Is there anyone here who is using some sort of hardware groove box or sampler/sequencer with Mac, for live acts and music production?

Few models I have digged out spice up my imagination.. For example, little older but still good Yamaha SU700, but if combined with SCSI hard drive and additional RAM...

Then, Korg ElecTribe EMX 1, with even two tubes for vintage sound... New thing, sounds like it is easily combined with computer...

Boss or Roland SP 606, but with NO SUPPORT for Mac... s--t... Even SP 404 sound OK for starting point...

Any expiriences? Any owner advices? What should i look for when choosing stuff?

I'm little low on budget so up to 800 euros is TOP!

And I making some kind of ambient/deep/pop/chill/rock... He he... One more CyberGenre...

I'm using PowerBook g4 15" 1.67 with 1,5 gigs of ram, feeding it up with Ableton Live, Reason, Absynth etc...

If you are using Ableton, I think you will find a sampler redundant. You can far exceed the capabilities of your standard 'groovebox' type sampler with Ableton.

I used to use a Roland SP-808 sampler, and an MC-303 Groovebox. Once Ableton came along, my sampler quickly collected dust, so I promtly sold it while it still had some re-sell value left to it. I still have the MC-303.

I think you will get more mileage out of something like a Korg Electribe or a Roland MCx0x series box. They have built-in sounds and realtime filters etc., and you can trigger patterns on them from MIDI clips in Ableton while tweaking their filters in realtime etc.

Plus it's always way easier to program sequences in your computer than with the rediculous sequencer built into a Groovebox!

Just some thought from my experience with Grooveboxes and Ableton.

Hope that gives you some ideas.

There s no reason to use the groovebox sequencer if you have a midi interface, I use a Yamaha SU700 with Logic 7 and it s the perfct combination, the sound quality is much better than soft grooveboxes...and I secuence it with Logic Midi Editor

I found the Groovebox sequencer very easy to use. I am trying to figure out the sequencers in Reason and I am having quite a tough time. I can't stand tech crap...I just wanna write! Is there a good tutorial book to read for Reason that will explain the very basics to me? Thanks!!

Yeah I Like the feel of the groove box. Reason is good too, and it just may be my bias, but i think it lacks in overall quality. I mostly sequence in software though.

But if your a visual person: I say go with soft sequencers (sonar,cubase,protools)
If your a more kinesthetic, more hands on, go with hardware like: roland groovebox, mpc, etc.





go to reasonstation.net for tons of reason help, def check out the forums over there

Reason is very very good piece of soft. Try pdf files attached with Reason- IMHO Reason has best documentation I've ever found! Really!
Try to learn some modules rather than overall Reason. So, spend some time acting with drum sequencer....
It works.
Hope You make advice useful...
cheers
Ruczaj

Then maybe you should try to program using the matrix sequencer for synth, and the drummachine's sequencer for drums rather thant the main-crap. But this doesn't work, or works very poor for strings, and loops.

There are two incredible resources for learning Reason. www.macprovideo.com has Reason 101 and 103 for visual and audio learning, and there is a great manual, not too deep, with tons of pictures to demonstrate exactly what you need to know. It's called 'Reason 3 Ignite!' by Eric D. Grebler and Chris Hawkins ISBN#1-59200-666-3 for $22. Publisher isThomson Course Technology.