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allows for easy sample transfer and assignment. As a MIDI controller, you can control every MIDI note for every pattern.
Good things
The menu is easy to navigate and the live controls are an improvement over the SPD-S. The onboard .wav editing, while basic, is very easy and very handy. The huge amount of onboard memory provides almost unlimited sampling storage and selection options. The onboard effects and real-time performance application of those effects is great.
Not so good
Not the best ergonomics for hand usage and the bar pads have poor sensitivity. The Sub output can’t be used along with the Main output for velocitybased multi-samples.
There is no variable HH support, which was on the SPD-S. In fact, there’s no effective HH support whatsoever. It was a popular feature on the SPD-S and for reasons that have most people scratching their head, Roland took it out of the SX. Yes, you can assign a HH sound to the foot switch but no variable HH controller like Roland’s own FD-7/8 will work. Even if you assign a HH sound to the foot switch, it’s not associated with any pad on the actual unit, unlike what you find on the Octapad, Multi 12 or some of the Alesis units. Thus, if you have a closed HH sound on the foot switch and an open HH sound on any given pad, there’s no way you can cut off the latter by depressing the foot pedal.
Things we’ve learned since the last time
Sounds triggered by hitting one pad are not truncated when switching to another kit, but there is a one- to two-second delay when the next kit loads, which effectively truncates the sound. This is not true when triggering a pattern from one pad. It will continue to play until stopped (assuming it’s that kind of pattern). You can then switch to another kit and hit another pad to trigger another pattern and it’s amazing how much rhythm you can get, and also very confusing since you can’t turn off the original pattern unless you switch back to that kit.
Roland SPD-30 Octapad
The Octapad’s main selling points are the playability of the unit and as a sequencer (or as Roland calls it, a “phrase looper”). Another advantage is its potential use as a very portable e-drum kit, given the number of external pads and controllers that can be attached. digitalDRUMMER, NOVEMBER 2012
The hardware
The pads measure 43⁄8” by 3 ¾” (110 mm by 95 mm). Pad dynamics are good and because of the unit’s layering feature (this is similar to the Multi 12’s layering capability except that you can assign two instruments/voices to one pad vs four on the Multi 12), one can literally set a “crossover point” and get very good cymbal swells and great snare dynamics. At first, stick noise seems louder since there is a deep resonance, especially when compared to its sampling brother, the SPD-SX. However, a quick check with the sound meter held one foot away while whacking the Octapad and SX showed no difference in decibel level. They are far quieter than the Sample/PercPad. Like the SX, the controls are on the front of the unit. You might fear thwacking a knob or the LCD screen and breaking something. Roland has made those controls very robust: there have been demos of taking a stick base and whacking it on the control panel with no problems.
Pad rebound is about the same as the SX, which means flams are easy to do and the individual notes are easily picked up even with rapid, repeated strikes. The pads are responsive across most of each pad and again, because of the layering, you get the equivalent of positional sensing on many sounds. Hand play is also viable, but with some drawbacks.
The brain
The 50 preset kits that come with the Octapad are, at first glance, the usual oft-maligned Roland “novelty” kits found on full-blown modules. There’s nothing approaching a conventional drum kit, except for the “Tutorial” kit. Furthermore, there is no such thing as user kits. Instead, you either copy over or change the instruments to the existing kits. The Octapad does come with a sizeable instrument (sound/voice) library, but the vast majority of those instruments are percussive, not straight-up drum instruments. By comparison, of the 650 instruments on the Octapad, 166 are drum-kit related while the 21