Arturia SparkLE 420101 Hardware Controller and Software Drum Machine

Have been playing with this for a few months now, and very happy with it. Make sure you are aware of the working process with this unit. The SparkLE is a controller, and is meant to be used predominantly with the Spark 2 software (included). The SparkLE hardware does NOT store any sounds, you're using it either to work directly with the Spark 2.0 software (I use is as a VST in Ableton) or as a Midi controller.The build quality of the unit is excellent. The velocity pads are track well and have a solid feel to them. There are 8 pads, and a button switches them to control up to 16 instruments. I'm fine with that setup, as it keeps the unit pretty compact size. Knobs and buttons equally high quality. Small size, and comes with a neoprene carry case. It's easy to travel with; I do. It's a USB mini cable connector; just take care with that connection. The USB mini connector fits fine, just don't want to be stretching the cable against the connection point. That's the only connection to the unit, and it's powered by the USB connection. It's USB class compliant, so no need for any drivers. Truly plug and play for me on Win7/64 bit.Once you get your head wrapped around the workflow, it's pretty intuitive. Make sure to read the manual and check out the various YouTube tutorials out there. Lots of good SparkLE shortcuts that make using the Spark software even quicker. Mostly you'll be interfacing between SparkLE controller and computer keyboard when building up drum kits and/or tweaking sounds. Once you have your kits built, you can easily ignore the computer keyboard and control everything from the SparkLE.I like the Spark 2.0 software. The layout is great, IHMO. There are basically 5 main screens (all selectable from the SparkLE); main info, sequencer view, pattern/chaining view, instrument view, and kit view. You can use your own samples and build some pretty excellent kits. Decent effects processing built into the Spark software. The SparkLE controller combined with the Spark software is a great combination. I take my laptop and the controller with me when I travel and make for a great on the road music tool.Once you have your kits built, I believe this would be a great live setup. Certainly great for me in the studio and/or on the road.Make sure to spend some time reading the manual to get the most out of the software (RTFM...we never really get away from that!). Look at the Arturia site, and make sure to get their Midi control center (free download), it'll help you with the Midi plumbing into your setup.

