Is the electribe sampler a bad joke?

Spheric El · Post by **Spheric El** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:05 am

Oops multi post.

markxl1 · Post by **markxl1** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 10:07 am

Last year I sold my roland mc808 for the new hyped E2 and after 10 minutes of playing with the electribe I thought " I've f****d up big time"
Now I can't even sell it for £200! so I'll keep it as it may be useful in the future. There are some good things to come I hope.

2 years ago, I dabbled with korg gadget on an ipad2 and even bought a midi interface to incorporate my emu command station and rs7000 purely for midi transfer of sequences.
The ipad2 could only really handle 5 gadgets so I felt limited and Omni midi was a problem at the time.

Weighing everything up and the gear I have in the studio, the E2 just doesn't fit in to how I work and I tried lots of things, spending days thinking of workarounds to the point where I lost my music making mojo and everything else just sat collecting dust.

Anyway, this Christmas my wife bought me an ipad air 2 and I loaded up gadget again, bought the extra synths and suddenly I am excited about making music again.

I can't wait to buy a decent interface and hook up my external sequencers and record/save/edit the results easily on a large touch screen.

The only drawback I can see at the moment is that I will have to build up each song one track at a time but that's not a problem, just slows me down a touch but compared to the hundreds of drawbacks I've encountered when music making with everything else......

I didn't like the ESX very much and wished korg made an EMX where you could load in your own samples ( even if it was just drum section to add fx vocals ).

If you already have an EMX, you could buy an ipad, gadget and interface for the price of a new ES2. You can fire your old beats/tunes into gadget easily and add all the bells and whistles after. If you try doing that with an e2 , es2 all your beats will come out as a series of C notes.

They ( new electribes ) just don't f*****g fit in, Korg didn't do their homework and certainly didn't ask their users what they wanted. I see it as a standalone instrument unless you work four bar.

For people who are pissy and moany about the new electribes ( myself included ) TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

I hope this is helpful to some and just to forewarn you, the korg/ipad/gadget forum section is f*****g useless and not in the slightest bit helpful as I have had many questions read/unanswered.

Would like to know peoples thoughts on my view

jpeg · Post by **jpeg** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:19 pm

Spheric El wrote:We need everyone's opinion.
That's what this forum's about, discussing gear.

I dont think u need everyone's opinion; cos lotta peeps just attention seeking and dont know wtf they talking about.

we need knowledgeable/experienced people to come to the forefront and share their perspectives.

the mofo's that dont know s**t really need to stfu and listen

this is why I dont post alot; partly cos its a slow moving forum but also because I am not super knowledgeable on the electribes.

I have experience using the esx1 but that was years ago

_INTER_ · Post by **_INTER_** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:21 pm

I can't wait to buy a decent interface and hook up my external sequencers and record/save/edit the results easily on a large touch screen.

The only drawback I can see at the moment is that I will have to build up each song one track at a time but that's not a problem, just slows me down a touch but compared to the hundreds of drawbacks I've encountered when music making with everything else......

Most people that want to make music with a DAW would sit in front of the computer doing so. Most buy a groovebox to get away from this. Also the reason why the subforum concerning iPad etc. is so sparse.

sl23 · Post by **sl23** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:33 pm

@markxl1
Spot on!

Getting rid of your Mc 808 was a mistake, I had the Mc 909 and wish I kept that. I sold it years ago, but still, it was far far better than any korg box, especially for sampling.

I suggested a redesigned emx/esx combo to korg not long after their release. Korg are and always have been putting customers third! They released emx but you couldn't filter drums, they released esx but you couldn't drive the filtered drums, seriously what the f*ck!!! Even now, they screw up after a ten year period to research and develop a new tribe, useless doesn't even begin to describe korg!

As I said I'll never buy new korg gear again, only second hand so they don't get my money!

jpeg · Post by **jpeg** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:41 pm

markxl1 wrote:L

I didn't like the ESX very much and wished korg made an EMX where you could load in your own samples ( even if it was just drum section to add fx vocals ).

:

I am sure the ESX was indeed an EMX where u can load ur own sample?

jpeg · Post by **jpeg** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:59 pm

axs wrote:Sure, it could be due to a certain lack of research, but I would have never in a million years expected the kinds of short comings I feel this product is riddled with, so how would I know to investigate it?

And surely you don't mean that there is something wrong with warning potential buyers against a product that one finds lacking? No one has been particularly malicious on this thread, but have simply pointed out various degrees of disappointment in lacking features.

So, hopefully someone considering this product discovers this thread and can make an informed decision about whether or not to buy it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems to kind of be the point of forums - to spread information.

nothing wrong with alerting people of faults found but also alert people about ur failed research which is simple as watching a few videos on youtube to get a sense of the products limits and features

markxl1 · Post by **markxl1** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:00 pm

I got into all this in 1999 by buying a Yamaha su700 sampler and taking it back to the shop a week later to buy the rm1x and a sampletrak

Then I bought an emu xl1, ks rack, korg er1,es1, a few years later.
Sold them all for a Yamaha rs7000 and emu command station and these two machines will stay with me forever...The midi possibilities are vast
Went through the PC/audio midi/reason/project5 stage and made some good stuff but you lose the hands on groovebox feel and the frustration of losing hours of work due to PC crashes teaches you early in life to SAVE/WRITE regularly ( this is your E2 undo button LOL ).

