Sampler for jamming with pre-produced Stems - Octatrack?

[worldfever]

Hey kvrians,

I'm not much of a hardware guy, been producing and sound designing with software since 2012 or so. Of course I owned one or the other synth or hardware effect, but I'm not that well versed in the world of hardware.

I'm looking for a hardware sampler that I can easily use to jam/iterate/recombine on stuff that I already pre-produced in ableton. Say I'm producing 10 drum-loops, 10 synth loops, 10 fx tracks, a couple long/full-spectrum tracks... and I want a hardware sampler with which I can use that pre-made stuff to easily jam with, combine and arrange tracks, maybe add some effects here and there - Sort of like playing with 4 CDJs, and loading each of them with stems to recombine.

Is the Octatrack what I'm looking for here? I heard that it's quite difficult to learn, esp. as someone more software-native. Are there any alternatives that might have a lesser learning curve? Any recommendations?

[Schmidi]

From what I understand, the Octa only has about 80mb of actual working sample memory, so it probably won't be nearly enough for what you're hoping to pull off. It's too bad because it's apparently an awesome sample mangler.

I know the Akai Force has Ableton import/export, so it might be a good option. It has lots of FX and with it's layout you could have all of the stems right in front of you ready to launch. There is a crossfaded for blending loops, and you can setup a lot of macros to have fun with FX etc.

A Roland SP404 would have plenty of sample ram for the task. It doesn't have as many options for jamming though besides launching/FX/filter.

You might just grab a cheap/used 4 deck DJ controller and use a DJ software (I love Virtual DJ personally). You could launch stems from hot cues, fade, FX, scratch, loop. Plenty of fun to have there.

[S950]

This seems like a relatively basic need. I think you would be fine with something like an MPC One, Deluge, etc. The MPC could probably do this via mutes, perhaps with volume controls mapped to q-links for fade in/out etc.

[thecontrolcentre]

I'm looking for a hardware sampler that I can easily use to jam/iterate/recombine on stuff that I already pre-produced in ableton. Say I'm producing 10 drum-loops, 10 synth loops, 10 fx tracks, a couple long/full-spectrum tracks... and I want a hardware sampler with which I can use that pre-made stuff to easily jam with, combine and arrange tracks, maybe add some effects here and there - Sort of like playing with 4 CDJs, and loading each of them with stems to recombine.

I have used a BOSS SP505 sampling groovebox to jam using loops made in Live ... I could manage about 12 songs with 7 or 8 patterns for each. The memory card in the SP505 is only 120MB IIRC. I think an Octatrack would be perfect too, once you learn the Elektron "system".

[vurt]

the sp404 can be fun really, if it's to add to something, not sure id use it alone. but as a jam instrument along with a mix yeah or in my case, alongside the modular