quote:

Originally posted by DeZmA given it's price used on ebay it's worth it for the sequencer alone. It does have some good drum sounds

Absolutely. $200 for a RM1X is a real bargain for such a fantastic piece of kit. I wouldn't part with mine for five times that.

Agree with you about the drum sounds: it's those synth and GM noises which are a bit rubbish. Hook it up to some decent hardware, though, and its true potential shines through.

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I thought I'd chime in since I've owned most all of the ones you asked about and a few more. Here goes

RM1X - Great sequencer, convenient floppy storage, thin sounds, so you'll have to layer tracks/instruments etc which kills tracks and polyphony.

RS7000 - Great sequencer, convenient smc storage, useful sampler. No pad velocity on main pads. Thin sounds for the money. MC-909, E-MU and the MC-505 style synths have better synth engines.

EMX-1 - Monophonic synth parts only, so pads are out but great drums and nasty (good) effects, not an easy trance machine though because of the no poly

XL7 - Very deep, strong sequencer, great sounds, upgradeable, but complicated to learn with difficult pads to program with imo. Good choice.

MC-303 - Thin and outdated synth engine but useful drums and arpeggiator. Great to learn on or program and watch TV. Much creativity will be needed to get a great sound out of this one.

MC-505 - Great sounds (4 programmable tones per voice), easy pattern based sequencing, nice part mixer but expensive 5v smart cards - dated patterns not much there to inspire you. Good choice though.

D2 - MC505 without the controls, but an X-Y controller instead, around $100 on ebay. This is a steal but you'll need a decent controller to get anywhere with it, same sounds and specs as MC-505. Bargain!

MC-307 - Same as D2 without X-Y controller but adding a BPM/pitch slider and some realtime knobs but still too much time in menus for me. Leave it to the DJs?

JX-305 - MC-505 with 5 octave keyboard w/ velocity and aftertouch. Loses the ease of use of the 505 though.

Quasimidi Sirius - If you have the space for a keyboard, this one is a lot more immediate than all the above imo. Sounds pretty good, effecs are garbage imo but fun sequencer, great drums, flexible vocoder, random patch generator.

I haven't owned the MC-909 or the Polymorph but they are a little out of my acceptable "groovebox" price range. The SP-606 is a sampler so probably won't be your only box. Good luck.

sums it up quite nicely.
Just wanted to add : if you want to have a stand alone sequencer I'd go for yamaha rm1x or rs7000 (don't have experience with e-mu, they had good reviews tho).

If you want decent sounds and a good sequencer you might wanna go for the roland mc909. If you will sequence thru software, the mc 505 is a good choice (I own one). It's basicly a jv 1080, but more dance based sounds, still it has a bank with classic instruments. You won't get far with 8 tracks to sequence tho, but it was great fun back then and I learned a lot from it.

The korgs are fun too, but a bit limited in sequencing. The latest blue one has really fat sounds but not that usefull for trance. I've tested the old blue one, it's very usefull for acid riffs and stuff and the red one has some great original drum sounds. Listen to a live set of alter ego and you'll know what I mean

Last but not least, don't expect any supersaw leads from these boxes as they are all s&s based synths, which means it's basicly a sampler with ROM sounds onboard. The korg's have (virtual) analog synthesis but don't have enough possibilities (detune, layering) to make it fat. You'll need a grown up virtual analog synth for this job.

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quote:

Originally posted by Freak I tested the Yamaha RM1X before it was released many moons ago (long story). I thought it was garbage personally- sounded very cheap. Quite limiting too. I know all grooveboxs are limted in some respects, but this was moreso.

yep. i had it as well and i agree in all your points.

I challenge anyone here to contest of hardware sequencers. I say that E-mu sequencer is the best of the bunch. We can do it on "paper" -e.g. spec wise, or performance wise - e.g. what you can do with a box alone.

E-mu sequencer has 32 MIDI CHANNELS - that means 32 TRACKS.
128 Voice poly - meaning you can layer the sh!t out of your drums. I can allocate 4 tracks for just one kick drum and layer the crap out of it, until it punches you in your guts on both channels. 32 arp individual arp patterns you can stick on every track, real time control of all parameters, including the velocity of the kick, the volume, sustain, tone, etc.

None of the boxes you mentioned even come close to Emu. Like Infiniti's old moto, "Own one and you'll understand".

And search the web for demos of Emu boxes - there are tons.

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quote:

Originally posted by Freak I tested the Yamaha RM1X before it was released many moons ago (long story). I thought it was garbage personally- sounded very cheap. Quite limiting too. I know all grooveboxs are limted in some respects, but this was moreso.

Yeah, it was a bit of a mare to program (small LCD screen).

If you have the time to program it then yeah, but as Freak said, it sounds a little cheap and nothing to get excited about.

There's far too many vst's out there which blow it away