Roland MC-707 Groovebox SonicLAB Review

Roland’s new Grooveboxes (well new as of last year) just got a significant OS update to v1.5 and as a result they’ve come a long way since they were first introduced.

Gaz Williams and Nick Batt took a look at the MC-707 which is an 8-track groove box with tone tracks, drum tracks and Looper tracks.
At the heart of both the MC boxes is the Zen Core engine. This is common to many new Roland machines - the Jupiter X and Xm and the AX Edge specifically (though without the synth specific expansion engines) and as such can share the basic core patches across all models, including integration with the Roland Cloud.

#soniclab #roland #mc707

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[canvoodoo]

I must say I absolutely loved the format of this review. From a punter point of view, I would take this over some noisy Namm videos any day.

[MikeFelkerVideos]

Great review guys! I agree. The MC-707 is a beast but if they could just overcome the 60 second limit (I, too, read about the 12 minutes of mono/6 minutes of stereo record time) that seems self-imposed, this groovebox would be stellar!

[gabrielvalentin]

Can you please have a video on how to use the effects on a track.

[lightoffuturedays]

So, for live use, to send a master mix and a click to a drummer, is that going to use up 2 of the eight available tracks? or is there another solution for that? sorry if that sounds like a stupid question.

[crjmccc]

No motorised faders though! I miss my mc808. Resisting all temptation to buy this until I see what teenage engineering replace the OP1 with. It would have to be something incredibly similar.

[joebrewer]

There's like this 1984 Bud going on with the videos still.

[Jazzybreaks]

63 seconds of sample time is limiting??? *Laughs in SP1200 and 2MB MPC*

[hojdog]

Does anybody understand why modern music instruments like these always run into memory issues?

It's not like memory costs that much. I mean you can get a stick of 8GB memory for £15

[perrypelican]

Does purchasing it give access to the massive Roland zencore online library.
How can Roland be so stupid to have limitations like that to keep a ton of people away. There must be plenty of competition so why would Roland skimp on memory per track. It's bizarre. Is memory so expensive? No! So what is it?

[JR-xfnh]

Great review. You guys did miss a pretty big feature in my opinion. You can change synth patches on a per clip basis for the entire track.

[MusicianParadise]

Wow, 1 product 2 studios 2 presenters review - very engaging and dynamic, hard to quit watching. Nick and Gaz - you are digging into something new in music tech review territory.

[caktalfraktal]

I got a 707 in December '19 and was simultaneously amazed and overwhelmed at the possibilities. I find that it gets less overwhelming with time; even with light use. You just kind of get used to it and I find myself liking it more and more. It really is an all in one electronic music tool; and now I wish I could buy one for all my friends. The frequent updates have been adding actually useful features too. Everyone who has any interest in making electronic music with knobs and sliders instead of a mouse should have one of these.

[Arperture]

The MC707 makes a fantastic brain for your hardware as well, sequencing 8 different channels and will allow you to mix your hardware audio back into the MC707.

[jonowise]

There is a big feature you missed and that is you can change patches on a per clip basis for any track type, ie, up to 16 different patches per channel !

[pricejoss]

I flipping love my 707. I’m a novice to making music and I was making a track in no time. Absolutely awesome device.

[MatusFinchus]

Absolutely love this video. My 707 and TR-8S setup is almost all I need. Plus, the combo of Nick and Gaz is all that is needed for a great review.

[Steve_]

This turned out to be the best machine Roland has made in a while

[Wagoo]

Sounds like it'd be great if in a future firmware given a minimum spec of SDcard inserted, they could then use the internal looper space as a cache for streaming from the card..

[Jason]

Alternatvely, they should add a system parameter to toggle between making [Shift] a hold button or a toggle button. The Shift button on Modal's Skulpt and Argon8 is a toggle button, making one-handed operation possible.

There's a master multi-band compressor and EQ in addition to the master delay/chorus and reverb, and even an optional insert effect to go with those at the user's discretion, not including the insert effect and EQ per channel, plus EQ per oscillator in the individual synth patches.

[ultrajayme]

62 second sample time actually isn't that bad if you're producing dance music. you could go up to 32 bar looping and not hit 62 seconds. just saying