For me, having a groovebox that you can get on with hooked up to an ipad is a great way to make electronic music. I'm sure I'll find future problems but from experience and weighed up against all other problems from the past I thought I'd share my view based on the topic.

I will still be using a groovebox, I will have a huge amount of synths and a varied sampling tools, a visual touch screen editor and the ability to save as a pattern as normal and as audio....

Don't forget some decent speakers and headphones

markxl1 · Post by **markxl1** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:03 pm

jpeg wrote:
markxl1 wrote:L

I didn't like the ESX very much and wished korg made an EMX where you could load in your own samples ( even if it was just drum section to add fx vocals ).

:
I am sure the ESX was indeed an EMX where u can load ur own sample?

No!
sampled drums, 2 synths and s**t timestretch

I meant sampled drums and the 5 mono synths you have ( would be cool if they could be changed though ).

h.vel · Post by **h.vel** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:07 pm

markxl1 wrote:Anyway, this Christmas my wife bought me an ipad air 2 and I loaded up gadget again, bought the extra synths and suddenly I am excited about making music again.

I can't wait to buy a decent interface and hook up my external sequencers and record/save/edit the results easily on a large touch screen.

I don't like to kill your enthusiasm, but did you ever tried to sync Korg Gadget with your external gear? As far as I know ALL Korg apps have a VERY bad MIDI clock. The latency is higher than 60ms - absolutely useless. I've tried to get it working many times and while I was searching in forums, I recognised that this is a common problem of Korg's apps. Though Korg knows about this problem, they never fixed it - since years.

Maybe there will be a solution with Ableton's Link (just hoping)...

thesigma · Post by **thesigma** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:14 pm

markxl1 wrote:I got into all this in 1999 by buying a Yamaha su700 sampler and taking it back to the shop a week later to buy the rm1x and a sampletrak
Then I bought an emu xl1, ks rack, korg er1,es1, a few years later.
Sold them all for a Yamaha rs7000 and emu command station and these two machines will stay with me forever...The midi possibilities are vast
Went through the PC/audio midi/reason/project5 stage and made some good stuff but you lose the hands on groovebox feel and the frustration of losing hours of work due to PC crashes teaches you early in life to SAVE/WRITE regularly ( this is your E2 undo button LOL ).

That sounds familiar.. I too started around 99, late 98 actually. I had no money back the so I got EA-1 first the ES-1, then RM1X, sold RM1X because it didn't work too well with my electribes and some other annoyances, plus sounds weren't great. Started us Fruity loops, before it was FL studio(v2?) tried reason, rebirth, cubase, sonar, and tons of VST.

Actually FL was and still is pretty good IMO, always liked the step sequencer approach it was kind of groovebox-ish. Found a killer deal on a sequential circuits Pro-One, Six-Track, and Korg DW-8000 in a local for sale paper. 500 bucks for all with a three tier stand! both sequentials needed some TLC, but worked. bought an AKAI z4 sampler, huge mistake as AKAI lied about features it supposedly had, disk streaming was never implemented but was in all the sales literature, and the AK.SYS editor software was always incredibly unstable. this was right before numark bought AKAI and you see what a piece of S$%# company AKAI is now. Bought a novation A-station and motu MTP-AV and tried the Cubase thing for a while, mostly wasted time trying to make remote interfaces for my synths.. Then basically didn't buy any gear or make much music the next5-6 years, got married, bought house, did career thing to busy all the time.

Bought an EMX, loved it. New I would I had tried both out at a friends house, he bought both as soon as they were released. Bought an ESX the next year. Made a bunch of patterns sitting on the couch, it was great. ESX didn't get as much use, I was hating computers at the time and sample prep was a big creativity killer for me.

Now I make decent money, can buy new gear, and have moved across the country to a bigger house where I can set it all up. have bought Emu PX7, RS7000, Wavestation SR, Roland R8M, Volca keys and beats, Yamaha AN200, tons of FX boxes all kinds of stuff.

So I've been through a lot, Korg isn't the only one who has failed to deliver on some of their products, AKAI and MOTU have both let me down with very expensive products (the MTP-AV was supposed to be able to chain 2 units to get a 16x16 midi interface, yet my unit has a firmware chip that doesnt allow it, and now that I finally figured that out years later, support won't respond to my tickets.....they also don't allow you to transfer registration of any of thier products, hardware or software, to a new owner, so you won't get support on a second hand purchase if it was registered by the previous owner, which is bad enough for hardware but kills software, no way to get updates)

Yamaha, have been the best In My opinion, Thier boxes always worked as advertised on day 1, and the RS7000 even got a pretty significant firmware update that added new filter types and some other goodies. they always had a full and well implemented MIDI SPEC, and full featured sequencers. Sadly they seem to have abandoned the groovebox market. IF the RS had an updated synth engine and a more modern sampler (with live looping) it would be a Killer all in one box. If Emu command stations had sampling theyd have killed MPC's. both are great sequencers that will always have a place in my studio.

markxl1 wrote:For me, having a groovebox that you can get on with hooked up to an ipad is a great way to make electronic music. I'm sure I'll find future problems but from experience and weighed up against all other problems from the past I thought I'd share my view based on the topic.

