SP 404 Question

[Major Carew]

Just purchased a SP 404 second hand (the original version that comes with CF cards, not the SX version that uses SD cards) and want to know what compact flash cards it accepts other than the expensively priced & hard to find Roland brand ones. It accepts up to 1GB which is more than I need, but will it accept SanDisk brand, for example ? From reading other user problems it seems those ones don't always work? Anyone have one of these and can recommend anything?

[Vermin Marvin]

I have one and i`m pretty sure i used Sandisk 1G in at some point but there was problem that if you plug it out from power suply before powering it off it empty whole card.. not sure if that happens on it`s own cards or not.
Haven`t use it some while so don`t trust my memory too much. 

[FreakAnimalFinland]

This was problem with my SP-404. First of all, 1GB are nowadays getting fairly rare already as it is. As even 4GB is small by todays standards.
But when I bought "thomann 1GB" flash, it didn't work on sampler. So luckily I had some friend with other old flash card he used in his camera, so that worked just fine.

I assume it's not only about size, but other things too, like speed of data which may cause issues. I had one card which "almost worked". Basically you could get sampler working, but it would randomly stop samples - both from flash and internal memory. As soon as it was taken away, internal memory worked just fine.

Good luck hunting suitable old flash....

[Leatherface]

I've three brand new Sandisk 1Gb somewhere i think.

[Major Carew]

This was problem with my SP-404. First of all, 1GB are nowadays getting fairly rare already as it is. As even 4GB is small by todays standards.
But when I bought "thomann 1GB" flash, it didn't work on sampler. So luckily I had some friend with other old flash card he used in his camera, so that worked just fine.

I assume it's not only about size, but other things too, like speed of data which may cause issues. I had one card which "almost worked". Basically you could get sampler working, but it would randomly stop samples - both from flash and internal memory. As soon as it was taken away, internal memory worked just fine.

Good luck hunting suitable old flash....

I've heard the same things from other users. I managed to pick up a slightly more reasonably priced dedicated Roland SP 404 brand card, so hopefully that will be OK.

I've three brand new Sandisk 1Gb somewhere i think.

The problem is that some SanDisk ones work and some don't. Apparently other than the Roland ones the 'Lexington' ones are the most reliable, but I saw one for about £90, fuck that!

Worst case is that I use the internal memory which is about 5 mins or so at full quality, so for 10/20 second loops should be plenty.

[ligature impression]

I use that same sampler, and I've never had the official Roland CF card. I think mine is a 1-2GB Sandisk from my old digital camera. The one it came with was like 256MB Fujifilm??? I formatted it and have never had a single issue with samples stopping or deleting. I've had some samples 1-20 seconds and some 5-6 minutes. Some sampled directly from source and some loaded from computer.

Bottom line, the non-Roland SF cards have worked perfectly for me.