September 2002
By David Battino
This page is designed to complement my review of the Boss SP-505 Groove Sampling Workstation in the August 2002 issue of Electronic Musician. Click the following links to jump directly to a subtopic.
The SP-505 is a sampling drum machine with some unusual twists. It stores audio in a compressed format similar to MP3, providing up to 66 minutes (!) of sampling time at 44.1 kHz. (You'll need to add a 128 MB SmartMedia card to get that much memory; out of the box, the SP-505 holds two minutes of 44.1 kHz audio.) To gauge how the data compression affected the sound, I generated a 20Hz-20kHz sine-wave sweep with Audio Ease's Make A TestTone program, saved it onto a SmartMedia card as a WAV file, and loaded it into the 505. I then recorded the 505's audio output into my computer through a Korg OASYS PCI audio interface.
Hear the original WAV file (352 KB)
Hear the SP-505-encoded version (356 KB, recorded from the SP-505's analog output)
Here's a comparison of the "before" and "after" waveforms. Note the rolloffs in the high and low frequencies in the compressed version:
Of course, a sine-wave sweep is not a realistic test of perceptual data compression, which is designed to shrink music files, not reproduce test tones. The audio interface may have had an effect on the sound, as well. (Because I sampled at 44.1 kHz, I'd expect to see some high-frequency rolloff, for example.) But the high-frequency distortion was clearly audible in the SP-505's own outputs. And for what it's worth, when I encoded the WAV file with the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder, the resulting file was much smoother.
Hear the MP3 version (64 KB)
However, the bottom line with any instrument is not how it specs out, but how it helps you make music. The next sections should give you an idea of why I liked the SP-505 so much.
The SP-505 is unique among phrase samplers (not to mention most full-fledged samplers) in that it can pitch-shift a sample to cover an octave of notes, then assign the resulting samples to a bank of 13 pads. The pitch-shifting process preserves the duration of the sound, so you can play chords without the high notes cutting out before the low ones do.
Hear a pitch-shifted snare drum (172 KB). The first hit is the original sample. Note how the attack of some notes is smeared.
Hear a pitch-shifted bass note (204 KB). This sample was one of the 16 single-note samples built into the SP-505, and produced much cleaner results. I played the final chord from a MIDI keyboard attached to the SP-505, which allowed me to vary the level of each note.
Hear a pitch-shifted note in musical context (280 KB). In this example, one SP-505 pad is playing a stereo loop while I trigger the pitch-shifted bass notes from a MIDI keyboard. (The loop is an excerpt from a demo I recorded during my Yamaha Motif review. It features EM's Matt Gallagher on sampled answering machine.)
The SP-505 features 26 signal-processing effects, each with three parameters that you can control in real time with knobs. Although I wasn't blown away by the standard effects (reverb, chorus, distortion, and other usual suspects), I had a lot of fun with the more esoteric effects. Here I've applied them to a short vocal sample I ripped from a DigiTech Studio Vocalist demo CD. The original phrase, introducing a song by former EM editor Craig Anderton, said, "Craig Anderton makes extensive use of Gender in his song." Because several of the SP-505's effects mess with pitch and formants, it seemed appropriate....
Hear the Tape Echo effect (256 KB). The parameters are Repeat, Intensity, and Effect Level.
Hear the Radio Tuning effect (188 KB). The parameters are Tuning, Noise Level, and Frequency Range.
Hear the Slicer + Flanger effect (224 KB). The parameters are Pattern, Rate, and Flanger Amount.
Hear the Chromatic Pitch Shift effect (188 KB). The parameters are Pitch 1, Pitch 2, and Balance.
Hear the Voice Transformer effect (232 KB). The parameters are Formant, Effect Level, and Direct Level.
Like most modern phrase samplers, the SP-505 can automatically adjust the tempo of different loops so they play in sync. Because the 505 has greater polyphony and memory than competing samplers, though, you can really take advantage of this feature.
Hear two stereo loops with BPM Sync off (128 KB). The first loop is 6 beats long at 90.2 bpm. The second loop is 8 beats long at 77.7 bpm.
Hear the loops with BPM Sync on (672 KB). After a few seconds, you'll hear a filtered variation of the 77.7 bpm loop, which I produced by resampling the original through the Filter+Drive effect while twisting the knobs. Next I trigger the Anderton sample (through the Tape Echo effect) with my left hand, while playing a few drum hits with my right.