Roland MC-707 Groovebox Professional Music Production Workstation (MC-707), Standard

This is the coolest groovebox made (in my opinion, of course). I am biased as a huge fan of Roland equipment, so take my review with a graintable of salt. It is super pricey, but, no more or less pricey than any other mid to upper range audio production equipment. The interface is incredibly intuitive and user friendly. The entire unit is super easy to work with and a joy to play on. Way worth the money!

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!!

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 setup Cons: - 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

Pretty amazing little machine. Easy and intuitive to use. I have more advanced electronic music equipment in my studio, but I can still see myself using this quite a bit due to its portability. I almost took a star off due to its plastic build. However, I suppose that makes it lighter and easier to throw in a backpack etc., and the knobs, sliders, buttons, and pads are all responsive and feel great.

MC-707 wow. 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-101 Lacking 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.

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

Bonjour, Je voulais étendre mes équipements, cet appareil fait amplement le job. Je m'en sers comme expander, ayant déja le fantom derniere génération, il n'y a pas de différence sur les sont de bases. On se plongeant dans le manuel, on peut aller beaucoup plus loin que mon utilisation. La dernière version du firmeware permet de pousser plus loin les limitations. J'avoue que l'utilisation peut être complexe au départ, mais l'investissement se justifie avec les efforts. Si on aime le son Roland, satisfaction garantie. Bonne acquisition.

Ich bin nach vielen Jahren wieder zur Musik zurückgekehrt und habe ein Gerät gesucht, welches gute Drums und Basissounds anbietet. Die Groovebox bietet weit aus mehr, was dem Neu- oder Wiedereinsteiger zu Beginn etwas überfordert. Der Funktionsumfang ist heftig aber der logische Aufbau hilft die steile Lernkurve zu überwinden. Was mich begeistert: Das Teil ist nahezu komplett: - massig Sounds, die man editieren kann - massig Drumssets, die auch frei zusammengestellt werden können - Sampler - freibelegbare Pads - ein Mixer - Effekteinheiten - und jeder der 8 Kanäle hat drei Drehknöpfe, die bei jedem Kanal individuell mit Effekten oder Filder belegt werden können Ich muss hier auch ein "aber" loswerden. Mein Gedanke war es, ein Gerät anzuschaffen, welches unabhängig von PC und Midisoftware arbeitet. Also eine kleine überschaubare Workstation, wo zunächst maximal nur eine Miditastatur dran kommt. Das kann die MC-707 auch. ABER man muss sich auch darüber im klaren sein, dass man dann mehr im Kopf arbeiten muss und den Song nicht im Stück, auf dem Bildschirm vor sich sieht. Das kann schon anstrengend werden, wenn man nicht mal eben mit drei Mausklicks unterschiedliche Parts oder Spuren des Songs flott kopieren oder editieren kann, weil eben die Übersicht fehlt. Die MC-707 ist in dem was sie macht schon allein am Markt. Ja, es gibt die MPC's und andere, die auch super sind. Aber sie haben etwas andere Ansätze, sind vom Sampler abhängig oder haben nicht die kultigen Roland-Sounds. Wunschgedanke: Wenn das Teil anstelle des kleinen Displays einen Bildschirm hätte und man die Songs wirklich unabhängig vom PC produzieren könnte ... Mama ;)

動画にちょっとした音楽を入れたくて購入しました。 音楽の知識やセンスが全くない私でも、少し練習すれば陳腐ではありますが、それっぽいフレーズはできます。 Youtubeにはいろんな動画もあるので、参考になります。 私レベルならMC-101でも充分だと思いますが、操作のしやすさで707を購入しました。 回収できるよう頑張ります。

J’ai acheté ce produit il y a quelques mois ! Je l’utilise à lâ maison fixe . Depuis aujourd’hui… le bidul plastique qui permet l’activation ON / OFF m’est resté entre les doigts !! Moins de 2 ans de pratique ! J’espère tres vite trouver une solution pour cette achat !

Gran macchina con potenzialità esagerate . Il primo pacco avvertito era il fatto che per passare da un progetto ad un altro devo fermarla e caricare il progetto . Appena ho cercherò di trasferire dal mac alla macchina dei campioni la macchina. Ha iniziato a svalvolare e a sprogramarsi . Avevo già creato 5 mega progetti andato a ramengo . Restituita in tempo reale