so the Beat thang is actually at my local bestbuy

[starving student]

I could forgive all the corny ass marketing if they just got the machine right, you know in a way it's funny
I have more respect for them now for even pulling this off but still I'm very disappointed. There are some very unique features on the machine but.......who knows what's going to become of this.

I'm still waiting for ni to make it so that you can change the damn notes on a pad on maschine
beat thang does it with ease
there's lots of little shit like that, this is great and this is not on the beat thang.

another thing, I think they exist between the maschines and the mpcs, they are not really either and because of this they really needed to stick it with the os and functions and they did not, unfortunate. who wants a neko that's small enough to take with you in a small bag thats buggy.
the bright side is that there's gotta be some 13 year old kid somewhere who can clean this shit up for them, they need to completely open up the os to everyone and let the geeks fix this shit.

[starving student]

I'll tell you this, because of it's uniqueness it's given me new ideas on working with maschine and the mpc

[Tone Deft]

you'll be returning it to Best Buy in under 30 days.

[regretfullySaid]

I agree with the bright side; at least it's fixable and I think it'll shine by the time it might be too late, like when I pad4 is out and this thing is considered retro. By that time there will be tons of firmware/s/w hacks to do some really cool shit.

A cool hack would be an iPad interface to handle the editing side of things. I'm not even talking about the vst or h/w screen equivalent, just something where you're not limited to the jogwheel and buttons for navigation and typing.

So, how much of the stock sounds sound like cheese? I bet the drumkits are tight, though, other than emulations.

Think you'll be returning it in 30 days?

[starving student]

I'll be returning it this week for sure. I hope they make it to the point where somebody gets a hold of it and turns it into something but I don't know if it will last that long, I don't know much about about the business side of gear but the beat kangz had the whole thing complete before dallas austin got involved and took over acting like he came up with it, usually people let things like that happen because they are in need of help
they say they are going to put in a stepsequencer and other things in the next update but they say they don't know when that update will be, of course thats' not too unusual but they sound like they're on shaky ground, I just wish the cool kids would bombard this thing and make it some super sampler, all of the right hardware is in place just begging for someone to program up a doozy of a beatmachine

I think they already have an ipad hack let me check


check the end of this clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f48peSw ... er&list=UL

oh yeah, the sounds are good but the important thing is how it samples imho

[doghouse]

I don't know what people are talking about best buy, best buy is killing the market right now

No BestBuy pro music departments here in New England yet...where do you guys live?

[Tone Deft]

I don't know what people are talking about best buy, best buy is killing the market right now

christ...

Best Buy sells absolute CRAP. it's cool that some kids will get instruments because of a parental impulse buy but the quality of their stuff is absolutely cringeworthy.


doghouse - SS is in LA, I'm in SF. not all stores are getting music departments, SS is posting a lot of bad info on the topic.

[regretfullySaid]

I'm telling you, Beat Thang should be on demo in the Electronics section of Target!

[Tone Deft]

[macmurphy]

i read on their forums that their support for the vst Thang thing was awful. that was a while ago though so things could have changed.

[regretfullySaid]

If they had an auto-chopped Bieber dubstep remix parents would be facepalming themselves for letting their kids convince them to go over and check it out!

Best xmas present evarrr

I'd be like, "if you really want this, we're selling your xbox, ps3 and wii". That should shut em up.

[Tone Deft]

I stand corrected. a google image search on "Best Buy music instruments" shows some cool setups (who needs to leave the house to see things <sarcasm>?!?) given that this is a Beat Thang AND a Starving Student thread I took it as some shark jumping. one of the BBs in SF has some musical instruments, it's a sad site.

the ones near me have 'Magnolia' sections in their stores, which is their high end audio section, maybe they're opting for that instead of instruments around here.

[starving student]

I stand corrected. a google image search on "Best Buy music instruments" shows some cool setups (who needs to leave the house to see things <sarcasm>?!?) given that this is a Beat Thang AND a Starving Student thread I took it as some shark jumping. one of the BBs in SF has some musical instruments, it's a sad site.

the ones near me have 'Magnolia' sections in their stores, which is their high end audio section, maybe they're opting for that instead of instruments around here.

no worries mate, you weren't that far off from the truth, there's allot of sharks talking shit in this thread but as usual I'm not one of them. but just so you know in the future, It's not possible for me to give bad info on samplers, it's not in my dna.

[starving student]

well the beat thang is going back to best buy in the morning, would have been today but decided to give it another go just for the fun of it.

It's a remarkable idea in that it's like a neko but smaller and ultra portable, unlike a neko it doesn't run third party software yet.

it's build is very good and very unique with pitch /mod wheels, 2 sd slots, ability to save and import audio and sequences to an external drive, even thumb drive, and decent battery life. I think it's great that it comes with a nice rom of sounds and 256mb of ram out of the box as well as the battery is a rechargeable that you don't have to change it's like a laptop. they really made it so that you don't need anything else it's really ready to go right out of the box. oh yeah the screen is great too.

unfortunately it's far from ready at this time imho, who knows maybe tomorrow they'll upgrade the software and it will be the greatest thing but as of right now it is not.
for something that runs on software and just came out today they have developed the machine with the mindset of yesterday when it comes to the heart of the machine which are it's capabilities.

to much global going on, the fx section is awful, and the fx are awful, some of them didn't even change the sound when used, plus the fx are global and each track or pad can send whatever amount you determine to the fx but if you've pressed an effect button the whole machine is using that effect and that can't be changed. coming out with something like this at this date and time is un-acceptable to say the least.

the swing and quantize are global as well, also unacceptable in this day and age

the software is glitchy, sometimes my patterns would slow down for know reason. the buffer settings go from 256 up to 2048 but it improved things very little when adjusting these settings.

the layering on this machine is what you wish your layering was, no matter what kind of hardware or software you're using now, it boggles my mind how they could make it so good and the rest not even in the same ball park. it's the story of an operating system at odds with itself.

well like I said I'm disappointed, this machine has all the hardware in place for something magical but the capability of it's software falls extremely short. It was a frustrating experience. If you have any specific questions about it post it up and I'll try to answer them.
oddly enough this thread reminded me of this movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVtsvIpJFTw

[So Solid Poo]

If you have any specific questions about it post it up and I'll try to answer them.

YO DAWG
AS A PROMINUNT MENSA MEMBER DID Y'ALL GET DISCOUNT ?