Akai S1000HD or S2800?

[Hellhound]

Hey guys, I have the chance to buy either an Akai S1000HD or S2800 and was wondering which is better in terms of sound quality, character and capabilities. Having no experience with samplers before I'm really not sure.

What do you guys think?

[gcoudert]

I have a 10Mb OS4.40 S1000 (no internal HD) and an S2800i. Frankly, there isn't much difference sound-wise except for the fact that the S1000 filter is not resonant. I think the filters are slightly different but I can't really hear the difference.

If you get an S1000, make sure you have OS4.40, as it will read - but not write to - S3000-series floppies and HD volumes/programs/samples. In fact, even if you completely re-format the disc, it still recognises it as an S3000 disc! The S1000 will give you 8 individual outs, which is ideal for drums. The S1000 uses Akai proprietary RAM cards which are almost impossible to find nowadays.

On the other hand, the S2800 will read E-mu EIIIx and Roland S7XX CD-ROMs over SCSI. The S2800 is limited to 16Mb RAM unless, as I did, you buy that cheap upgrade from Germany that gives it 32Mb. The S2800i has two sets of stereo outs that can be used as four mono outs. It also suffers from a bug that displays "Waiting for hard disk ready" forever, which isn't a problem if you actually have a SCSI HD connected to it. Oh, and the S2800 has cursor buttons, which are much more convenient imho than the S1000's cursor wheel to navigate through menus. The S2800 comes with a system disc that allows it to play MIDI files using internal samples. Well, mine did. It is quite handy if you don't want to gig your sequencer and your sequences are fairly simple and don't require external sounds.

Tell you what! Get both! Mine are connected to the same external HD and everything works fine. But if you ask me which one I prefer, I'd say the S1000. There's just something sexy about it. Whichever you get, check that the display backlight still works. It's easy to change, mind you; I changed the S1000's display in 20 minutes. Backlights are easy to get and will set you back about UK£30.

Gilles

[Hellhound]

Thanks for the in-depth reply. I have settled on S1000, as you said there just seems to be something sexy about it.

[gcoudert]

You won't regret it. OS 4.40 is widely available on the web for free. When I got my S1000 a few years ago, I joined the Yahoo Akai samplers group. Some nice guy here in the UK offered to burn the OS onto EPROMs for free. If you know somebody who has the right equipment for this, have it done; it'll save you the hassle of having to make sure that the OS4.40 floppy is in the drive when you boot up the machine.

Also, be aware of this when using an Akai sampler. When you only want to load a single program and its associated samples, make sure that the LOAD page says "Cursor prog+samples" or it'll load the whole volume by default, which could take ages or your sampler will run out of sample RAM and you'll have to re-boot it because unloading samples takes forever for some reason. I get caught every time!

You'll love that machine, Hellhound, I can tell you that much. It's been around for 20 years now, it's built like a tank and it's still a workhorse in many a studio round the world. If I didn't have my E4K, the S1000 would be my main machine.

Let me know how you get on with it.

Gilles

[virgo red]

interesting thing
my s1000HD has a sticker that says:
"dont turn off the power when the hard disc is being accessed"
i looked in manual and found this:

PARK
PARK is a very important operation if you have a hard disk fitted, and should be performed
every time you end a session with a S1000 with a hard disk fitted. If you do not have a hard disk
fitted, this does not apply to you. The PARK procedure makes the hard disk safe for
transportation. If you neglect to do this, you stand the chance of losing the data on the hard disk
and the hard disk itself if the S1000 is roughly handled. Press PARK. If, for some reason, the
heads on the hard disk are not parked properly, a message will tell you to try again. If you keep
retrying and this message continues to appear, contact your AKAI dealer. Head parking is not a
luxury - it is a necessity if you intend moving your S1000.

to find it on os 2 go disk>hdsk>park(f8)

[Vxster]

If you don't move your S1000 it should not be a problem. Otherwise, I would park it every time.

[gcoudert]

If you don't move your S1000 it should not be a problem. Otherwise, I would park it every time.

I second that.