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

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. 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. 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. If an item can not be repaired, a similar alternative product or cash discount (as defined in this policy) will be offered

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.You’re able to import a lighter “tap” sample as well as a hard-hitting strike of the drum. You can then adjust the velocity level on the SamplePad 4 to determine when the “crossover” is of which sample to trigger. This is great for percussion samples like congas or bongos. The ins and outs of the Alesis SamplePad 4 Ultimately, there are pads out there to suit a whole host of different needs, so it’s important to be clear on what specific role it will play within your music creation. How we chose the best electronic drum pads for this guide Also, when it is hooked up to a computer, it works great and is everything you could hope for. I had no cross triggering or false triggering, it was solid and reliable. Hooked up to Ableton, it was incredibly useful. 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… 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

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 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.

What's Included:

To get started you'll only need to plug your kit directly into your computer via a USB cable. All of our devices are class compliant, so if you run into any connection issues please be sure to eliminate any hubs or connectors between the computer and your module. 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.

The size and functionality of the SamplePad 4 make it an incredibly useful and flexible piece of gear. With the SD expansion slot, you can load up all of your own samples ready for gigging. Or, you can just play for fun anywhere without having to be tied to a machine. The maximum capacity for SD card storage is 32GB or 512 samples - plenty of space for a wide range of sounds.The high-end sample pads by Roland and Yamaha are quite expensive and therefore out of the price range for many people. However, the Gear4music extended warranty scheme provides an enhanced service, and is designed to offer a higher level of protection than many 'free' warranties offered by some retailers and manufacturers. Any captured sample may be saved onto the SD card (via USB), without having to remove it. Facets of any user sample may be altered, copied and saved (without affecting the original), including tuning, pan and reverb. 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.