Worst.. hardware sequencer.. EVER

[madtheory]

The worst:

Kawai Q-80 sounded nice and powerful with lots of tracks and motifs and such, but it did the opposite of inspire. Sold and never missed it.

I'd have to disagree, those are among the better hardware sequencers. I found that keeping it to 8 tracks it made a nice interactive sequencer for live performance. Switching through the matrix was not fast enough for muting/ dropping in parts. I used a Q80 and Q80EX together so there was an actual button for each track. It was a bit awkward to move stuff over via MIDI files. So I'm hoping one of the Emu Command stations will be a neater solution for gigging, or possibly Ableton with a laptop.

[StepLogik]

i think oliver lieb was a big fan of the Q-80ex for live performance. if i remember correctly, he had one when he did a live PA at bassrush in Louisville many years ago.

[Soundwave]

Bought this from a 2nd hand shop as a teenager it was my first ever sequencer and a pretty shitty one at that.

[urbanscallywag]

The worst:

Kawai Q-80 sounded nice and powerful with lots of tracks and motifs and such, but it did the opposite of inspire. Sold and never missed it.

I'd have to disagree, those are among the better hardware sequencers. I found that keeping it to 8 tracks it made a nice interactive sequencer for live performance. Switching through the matrix was not fast enough for muting/ dropping in parts. I used a Q80 and Q80EX together so there was an actual button for each track. It was a bit awkward to move stuff over via MIDI files. So I'm hoping one of the Emu Command stations will be a neater solution for gigging, or possibly Ableton with a laptop.

Yeah...I didn't get it.

[alpha5000dk]

If the built in sequencer of the Roland D-20 count as a hardware sequencer, it gets my vote.
There are no edit possibilities at all except for quantizing

[Christopher Winkels]

Bought this from a 2nd hand shop as a teenager it was my first ever sequencer and a pretty shitty one at that.

I once borrowed one of those off of a friend of mine. Made me wonder why I called him a "friend". Quick Disks and an interface as grokable as sanskrit. Utterly useless, and a very good choice for worst ever.

[Sexor]

I have this supercrap 80's midi sequencer... Yamaha QX-5FD



It's absolutely awful.

But then again it's musical, whereas the MC-202 sequencer is NOT.

[JSRockit]

I didn't mind the MC-202 and the TB-303 looks ok to program... wasn't a big fan of the acidlab bassline 1 way of programming. I remember the MC-303 being lame to program...and an older Yamaha QY as well... Nanoloop always bugged me as well.

[alpha5000dk]

About the Kawai Q-80, I've owned two of these and they are very easy, intuitive and steady as a rock. Never had any issues with 'em, except running out of memory because of a song my friend and I didn't quantize or made any motifs for. We recorded everything into it live as it were played

[Frayo]

It's funny, but I remember how clumsy building sequences seemed on the Drummulator, and it was probably pretty good compared to a lot of its contemporaries. But for ease of editing, give me software any day.

I am not a veteran of sequencer use. I have used very few hardware machines. I do use Jazz and I had a blast with it. I do prefer to use hardware over software because my computer...is evil. It likes to stop recognizing all connected MIDI hardware at random. It also has a very noisy and hissy sound card that likes to vary in noisyness at random as well.

But I would have to say my first real sequencer is the Drumulator. It's clumsy and confusing...and editing it in real time is a very weird experience for me every time. I usually give up trying to shoot for something and put a bunch of random events in it. With that and MIDI, the machine spits out something cooler than what I was originally shooting for in the first place.

I wouldn't say it's a bad sequencer...giving the things I've heard in this thread, I have yet to see a bad sequencer. In fact, I see this thread as a buyers guide on what to stay away from. I'm going to shoot for a Roland MC-500.

[Zamise]

The orignal Korg Triton. Mainly for its c**p step sequencing, couldn't do crud on it without an outside seq. Prob the #1 reason I sold it. I'd rather seq on tb-303, and for those who do think tb-303s are a piece of cake, try it on a real tb-303 sometime. Not saying its anywhere near the worst, but its pretty far from the best. Next in line is Radikal Tech Spectralis, its just insane, it don't suck, it does a lot more than many hardware seqs, just not an easy learn, not easy at all, its the opposite of easy.

[salwa]

My vote goes to Yamaha QY 10 as to Only Hardware Sequencer Which Cannot Play A# Note And Instead It Plays B (maybe mine is broken, but I don't think so).

[Frayo]

The orignal Korg Triton. Mainly for its c**p step sequencing, couldn't do crud on it without an outside seq. Prob the #1 reason I sold it. I'd rather seq on tb-303, and for those who do think tb-303s are a piece of cake, try it on a real tb-303 sometime. Not saying its anywhere near the worst, but its pretty far from the best. Next in line is Radikal Tech Spectralis, its just insane, it don't suck, it does a lot more than many hardware seqs, just not an easy learn, not easy at all, its the opposite of easy.

But damn, the spectralis sure does LOOK sweet.

[alpha5000dk]

I suddenly remember I once had a Roland MC-50 with mkII OS for a short periode. I never figured out how to use it. Never got anything made with it. Might be even worser than the D-20's built-in sequencer. I HATE menu diving on Roland instruments

[seamonkey]

While not necessarily the worst I would have to nominate the onboard sequencer on the Roland XP50! I finally quit trying because I would get tired and frustrated and any musical ideas were lost.
Easiest for me is the sequencer on the Ensoniq VFX-SD amd the Ensoniq EPS.