Yahoo Groups archive

Elektron Musical Instruments

Index last updated: 2026-04-28 23:22 UTC

Message

THE MD SPS-1 timing debate issue

2007-04-14 by sad1robot2003

Last week i purchased a SPS1-uw and fell in love with it out of the box.Playing/ 
programming it for hours on end ~by itself it has tons of character.  the timing  
randomness i could FEEL right off the bat. The night before buying it i spotted  the thread 
about the Timing fluctuations in the sound triggering dept. of the MDs internal 
sequencer.hmmm i thought, cant be that bad~ oh how wrong ~how high my hopes were ~ 
I syncd it to my roland orchestra of midi clock/ Din syncd drummachines and i was sadly 
aware of the Timing issue.Here is where i notice it most: i have an 808 & 909 pattern 
running in tandem , all sounds( kicks , snares , claps, hats toms etc etc are going thru the 
separate out puts on the 808 & 909. arriving into individual input channels on a healthy 
soundcraft ghost 24 LE, i like have all the individual channels up & running with the sep 
sounds all Looping and the PLAYING the mute switches making parts with combinations of 
all machines on the fly. Of course im decribing something tons of electronic musicians 
have been doing forever, no secret stuff~ but heres when the SPS 1 timing slop is really 
apparent.  When you start isolating sounds  I.E.  an sps-1uw snare track played in tandem 
with the 808's kick and  the 909s  ride, that snare hits OFF about 75 % of the time. 
occasionally youll get a dead on hit and it sounds magical like  the rolands do 100% of the 
time.ive been a drummer for over 20 years. my drum teacher used to have me practice to 
a metronome and my mission was to play rudiments and nail the metronome track spot 
on. when this happens , stick and click hitting at the same time theres a crack of accuracy 
that is magic. flams are flams, and thats the best way to describe what the SPS 1 is doing 
most of the time! Flaming! and have been collecting drum machines for the past 10. my 
collection is vast( tr 505,606, 808, 909, dr-110, cr-8000, cr-78, sp-12 turbo, sp-1200, 
mpc60,II, Mpc 3000 korg micro pops, kpr-77 simmons sds- 9, sds 1000, so of course  
goes w/out saying ive been looking forward to owning the machinedrum for some time 
now. On its own its fantastic ~ fluctuating and all, but when played alongside the other 
classic drummachines, i just want to mute it.  sad cause i love  the sounds out of it. Ive 
been following the thread close and just dont get how some people overlook the fact that  
this is a problem that needs to be solved. to pay good money for a unique modern 
machine is worth it for the sheer power of customization and control~ YET  its insane that 
one of the most important features of a drum machine is its ability to play its own internal 
sounds Precisely with accurate precision, and all the power to people that are measuring it 
against MPC 60s or 3000's than by all means  make those standards by which  the SPS 1 
should perform up to.  recording the SPS 1 into protools i can see and measure the 
fluctuations  and its a shame. My sidstations env's are sloppy . That was a BUG in the SID 
chip itself. Elektron  made up for it  by adding a great feature in the USER setting to have 
the choice to bypass the Buggy env's  and switch it into GATE mode making arpeggios 
Super tight when played with an external seq. I hope the Elektron Guys have perked up 
their ears ~ the thread is still going on over at the Elektron group page Special thanks to  
SN interclock for steering it back to the  real issue at hand~ Accurate timing. Perhaps im a 
rare bird syncing up a bunch of old drum machines and using cv/gates to trigger toms 
made on an arp 2600, or snares on a mini moog~ but i like the sounds on the SPS 1 too!  
but they are getting muted on the desk  when played next to the other machines. i hope 
elektron solves the problem in the near future. i think if enough users get the point of 
what the timing complaints are really about~ theyll speak up. By all means make that 
flammy timing an OPTION on the Global page , But give me Solid timing FIRST!

Attachments

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.