While this may not be on the level of the Roland V-Drum module, having two velocity layers per pad allows you to play more dynamically with your sounds. If you’re confused by what this means, allow me to explain. Is that an issue? If you’re using this for more basic playing and drum beats, you might be fine. If you’re expecting this to respond like a snare drum for very fast playing (or an electronic mesh pad) then you might be let down.

The Mute Groups feature is another useful addition, allowing a sample playing on one pad to be terminated when another pad in the same group is hit — particularly useful if you have, say, synth pad chords on the different pads. You could also set up a mute group for open and closed hi–hat sounds so the closed hat cuts off the open one. Sounds You have two different types of outputs on every drum module we make- your main audio outputs and your USB output. These have very different functions and are going to determine how you proceed. Your USB output is only going to send the raw midi messages from your hits to your computer. That means information like what drum you hit, how hard you hit it, and how long you let the note ring. It does not include the sound. A percussion pad will not allow you to import samples, however it will be loaded with - as the name suggests - a multitude of drum and percussion sounds, along with tools to colour and manipulate them. If a sample pad is an electronic Swiss Army Knife, think of a percussion pad as a thousand drum kits in a box. With the SamplePad's easy-to-use interface, you won't be rifling through endless submenus and categories to find the sound your looking for. Simply strike the pad you want to change, dial to the sound you want and you're done. If you discover a great combination of sounds you want to keep together, simply designate it as a kit and the SamplePad will save it for easy recall anytime you want. Features This sample pad contains many different in-built drum kits and sounds. These range from acoustic sounds, electronic hits, and world music to musical synth pads.The Roland SPD::One series is a curveball, that’s for sure (why the second colon?). The series is made up of four individual units, each with a specific function. They’re a little over-priced and they don’t have line-inputs, yet there’s plenty to love here. 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… Please note that this extended warranty is currently only available on products sold within the UK, EU or EEA, and is subject to the terms and conditions as detailed on the extended warranty certificate provided. The SPD::One Wav is perhaps the most useful - albeit slightly more costly - of the group. It has 4GB internal storage and 12 assignable slots, meaning you can use this as a fully functioning, fully customisable sample pad. Overall, these are nifty little pieces of gear, despite the relatively high outlay.

In addition to the 10 preset drum kits on offer, which feature various combinations of the 25 on–board samples, you can also load in your own samples via an SD/SDHC card slot. The SamplePad 4 accommodates cards up to 32GB in size, though the maximum capacity of 89 user kits and 512 samples per card may mean you can get away with one much smaller. Connect the SamplePad 4 to a Mac or PC using the USB 2 port — which also functions as a USB MIDI output — and you can drag and drop samples onto the SD card from your desktop. Once loaded, samples can be retuned and treated with the built–in reverb effect. In Use The default setting of the drum pad is to turn off after idling for 30 minutes. This can easily be turned off using the "options" menu. 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. I recorded live hits from one of my acoustic drum sets and loaded samples of that onto this device. It worked fairly nicely, though I wasn’t amazed when using an external hi-hat controller.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. Is cross-talk really an issue with this device? The answer is that it depends. You may have to avoid using the particular problematic pads if you’re looking for a lot of sensitivity in your playing. Otherwise, it might be fine. In practice, importing sounds turns out to be a relatively smooth process. Once a sound is selected from the card it takes a few seconds to load into the pad, and when you’ve filled all your pads with suitable sounds and set the parameters as you want them, you can save the kit. Please also note that every pad on your kit is assigned a midi note that may need to be changed to trigger the right sample in the program you are attempting to use. Your user guide will have more information on changing the midi notes for your individual kits, but you may need to go to the program's manufacturer to find out what those midi notes are.

The Alesis SamplePad Pro is an instrument with big features at an extremely reasonable price. It can serve as a good entry into electronic drum pads, but with some issues. The Alesis SamplePad is a compact four-pad instrument with 25 sounds built in plus the ability to add any sample to it. Any sound of your choice can be assigned to the four velocity-sensitive pads via way of a standard SD Card - this is perfect addition to you kit or studio setup. 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. Samples may be layered by assigning any two sounds to one of the four pads. The layers may have different trigger thresholds, for example there's potential for fat- sounding samples depending on velocity. Hands OnHowever, 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. 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! 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.