I will still be using a groovebox, I will have a huge amount of synths and a varied sampling tools, a visual touch screen editor and the ability to save as a pattern as normal and as audio....

Don't forget some decent speakers and headphones

I've got some ipad apps but honestly don't much enjoy them. they sound OK but i hate touchscreens, I really do, I don't find them good for much of anything except scrolling around. The APPS all sound pretty good, but If I'm gonna go hook up in the studio to a keyboard, I've got a room full of other gear that sounds just as good or better...

jbvdb493 · Post by **jbvdb493** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:15 pm

h.vel wrote:
markxl1 wrote:Anyway, this Christmas my wife bought me an ipad air 2 and I loaded up gadget again, bought the extra synths and suddenly I am excited about making music again.

I can't wait to buy a decent interface and hook up my external sequencers and record/save/edit the results easily on a large touch screen.
I don't like to kill your enthusiasm, but did you ever tried to sync Korg Gadget with your external gear? As far as I know ALL Korg apps have a VERY bad MIDI clock. The latency is higher than 60ms - absolutely useless. I've tried to get it working many times and while I was searching in forums, I recognised that this is a common problem of Korg's apps. Though Korg knows about this problem, they never fixed it - since years.

Maybe there will be a solution with Ableton's Link (just hoping)...

Got link to work with gadget and other apps so far and it is perfect timing
Gadget having s**t sync won't affect anything with link because link (or audiobus?) is what sends the clock and so far so good on my iPad at least
As for gadget there are no real fx in it so things tend to sound kinda same isn and can't get crazy sounds of easily because no distortion etc!

thesigma · Post by **thesigma** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:19 pm

markxl1 wrote:
jpeg wrote:
markxl1 wrote:L

I didn't like the ESX very much and wished korg made an EMX where you could load in your own samples ( even if it was just drum section to add fx vocals ).

:
I am sure the ESX was indeed an EMX where u can load ur own sample?

No!
sampled drums, 2 synths and s**t timestretch

I meant sampled drums and the 5 mono synths you have ( would be cool if they could be changed though ).

I always wished they'd combine the functions into one super electribe but I guess they're hell bent on trying to make people buy 2 boxes if they want sampling and synthesis. S$%# timestretch is better than no timestretch. I didn't find it to be all that bad if you didn't try to go too faroff original tempo, and going up sounded better than down....of course you could gets some cool grainy FX by stretching stuff waaayyyy far out....

h.vel · Post by **h.vel** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 8:07 pm

jbvdb493 wrote:
h.vel wrote:
markxl1 wrote:Anyway, this Christmas my wife bought me an ipad air 2 and I loaded up gadget again, bought the extra synths and suddenly I am excited about making music again.

I can't wait to buy a decent interface and hook up my external sequencers and record/save/edit the results easily on a large touch screen.
I don't like to kill your enthusiasm, but did you ever tried to sync Korg Gadget with your external gear? As far as I know ALL Korg apps have a VERY bad MIDI clock. The latency is higher than 60ms - absolutely useless. I've tried to get it working many times and while I was searching in forums, I recognised that this is a common problem of Korg's apps. Though Korg knows about this problem, they never fixed it - since years.

Maybe there will be a solution with Ableton's Link (just hoping)...
Got link to work with gadget and other apps so far and it is perfect timing
Gadget having s**t sync won't affect anything with link because link (or audiobus?) is what sends the clock and so far so good on my iPad at least
As for gadget there are no real fx in it so things tend to sound kinda same isn and can't get crazy sounds of easily because no distortion etc!

Yes, Link seems to compensate Korg's bad MIDI clock very well - but in my case Gadget just syncs well with other apps on the iPad itself. Did you also try to sync external/hardware gear (like the Electribe) with Link and Gadget? It still seems not possible (also not with audiobus), because you either can enable Link or standard MIDI clock - both at the same time seems not possible.

jbvdb493 · Post by **jbvdb493** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 8:57 pm

That's pretty classic of iPad apps I find
They all just kinda come short on stuff
iMPC Pro anyone? No midi sync at all so impossible to use with any hardware at all what a joke! And Retronyms suck worst than korg for support!
Gadget has no effects! And why include iM1 but not ielectribe, iMS20 and ipolysix?
Or how you need mimix to do multiple outs from audiobus? Why wouldn't they make all this in one!
Or Z3ta on iPad that doesn't support multi touch!!?
Oh well I will be quite happy if I could sort out animoog, iSEM and my electribe and MPC