Use an Electribe as an MP3 or WAV backing track player?

[DJDelay]

Hi there,

I'm new to this forum, hoping you guys could help me with something Korg-related!

I play in a rock-electronica band, and for playing backing tracks live, we currently use an Electribe EMX 1 and Electribe SMKII (running patterns or whole songs) for some songs of our set, and a laptop running Ableton Live for the rest of our set. There are about say 2-6 tracks of audio on each Ableton Live Song (drums, synth sounds, effects, etc).

We are looking to get rid of the laptop from our live set due to crashing, soundcard problems etc and use a more robust way of playing backing tracks. The Electribes always work well and sound amazing.

I was wondering if we could somehow just use the Electribes to play all of our backing tracks? E.g bouncing down a few WAV files from the Ableton Live tracks into one MP3 or WAV file, and putting them into the Electribes using the Smartmedia? If so, can it store say 20 songs of approx 5 minutes?

If not, I'd be interested to hear if there are any robust Korg instruments dedicated to Live Backing Track playback for bands?

Thanks!

[X-Trade]

None of the above.

The electribes that can play samples are the ESX and the ES-1 (mkII too). But they have a relatively limited total sample RAM of perhaps only a few minutes. The idea is that you build up tracks with 'songs' made from individual hits, loops, etc.

If you have the ES-1 mkII, then you should already know what I'm talking about. I recently moved from the ES-1 to the ESX because of the improved sample quality, longer sample time, and a more complete feature set. You can quite easily produce a whole song on the ESX (except for perhaps traditional vocal tracks), but the process is pretty much the same as the ES-1.

I'd recommend if you really want to play backing tracks, get an mp3 player. Alternatively invest in better computer equipment and stick with Ableton - it is a really powerful tool and that's certainly the direction I'm going in. I've never had my mac crash on stage, although really I wish I didn't have to use a computer at all. It's a compromise of two worlds - we sample every part of our finished songs as loops, and use just the scenes really in ableton, which gives us an option to still be a bit spontaneous on stage. Obviously I keep keyboard parts free to play myself.

I'm also in the rock-electronica scene, but moving now into working as a duo with just myself and a singer.

[P-E]

You need a sampler that can stream audio from it's flash memory (or hard drive, etc.).
The Elektron Octatrack does this extremely well (and you could use it as a mixer/sequencer/effect for your Electribes).

[Pastor-of-Muppets]

I think the roland sp404sx can do it too

[DJDelay]

Thanks very much for your help guys! The Elektron Octatrack looks amazing but is very expensive - I would have to check if anyone's selling this second hand.

The Roland SP404sx looks great as well and more affordable.

Would both of these samplers still be able to store say 20 songs of 5 mins or so (in say WAV format), and what happens if the WAV file size is large, can it still be transferred from a laptop into the sampler? If it uses an SD card for song transfers, I'm guessing the file size is quite limited?

Would either of these samplers work as a 'mixer' for the Electribe as well?

Thanks!

[Pastor-of-Muppets]

Thanks very much for your help guys! The Elektron Octatrack looks amazing but is very expensive - I would have to check if anyone's selling this second hand.

Even second-hand they aren't cheap - partly because they're still quite new so there's a demand for them.

The Roland SP404sx looks great as well and more affordable.

Would both of these samplers still be able to store say 20 songs of 5 mins or so (in say WAV format), and what happens if the WAV file size is large, can it still be transferred from a laptop into the sampler? If it uses an SD card for song transfers, I'm guessing the file size is quite limited?

why do you guess that? SD cards can store several gigabytes. I think both can play whole songs straight from the memory card (SD for the sp404sx, CF for the OT), you don't transfer it to the sampler, you leave it on the card.

Would either of these samplers work as a 'mixer' for the Electribe as well?

Not sure what you mean. I think both can be used to apply effects to external sources (the octatrack definitely can), so you could send the output of your electribe to the sampler to add effects

[P-E]

The Octatrack comes with a 4GB card which can store a few hours of sound, and connects to your PC over USB (it shows as an external flash-drive).
You can definitely play a 5 minutes track and mix-in your Electribe at the same time. You can even do some nice DJ-style transitions between your songs.

[chad9477]

we currently use an Electribe EMX 1 and Electribe SMKII (running patterns or whole songs) for some songs of our set, and a laptop running Ableton Live for the rest of our set. There are about say 2-6 tracks of audio on each Ableton Live Song (drums, synth sounds, effects, etc). We are looking to get rid of the laptop from our live set due to crashing, soundcard problems etc and use a more robust way of playing backing tracks.

As you've already tried the Ableton route, I highly recommend the Octatrack for reasons others have already offered above. It's pretty much the exact instrument you need for what you're describing, and it can do a lot of other amazing things besides.

[DJDelay]

Thanks guys.

Pastor of Muppets (great name by the way, Metallica rules!), I didn't realise the audio could be streamed on the SD card for the roland SP404sx, I thought it had to be transferred from a laptop and then saved onto the sampler. I understand it now thanks. For assigning the tracks on the SD card to the pads, this is done with the bundled software. Their website says there are 12 banks of 10 pads, so 120 songs is the maximum songs we can stream at any time? That would be plenty if so. If it's just limited to 10 songs on the pads available on the sampler, that wouldn't be so good. I'll see if I can try one out in a music store!

For using the sampler as a mixer, yes I meant if the Electribe audio could go through the sampler, then out to the PA. That's great that it can and also gives us more options for cool effects etc.

P-E and Chad, I would love to get the Octatrack but I don't think our budget could stretch to that unfortunately. I'm leaning towards the Roland SP404sx, it seems to be an all rounder and more affordable.

[Pastor-of-Muppets]

Pastor of Muppets (great name by the way, Metallica rules!),

I'm not the first person to think of the name though - there's some guitarist guy on youtube who uses the name too ... that's not me, I'm hopeless at the guitar!

I don't know any more about the sp404sx than I've said in this thread, so trying it out in a store and testing it for yourself is a good idea - good luck finding the right thing for you

[xmlguy]

Actually, the sp404 is arranged into 10 banks of 12 pads.

The pads are numbered 1-12. There are two buttons to select the internal banks, A & B, that use internal flash. There are 4 buttons to select external banks, C/G, D/H, E/I, F/J, that reside on the inserted flash card.

You can access 120 samples at a time, 24 from internal flash and 96 from the flash card. The 404 directly plays from flash, and there's no separate process needed for loading the samples into RAM beyond what it does automatically for RAM buffering.

Frankly, I only use my sp404 for triggering small samples or loops on the pads. The pads can be used for full songs, but you have to remember which songs are loaded onto the pads with your own memory or notes, because there's no song or file names. I would highly recommend using an iPad or iPod Touch instead of the 404 for full songs, since they are better designed for that purpose and for other general music tasks with various apps. You are limited to using wav/aiff files on the 404, while iPods can use mp3 and other formats. The iPad/iPod is better for looping too using apps. The 404's method for editing samples and loops is terrible.

[neotechtonics]

Have a look at the Zoom R16...

can record up to 8 stereo tracks (per project, not sure how many projects you can have but it'll be more than enough) for playback and with a 32GB SD card you can record alot...
can use it as a mixer while playing back other tracks (16 total mono tracks/ 8 total stereo tracks can record on up to 4 stereo tracks while another 4 stereo tracks are playing)
and does SO much more.

truly awesome piece of kit for a small band for recordings/mixing/mastering

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/a ... oomr16.htm

I wouldnt suggest the SP404 for what you need unless you also want a sampler and some better effects. check out the R16 seems a perfect fit for your needs.. and more.