Isla Instruments has announced that its SP-2400 – described as “The spiritual successor to the greatest drum machine the world ever saw”, aka the E-Mu SP-1200 – is heading into production and will be shipping soon.
Their latest video, embedded above, offers a sneak preview of the new drum machine.
Features:
- Sturdy 4-piece Steel/Aluminium enclosure.
- Mains Powered 100-250V AC.
- Dual Audio Engine: 12-Bit/26.04khz Lo-Fi Engine (Classic SP Sound) and 24-Bit/48khz Hi-Fi Engine
- Stereo Recording/Playback.
- Channels 1-8 Pannable to Main out L/R Channels 7+8 can be ‘linked’ to support stereo audio content.
- Headphone Output (9-10) w/independant monitoring of channels.
- Dedicated Microphone Pre-Amp.
- Looper Pedal Mode (with full duplex recording/playback).
- Record and overdub live audio during playback.
- USB Host & Device Ports: Connect usb thumb drives, keyboards, midi controllers directly into the SP2400.
Here’s a look at the SP-2400 filters:
Pricing and Availability
The SP-2400 is available to pre-order now and is expected to start shipping in January.
Sp2400 was good, but not “the greatest drum machine the world ever saw”. At the time, linndrum was more deserving of “the most overused drum machine the world ever saw”.
Emu made the SP-1200, the key to its sound was the SSM2044 low pass filters. This thing is a digital sample playback box that kinda looks like it.
Ever used a 1200 before? The filters do sound lovely, but a large part of that “magic” in the sound is down to the digital elements. Look at the adjectives most commonly used to describe the sound of the SP-1200: “grainy”, “gritty”, “lo-fi”, etc. How often are those terms used to describe analog filter? At its core the SP-1200 is very much a “digital sample playback box”. Digital sample playback is the SP-1200’s raison d’etre.
Sound aside, the 1200 is also just a fun and simple machine to use. This new machine certainly seems to have paid attention to (and perhaps even improved upon) that important part of the equation.
Out of the gate, the SP-2400 includes per-channel digital HP/LP filters, but it was designed to accept a yet-to-be-released analog VCF daughter card (or user created VCF, for that matter). Also, with the 8 analog channel outs, any analog filter can be used.
The SP-1200’s 12 bit 26kHz engine (just as digital as the SP-2400, which also features both an oldschool lofi engine with the same specs, as well as a 24bit 44kHz modern one), the pitch shifting algorithm, the aliasing and how it all interacted with the analog components, i.e. the filters, all played a part to create *the* sound of the 1200.
And the 2400 is actually a very faithful “spiritual successor”. It’ll also have the possibility to optionally have different kinds of analog filters installed. So it’s pretty much all covered 🙂
for those searching for the price $1000
Wow. That’s cheap!
The sarcasm is strong in this one..
The ISLA Instrument SP-2400 seems to be an interesting product. I can see this gear as a great tool in ambient music. ISLA Instrument should check out the features of the Bastl MicroGranny 2. If this feature set would be included into the SP-2400 it would become a beast of gear.
However, unfortunately I’m one of ISLA Instrument Kordbot users who is still very dissapointed about the huge gap between the features that were promised back from Kickerstarter times and the current status, even after years of being in production. And the disastrous firmware update early 2019 was IMO more like a “fake” update with just some few bug fixing and speeding up the UI, as a try to feed disappointed users.
Having said that, I will follow any updates regarding the Kordbot and the SP-2400.
I would have bought a 12 bit sampler from Satan himself, but having dealt with Isla before, I predict a bug infested release and disappearing act when the user base begs for firmware updates. Buyer beware.
Shame that they dont have any dealers in Europe….
As long as the SP-2400 will not have a Declaration of Conformity (CE) for Europe no dealer in Europe will distribute it. Same with the Kordbot since its release.
According to the dev they do have CE. I think he mentioned it here in a previous post. It’d be easy enough to ask him. He’s on Twitter and Instagram.
If I understand the last part of the video correctly, then the promised shipping from January 2020 will be postponed to end of february (if software and hardware goes by the current scheduled)….
When it’s released and in the hands of users then we’ll see if it sounds and performs like an emu sp. I think part of what made the sp great was the sequencer and swing settings, these will need to be consistent on the 2400 as well as sound…
I actually don’t doubt that it will sound very close to the E-mu SP.
To be honest. I think the music end results from the end-users will be very different from what people know the E-MU SP for, due to that they don’t have to be creative to overcome the sample time limitations.
Honestly, I can understand the lust after hardware synths (for the knobs and slightly superior sound even to the best VSTS) and using something like cassette machines for adding authentic crunch (THAT hasn’t been emulated properly digitally yet).
But hardware samplers? Buy D16’s Decimort on sale right now and get that old sampler vibe on the cheap without the hassle of having to load the songs into this thing.
Wow! This SP2400 is turning out to be more impressive than I originally thought.
I also like the look, kinda throwback to old Vestax gear ?
2400 will be amazing, super excited.
I’m in 100%, very interesting project especially considering the price point. People complaining about ship date or firmware quality usually don’t get the amount of work behind. Also if you want something with more support and garanties you should go for Korg or Roland.
Looks amazing.
Great to see a piece of gear that actually builds on past designs in interesting ways, instead of just another dumbed down copy.