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If you're already using a laptop, consider NI's Maschine ... Will do EVERYTHING the 404 will -- excepting standalone operation with battery power and the built-in mic ... Although if you just consider the controller and laptop as part and parcel, then I guess it will run on battery power, too ... Maschine should run well with other software as the CPU requirements seem low in actual use ...
The thing that really made the 404 unusable and sell it was the lack of a real display ... How the hell am I supposed to remember what all those banks of samples are with a three-digit display (for christ sake my JP8 has four ... !!!) The solution ... ??? Write it down ... !?!!?! I tried and that sucked ... And as others said, it doesn't sound that great ... I don't miss mine at all ... Plus, there are WAY too many shift button combinations that require constant manual referencing ...
For everything Maschine does and how flexible and user-friendly, I really wouldn't mind toting around the lappy to a gig or rehearsal ... In fact, I'm about to import all my old samples from the 404 to Maschine and start over ... Obviously, no storage issues with Maschine ... Also, it has never crashed on me ...
After getting rid of the 404 I was hoping on the Beat Thang --- yeah, really -- but I gave up waiting on the hardware ... It seemed to be everything 404 was and so much more ... But I got a great deal on Maschine, which made it considerably less expensive than Beat Thing, NI is really, really supporting Maschine, and I've had it for six months now instead of MAYBE six months from now ...
The KP3 is not a true sampler ... You can only have four samples available at one time, and loading them is a major PITA ... It's more for capturing and mangling live audio and having the ability to save them for later on ... The sample fidelty is great, but that said, I almost never use the sampler ... I use it for the FX, which really is terrific ... But I'm pondering letting go of my two KP3s as I'm thinking I'd rather do all the FX in the box ... even if it means a temporary setback in terms of what I can do ... (Maschine 1.6 can host instrument and effect plug-ins now ... )
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