. First and foremost, we are musicians, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best electronic drum pads on the market right now. Cross-talk: This was one of my biggest concerns with using the SamplePad Pro. A well-known issue with this model is that hitting one pad may trigger another. Both connections have their positives and negatives and it's important to do your own research before you try one or the other- an interface will probably cost as much as a good drum plugin that is on sale; the real difference being that Midi notes can be edited and quantized for mistakes and mixing, whereas you get you get what you get from your audio output and you will need to do your mix of the drums before you begin recording. Also new to the Pro is a desktop app that enables full control of your unit, so you can assign samples to pads, apply effects and so much more without having to deep dive through endless menus and button pushes.Prepping for your next gig has never been easier.