Great device that does what it says on the tin, with some caveatsHardware::The build quality on this thing leaves absolutely nothing to be desired. Black steel bottom, and the top is, as far as I can tell adamantium grade plastic, I initially thought it was aluminum.-Encoders themselves feel middle of the road, but certainly acceptable; the caps on the encoders are a perfect choice; love the feel. The big jog wheel, and the loop divide/move are detented.-Pads are something everyone holds to their own personal ideal. I couldn't ask for anything more from these, they are IMO perfect. But I'm really one of the least picky people you'll find in this regard.-XY pad is the cheapest feeling hardware component on the unit; but once again it's quite usable enough. The pad feels a bit papery, like the touch component is not bound tightly to whatever's beneath. I don't feel that this is at all a problem, but it is worth mentioning. The pad itself if plenty accurate enough, as reflected in the software.-Missing hardware elements are very few: dedicated shuffle knob, accent button and most importantly Tap Tempo. I would imagine any of these could be added with a "Shifted" function on an existing button/knob if Arturia decides to update it. In the meantime, the shuffle knob can be MIDI mapped to another controller, if you'll be using it extensively. There doesn't seem to be a way to map Tap Tempo at all. This really needs to change as it's the very first thing a lot of us do when we began a new pattern. It should be somewhere in software, even if it's just a hidden MIDI mappable VST parameter (users could map it from the "Spark Creative" interface, and then change back to the "Spark LE" interface), so that those of us who use it can map it to another controller. Not a big deal if you're working inside of a DAW; big issue if you're running Spark standalone. I won't gripe too much about the missing Accent button, but since it's already presented on screen, common sense would dictate that it should be MIDI mappable, particularly since it's not already implemented in hardware.Nit-picks aside, for the price I paid the hardware's quality could be rounded up to 5 stars. Though I personally think they should always be included on devices like this, I didn't mention lack of on/off switch for two reasons: 1) they are usually tiny cheap affairs that are time-bombs waiting to fail. 2) for the price, Arturia is allowed to cut a few costs, this is an expendable feature. Dito with MIDI out.Software::COMMUNICATION between the software and hardware is somewhat hit-or-miss for me. When you load the VST into your DAW, the Spark Engine shows a screen that says "Establishing Connection". For me this works the first time around, about %80 of the time, perhaps a little less. Usually just unplugging and re-plugging in the unit takes care of it. Very rarely restarting the DAW (Ableton Live 9) is necessary.INTUITIVE use is spot on. I've never used a drum machine of any sort, so I had to watch a few very short tutorial videos, but 3 or so days later and I feel like I know this well enough to teach a class on it. Kudos for the design. Superb tool for an artist looking to hit the ground running.FEATURES are all present and straight forward. Routing individual instruments to independent audio tracks, Integrated EQ, compression, flanger, chorus, distortion, and many more. I'm truly impressed at how comprehensive the VST software is. My only gripe here is the lack of ability to edit sample length with any accuracy. Sample length can be edited in the STUDIO section, but the zoom is too far out for it to be very accurate. A zoom level adjustment or just a zoom factor switch would be welcome here. Making the sample Start/End points a "Shifted" function of the loop encoders would be ideal, making them MIDI mappable at all, via VST parameters, should've been common sense.STABILITY is okay overall. Four or so instances will crash my Ableton session if loaded quickly (by duplicating the track containing Spark via Ctrl+D), while this is not something I'd typically do, it is an indicator that something is amiss. Most importantly on my i7 2600k processor, the VST idles at %20. Far, too high for a VST not doing anything. Multiple instances don't drive the usage up any further. While I have had crashing since using the VST, none that I could blame definitively on the Spark VST (with the exception of the multiple instances mentioned above). Are at least some of them caused by the Spark VST? Probably. Who knows. That's one of the things you get to enjoy with hardware bound to software, with great power comes great responsibility.TECHNICAL SUPPORT dealing with companies like this tends to be of two varieties. They really "wow" you with how understanding and helpful they are, or they are dreadfully abysmal. From the short interaction I've had with Arturia inquiring about the CPU usage, I expect them to be of the abysmal camp. From the forums I can see that the heavy CPU usage is fairly new, and that it was being researched at some point. What I got back from tech support was "Hi,It's the normal CPU consumption. Yours, john". Yeah 8 whole words. That's the whole email. We all know that support staff is typically overworked and under-appreciated, and that they are being asked to essentially troubleshoot 1 piece of software interacting with 3 or more others (OS, DAW, drivers, etc). Not to even mention the PEBKAC errors. But when hardware is bundled to software, and your only help comes from a very small community of users (not as large as say NI's community), 8 words is frustrating for a brand new product. You don't have to really empathize everytime, just do it once and copy and paste the response. I did get a prompt straight forward response; though not one leaving me feeling particularly optimistic or valued as a customer, but hey "C'est la vie" (Arturia's a French company)MISCELLANEOUS::I'd imagine there are technical reasons that aren't obvious but Spark VST requires you to disable the Spark's MIDI ports in your DAW to establish the specialized link from the hardware unit to the VST. If you want to use the hardware unit as a class compliant MIDI device independent from the Spark VST, you simultaneously press Filter+Slicer+Roller on the hardware, but then you have to re-enable the corresponding ports within your DAW. Can't be done on the fly. In the future I'd like to see the firmware or the drivers, quietly discard the MIDI data in the background when the unit is in "Spark" mode, and just sever the proprietary connection, and resume sending the MIDI data when in MIDI mode. This is certainly a worthwhile controller outside of the Spark VST to be used as such.OVERALL::Overall I'm quite impressed. I've only had this unit for 3 days, so opinions are subject to change, but from what I've seen so far this is a great little controller at any price point. Like so many products from the last 5 years or so mandatory proprietary drivers/software threaten to be the Achille's heel of a superb hardware design. In this case almost all of the complaints (with the exception of the CPU usage issue, and possibly the MIDI port shenanigans) can be solved with the additions of a few MIDI mappable VST parameters, and other small changes that could be implemented within a few minor revision levels. I'll try to keep this review updated as to what gets fixed, what gets added, what gets broken, and what get ignored.I don't claim to be an expert on this thing, but if you have any questions I'll answer as best I can in the comments.

My new favorite toy, I needed some new drum sets and sounds for my hip hop and techno sounding pieces, and this has provided nicely, only issue for me is the menu as it's taking me time to get to know and find all the sounds and samples.

This product shows a lot of potential, but the software still has a lot of kinks they need to iron out. Slowly they're trying to fix issues like instability, memory munching, executable file having a hard time running properly and such, but these problems aside and being infrequent in my experience, the software isn't too bad. I think the hardware is a sold built and If you have and audio editing program like Soundforge, Goldwave or Audacity this may be one of the only pattern making programs you'll need. I've been using mine for about 3 weeks now and I am really enjoying how easy it is to make music with Spark LE, the lay out and everything just make sense to me. Now the stock samples are very hit n miss as are the stock patterns, but I didn't buy it for the sounds it came with. I bought it so I could cut up my own samples and make my own kits. So sense the software is unstable, I'm not comfortable giving this product the full 5 stars, but in time if they fix the issues that effect me, I'll come back and add to this review.*Edit*The new Spark 2 software is a huge improvement. I enjoy the layout more. The work flow is easier. It crashes less. Still a memory hog, but if you have 8 or more gigs of memory you wont even notice. Over all I enjoy the new Spark 2 and gave my rating one more star due to the improvements.

