RolandMC-101 Groovebox Compact Music Production Workstation

Great groovebox that checks all the boxes. I am able to sketch a track out in minutes. Definetly a creativity sparker, something that easily draws inspiration from thin air! Workflow is fun, connectivity is on par, the audio in is fun to work with on the fly audio samples. Doesn't feel cheap. Nice body construction. Solid unit. Pads take a bit of pressure to trigger high velocity which takes some getting used to.

ROLAND IS THE BEST!!!

MC-707wow. It is everything you think it is, and more. This thing is built like a tank. Worth every penny.Sound design, samples, sequencing, scenes, a LOT of presets, tone tracks, drum tracks (also with compression), looper tracks. You can sample anything.If you were considering getting 1 of these, click buy. You wont regret it.MC-101Lacking in the sound design catagory, as well as inputs and outputs. However, its half the price for 90% of the functionality of the 707. Still worth every penny if you are on a budget, or want a much smaller device.

Pros: Tons of quality presets, classic Roland sounds, totally portable, well designed, pretty lights, excellent sound quality, quantize is optional which makes for more human sounding grooves, full size midi in/out, faders are responsive, new updates add song mode and improve knob functionality.Cons: No arpeggiator, very few sound design options, basically a preset machine (although you can import samples and play chromatic), tons of menu diving and sub menu diving, Shift button required for most functions, no direct sampling, lots of limitations to the onboard effects, scatter effects aren't practical for live performance, too much importance placed on scatter effects, my mc-101 bricked after a month and I just returned it so make sure to get a protection plan.

Much better than I expected. I bought this to use it as a sound module, but I really like the workflow. I toght that having only 4 channels will make it limited, but its actually enought!Pros:- Sounds great!- The preset library is HUGE, it has all kind of sounds, making the instrument very versatile.- Really fun and intuitive workflow- Battery and USB powered, which makes it possible to bring anywhere- Midi In can be also set as Thru making it super easy to add to a hardware setupCons:- Only 8 scenes (I think at least can be doubled)- Pads are not velocity sensitive- No program change- Switching between projects takes time, so hard to perform several songs without interruption

the Roland mc707 is a nice tool for the amateur if they wish to sound professional with as few tools and as little experience as possible. I was one of such of these and enjoyed it for a weekend. some context: I used to produce electronic music as a hobby but I wasn’t that good at it, but thanks to this machine I now realize that my workflow was not properly suited to my producing style.I did run into a few problems that have motivated my motion for a return. first, the text documentation is insufficient and the recommendation is to simply watch the several hours of video documentation. it’s peculiar but the paper manual insert included with the package refers you to the pdf online for more information, and the pdf online is a pdf copy of the paper manual which also refers to the same pdf. somewhat of an self-referential, uninformative ouroboros.second, the video tutorials are excessively long-winded and should be concisely written out of respect for the customer. I like the beginning of the video tutorial where the MC says here you can create the tracks you want to create without defining any of them or what they do; a nice preview of what is to come. his improvised explanations are a little roundabout - writing it down would alleviate this frustration. since the only meaningful information you can acquire is through the video tutorials on YouTube one might think that they would organize them a little bit better instead of in three movie-length parts. I don’t know, perhaps if they made a coherent playlist it would be more considerate. or perhaps if they organized topics within each video using timestamps since it's been possible to do that on YouTube for a while now. bon voyage on your journey, clicking around to different sections that they outline at the beginning of the video praying that you find what you are looking for by random chance. yes the astute reader will surmise that one becomes impossibly irritated if they happen to forget how to do something they saw in the videos.the customer support isn’t bad, but Marco Rebillet has some reservations about calling them on the phone because he abused the privilege.another problem is that the machine is actually more of a synth than a production suite. it is actually presented as such in the extensive video tutorial, but I think I had the wrong idea because of the marketing. moreover, the option of attaching an external midi controller or synth is essentially glossed over. I had a fun time looking at the manual trying to figure out how to record a ‘looper track’ without actually knowing what a looper track is in their programmer lingo. I mistakenly thought that any of the tracks can be a ‘looper track,’ that is to say recorded to by an external audio source. I was trying to record an external source to a regular track and it took me an embarrassing amount of exploration to realize that you have to create a ‘looper track’ first and then record to it.in the tutorial they don’t even showcase the looper function, which is the primary reason I wanted the machine. they do use an external device (one of their synths) but it is to resample something and the workflow was disastrous, though admittedly you can do a ridiculous amount of processing at your fingertips. again, more of a synth than a production suite. however, the resample triggers are laggy to a comical degree and you can’t input them on the controller in perfect time using the buttons - something horrible happens if you try. I tried to play a few hits using their midi layout and ended up with my signature spiders. plus clips with the resampled sound cannot be recorded over, you have to delete the clip entirely (a common problem) and resample from scratch. with this headache it makes sense that they only recorded a drone in the video.the clunky interface is not as clunky as one might expect for a machine with such a tiny lcd but it is clunky nonetheless. the knobs are annoying and inconsistently assigned with respect to system navigation. the fx game leaves much to be desired and the user has no control over the filters other than frequency which is woefully insufficient. and for some reason they label the top knobs filters although the filters are only assignable to the first few tracks? the remaining fx were worthless to me and if anything I ran into trouble because it sometimes automatically pitched my recordings because of the stock fx assignments. my solution was to disable all of them, and this is something I had to do for each project because you can’t load presets.lastly, you cannot record more than four or so concurrent loops per project as dependent on the length of the recording. I would say about four loops total if each is recorded for 4 measures. if you exceed that limit the unit says there is not enough memory. a confusing message, since there is an SD card behind a screwed-in shield that can hold countless projects. this last part is the actual reason I’m returning the machine in favor of a stand-alone looping machine. unlike other users I don’t so much mind that there are only eight parallel tracks but I do mind the bad programming that doesn’t allow you to have more than four 4-measure recorded loops in the entire project arrangement. in case this isn't clear, you can only record four of these, for an entire project. that's it. it's egregious. there is a lot of long term memory but all recorded clips and arrangement information are assigned to short term memory when those clips are not playing. this is incompetence but mostly laziness - I’m a programmer.but hey at least we know the guy in the video is pretty talented

The MC-101 is absolutely amazing as a way to get access to thousands of sounds and make beats. It made me love my SP-404 again because I was running out of sounds/grooves to load into it and it was a chore to make beats from scratch on the SP. But, together the MC-101 and SP-404 are a dream team. I create clips with the MC-101, and instead of using scenes on the MC I just put my clips on my SP and then I launch them that way. I can also add vocals via the SP. Good stuff Roland you guys are incredible!!