Anyone using an ARTURIA BEATSTEP PRO with your Kronos?

[MIDI_1984]

I've been toying with the idea of using an ARTURIA BEATSTEP PRO with my Kronos in hopes of reliving my old drum machine pattern making days while having a nearly limitless sound pallet to chose from.

Anyone here using the BEATSTEP Pro with their Kronos? I'd like to hear any feedback you may have about this, or if there are other units that you may be using instead to achieve a similar functionality.

Thanks!

[Lightbringer]

I connect my Beatstep Pro (hereafter "BSP") to the Kronos (hereafter "K") on occasion. Here's what I'd probably want to know if I were considering purchasing the BSP for use with the K.

Generally speaking they are a good pairing. The BSP adds some functionality that is not in the Kronos. The Kronos has several kinds of sequencers (comprehensive full song and in-synth modulator) but nothing that is really made for this kind of interactive pattern note/trigger sequencing.

You can connect it via USB and the K will power it and it will send note/gate data, but you won't get any MIDI clock exchange that way. To get the MIDI clock sync, you'll want to power the BSP externally and use 5-pin MIDI DIN cables to connect them. I have Kronos sequencer send clock to the BSP. It works well, although stopping the K's sequencer does not send any kind of reset to the BSP. You have to hit the BSP's stop button (2x I think?) after stopping the K. Or at least I haven't found a way to auto-reset it. But not a deal breaker for me.

To change the notes sent by the BSP's drum sequencer you have to hook it up to a computer and use Arturia's software. So it's not very easy to re-map the BSP pads to different sounds on the fly. However, you can sort of work around that by assigning 8 of the BSP pads to trigger the K's internal Pads. Then you can just remap the Kronos internal pads to different notes on the fly.

As far as other recommendations... Not sure how in depth you're looking to get. My two cents: you can find more feature rich MIDI sequencer hardware, but not without spending quite a bit more money. I haven't found anything close to what the BSP does in its price range. Arturia has done a nice job of packing it full of features.

Edit: one last thing. The BSP is a little too big to sit nicely even on the K2 88.

[CharlesFerraro]

The BSP adds some functionality that is not in the Kronos. The Kronos has several kinds of sequencers (comprehensive full song and in-synth modulator) but nothing that is really made for this kind of interactive pattern note/trigger sequencing.

Not familiar with the BSP but are you wondering if KARMA can trigger different drum patterns that are mapped to specific notes? For example having a four on the floor pattern mapped to a C with a Dn'B pattern on C#. While KARMA can do that, you're right that it's not specifically designed for that purpose. It's just that the system is flexible enough to do that if you wanted it to.

K's sequencer does not send any kind of reset to the BSP. You have to hit the BSP's stop button (2x I think?) after stopping the K. Or at least I haven't found a way to auto-reset it.

Since I don't mess with sequencer mode much, I'm not sure how it handles MIDI start/stop messages. In Program and Combi mode however you can enable start/stop messages from KARMA. So when KARMA starts running it'll send a start message, and then when you turn KARMA off it'll issue a MIDI stop command. You enable this setting in Global > MIDI > MIDI, in the MIDI Routing Setup window. It's labeled "Start/Stop(Realtime) Out".