Fantastic product. Works well with all my devices and DAW. Easy to program but also has lots of great presets

Ottimo strumento, non molto caro e decisamente funzionaleil venditore è stato rapido e professionale a differenza di altriConsigliato sia il venditore che l oggetto

The USB cable that came with the SparkLE was defective. I used a spare cable of my own and the unit worked fine.

Großartige Beatmaschine...mit Spark2 Software absolut stabil unter Cubase 9 64bit. Ich suchte schon seit längerem einen Klopfgeist der mich kreativ bei der Songgestaltung unzerstützen sollte.Gefunden habe ich dann SparkLe.Arturia hat hier wirklich ein kleines Schmuckstück entwickelt. Die Hardware fühlt sich sehr wertig an. Metallbodenplatte und Tasten mit gutem Druckpunkt - super Soundsets sowohl klassischer Beatboxen (tr808 909, Linndrum etc) als auch wirklich amtlicher Sounds für fast alle Bereiche von Dance, House bis Rock/Pop. Die synthetischen Sounds werden per virtuell analoger Synthese generiert und die Samples sind sehr hochwertig.Die Bedienung ist sehr intuitiv und wer schon einmal mit Pattern orientierten Drum maschines gearbeitet hat, findet sich sofort zuhause. Die Integration in bestehende Songprojekte findet ganz einfach per Drag and Drop aus dem VST Plug-in als Midi oder Wavefile statt oder halt über midiclock ganz wie ein alter Drumcomputer. Man kann auch mehrere Instanzen des Vst Plugs gleichzeitig nutzen - genial.Alles in allem für kleines Geld - super verarbeitete Hardware, amtlicher Sound und eine echte Bereicherung fürs Studio oder den DJ. Von mir 5 Sterne

This is my first Arturia product. Software synths has been something I have always kept away from being that I grew up using hardware machines. However I caved in with the SparkLE as it ticked almost all boxes for me in terms of what I wanted as part of my home studio. The SparkLE is a hybrid and with that you get twice the satisfaction of not only tweaking and tapping out all your favourites drums but also samples. What I was looking for was classic drum machines of the 1970's and 1980's. When you minimal funds and space for such machines then the SparkLE from Arturia is the nest best thing, and I am pleasantly surprised at just how good and versatile the machine and software is. The Spark 2 software gives you plenty of drums, beats, classic machines, samples and much more. My main concern was that the SparkLE is not a stand alone machine, it is nothing more than a controller. But you get plenty to control and have plenty to use for control. It fits perfectly into my home studio set-up and I can access the hundreds of samples in seconds and be kicking out beats in seconds. The SparkLE is also very robust, light, small enough while being just the right workable size. It doesn't look or feel cheaply made. After some basic online reviews from other customers I decided NOT to take the Arturia approach on loading the software as too many users have had issues. I for one can confirm that since buying the SparkLE and loading the software without the assistance of Arturia I have had no issues as-of-yet. So what do you get in terms of sounds? Well, in brief, a huge array are at your finger tips. For the classic collectors, like myself, you have examples of the fabled Lynne Drum's, Emu Drumulator, Minipops, Micropops, Roland's classic TR606, 707, 808 and 909 and a good amount of many more classic drum machines of those two decades. Then you have the sound packages consisting of R&B, Hip Hop, Dance, Trance, Electro, Funk, Disco, Latin, Berlin School, Club Classics, Deep House, Industrial, Jazz, Progressive, mixture of 90's and 2000's, Urban and even studio and acoustic... and I am barley scratching the surface with that short list. I must point out that although there is a huge amount you get straight from the box, Arturia do also offer a couple of additional sound sets at extra cost which cover Hip Hop, Rap and Beats. But that is entirely down to the customer if they want to expand their sample library. The SparkLE also lets you create your own samples and drop them in and with the machines TR style sequencer is expandable at your request. I am happy I took that step and picked one up as it will play a major part in my home studio - The ONLY downside to the purchase came from Amazon. I was very uneasy to how I received the product. It came in its factory box, brand new, everything there, but it could have been very easily a different story thanks to Amazon. I was given the box by the delivery driver (sent via PRIME) and the factory box was not wrapped, in any Amazon box or packaging. More concerning was that the Arturia SparkLE box was NOT sealed so the box could easily be opened by anyone, including the delivery company. As I received it BEFORE lifting the box lid is how you see it in the photos I posted with this review. Arturia should have sealed the box, maybe even dry-vac bagged it. But the main fault lays with Amazon. Something to take into consideration if you are thinking of buying.