Every time I start to fall in love with the S2400, it breaks my heart.
The only songs I have picked up momentum on have been roadblocked by two different show-stopping glitches.
It’s a very simple and intuitive sampler, and tends to get out of your way. I start to think about the structure of the song and not about the hardware itself, what more could one want?
That is until it ceases to function.
Previously I had an issue with gated samples unpredictably playing and not playing during pattern playback. I posted in this forum months ago with few responses and no solutions, I then found this glitch has been plaguing some people since 2021:
Today I was getting really into the groove, recording samples from various records and the track was coming together nicely and intuitively. Suddenly, after grabbing a sample from the phono 2 jack (44.1, 16bit, about 35 seconds long), right before I was going to save the waveform to a pad, the whole system becomes unresponsive and I have to turn it off. I had forgot to save because I was so zoned into the track and I lost 2 hours of my time and some really good, unique and serendipitous pattern performances, as well as two whole banks of vinyl samples.
I was frustrated, but figured I could give another go later while the ideas and samples were still fresh in my mind.
Well, I did a couple hours later and what do you know it happened again. This time I had been very paranoid and loss less material because I was routinely saving. Haven’t felt this paranoia since 2004 Microsoft office, and the Erica LXR 02. Thankfully both Microsoft and Erica Synths have since added autosave. Mind you this paranoia takes me slightly away from the music and makes me aware of the machine but I digress.
It seems to be related to having the input monitoring on and going directly into sampling. The sample successfully records and I can see the waveform. Pressing a pad to playback the recorded audio combined with quick press of the bank button to get to the pad I would put the sample on seems to be a commonality between both hangs. Suddenly buttons are unresponsive, nothing works, still shows the waveform and plays the sample through.
I don’t want to be a hater, this company has brought some great hardware to life and has a wonderful community. However, when I buy a sampler for almost $2000, it should be able to sample and playback recorded patterns of samples. My use case is classic and straightforward.
There have been no updates for almost a year. Some pretty basic feature requests (midi implementation, LFOs etc) and some pretty alarming bugs seem to have been ignored. Meanwhile the team focused on putting a second full ARM computer with a custom Linux distribution inside of the unit for effects that I would do during the mixing stage anyways.
This card mind you, costs nearly as much as the list price of the Korg Drumlogue which got Korg clowned on so hard for they are now selling the units for half price. The Drumlogue also has an SDK for developing not just effects, but synths as well. I really hope this effects card for the 2400 is highly successful and developers flock to it and produce some amazing VSTs, again not trying to be a hater.
I just want my sampler to sample and playback patterns of samples, and do so with such stability I could use it in front of a live audience. That’s why I paid a premium for what is honestly a redundant device. Workflow. If I am unsure about that stability I might as well just use ableton or an iPad.
Maybe I’ll just get a SP 555 and if I feel like dubious stability and coding on a Linux distro I’ll grab a Percussia SSP. At least it has multichannel sampling.
Please Isla team, do not turn this into abandonware, and please fix the bread and butter glitches before you build anymore framework on top of this system. I don’t want to give up on the S2400.