MusicRadar

You can't really miss the LCD screen.

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• Review
• Manufacturer's Description

Throwing effects into the equation is simplicity itself and being able to resample with effects opens up new avenues of invention for the sonic adventurer. That said, we'd love to have seen a small ribbon slider up the side or even a small matrix pad (as on Korg's Kaoss Pad) that could be assigned to an effect parameter or two. It would really enhance the playability of things like the filter or scratch effects.

Nonetheless, the three effects knobs are spaced well for 'easy access' and they do the job.

The blue pulsing metronome light looks really good and gives you the necessary timing info visually, and the large LED display is unavoidable. That said, with only three characters, it's sometimes hard to understand what it's trying to tell you.

Sound quality is excellent (as you'd expect these days) and belies the lowly RCA connectors. A headphone socket on the front lets you practise in private or line up samples offline.

Natural selection

There are no giant leaps of innovation in the SP-404, but the new developments keep it comfortably ahead of its competitors. New effects, like BPM Looper and Sub-sonic, make the SP extremely DJ-friendly, and with the expanded sample time and CompactFlash capability, its playing horizons are broadened.

In the future, though, we'd love to see more expressive performance features, such as a tracker pad for the effects. And how about a USB port for linking to a laptop?

For the time being, though, this revision does the business, and it comes at a very reasonable price.