Big_Stacks"I don't worry about hittin' power, cause I don't give 'em nuttin' to hit." 4,670 Posts
There are a whole lot of opinions being thrown around on here which is all very respectable. Here's a little science you can either take, leave or believe.
Two reasons the Mpc 60, 60II, and 3000 will always shit on any of the other wannabes Akai made later: Roger Lynn. The game is in the name and in the rights he held to the sequencing templates. When Roger left, so did the magic, and everything Akai made afterwords were CHEAP toys designed for hip hop producers. I hate to say it, but if you open one up and look at the piece of shit pcb boards they used and the converter chipsets, it's obvious they were cutting corners and costs. Is that why they swing better? NO. Here is the real problem: as time goes on, processor speeds get faster and faster and the companies that make these samplers utilize the latest, cheapest and most readily made processors. Herein lies the problem; the samplers, or more specificaly the playback sequencers, are getting more "perfect" as the processors get faster, which means the beats are hitting more on beat every time they swing around the sequence, and thus, in essence, sounding less funky. Every compare the SP1200 16th note triplet to any newer sequencer? that shi* is hip hop. And the reason is because the processor in that thing is the equivalent of a thimble and a casio watch. It is far funkier than the Mpc 60 and 3000, and by funky i mean loose, natural sounding (and technicaly fuc*ed up). Aside from the that the characteristic sound on the SP comes less from its bit and sample rate (as commonly believed) than from it's multiplexing across the AD converter at the rate that thimble of a processor can handle. And if you wanna get even funkier dig up a Lynndrumm. Moral of the story, in my opinion, you should use any of these older machines to trigger your sounds, even if they are on a computer, so that you don't lose the natural entropy of a slow processor sequencer.
On a side note Iomega and zip drives can go to hell. I almost lost my whole album because of them.
This is EXACTLY why I'll NEVER stop using my ASR-10. Old technology is the way to go with hip-hop, baby!!!
I can't believe someone resurrected a year old thread. wow.
But on another note, I understand all the talk about the processor quality making the quantizing more 'perfect' but seriously, if you want that 'imperfect' sound, just turn the quantizing OFF. The more you rely on the technology, the less organic it will sound in the long run. Especially when working with loops.
I remember reading in that "Making Beats" book that Prince Paul talked about how RZA would manually play all his drums for the entire duration of the song (i.e. no copying an pasting a 4 bar loop) and that's why his shit sounds so grimy.
This is a dope thread, thanks for bringing it back up. It's a crazy interesting debate....I wish there was somewhere you could compare all the samplers in person, see which one fits best.
i really want to get a 3000 or sp1200 one day but i really dont think i could ever use a floppy again in my life. im enjoying using my mpc1000 with a midi keyboard for now
i love my mpc... i feel mad complete with it, my decks, my synth, and my sp 303, thats all i need to get my beats done the way i like em.
i dont feel like making that spaceship crap you maybe can do in fruityloops n stuff, fucking import pictures of yo momma and it becomes a synth patch n shit haha! wack shit represent..
i really want to get a 3000 or sp1200 one day but i really dont think i could ever use a floppy again in my life. im enjoying using my mpc1000 with a midi keyboard for now
I still say there isnt such a huge difference between the machines. But then i like to do alot of southern type shit, so i need my quantization on point when it needs to be.
for everything else though, just dont quantize! simple solution.
This thread is the shit! I love these equipment/prod. related threads.
Anyways, I never owned an MPC in my life but it's most def. a piece of equipment that I would love to have in my possesion.
Last night, I was messing around with my brothers MPC 1000 and what I like the most about that is the ability to program drums. Also, the sequencing is nice.
I use an ASR-10 (which I love) but sequencing and drum programming on that sampler can be a bitch. Maybe, just maybe, sometime in the future I'll get at least a 1000.
NOTE: I don't think this post have shit to do with this thread. I just think the MPC don't suck balls.
i would like to get somethin a lil more portable to make beats with. i honestly cant travel around with the humongous machine i use. any of yall used that 500 that came out? it seems like a lil toy but that thing is pretty small and it works with batteries.
i would like to get somethin a lil more portable to make beats with. i honestly cant travel around with the humongous machine i use.
This is a pretty portable machine - small enough to fit easily in any kind of bag/rucksack, and pretty light. I use it to produce with, only problem as far as I'm concerned is you can't turn the quantize off, but a lot of its limitations can be worked with...
heres a question: i make everything in cubase, so i have no problem with long samples, organizing + layering loops, etc.
i do wish i could use pads to build beats "with my hands" sometimes though.
is there a firewire pad controller that you can assign samples to that are in your computer already? (no copying them to the device's memory - ideally the device would be only a controller/instrument)
and if so, can you then record the beats you play/program on the pad device back into your recording software and thereby record the results - no need for midi, etc?
if this exists, thats what i want.
by the way i have a minty mpc1000 that i know ill never touch again. PM with reasonable offers if you need one.
ok, here's one thing i never really adjusted to. i first had an mpc before fucking with any software stuff and i tried out a few vst drum synths. now, i assign my samples to my pads in a certain way like everyone else but the way shit is setup on keyboards or whatever is like completely different. would the best way to manage this is to just change the midi cc on the pads so it corresponds with a keyboard? anyone even understand what im really asking?
The reason why people swear by the 303 (yes these chicken heads swear on it because of madlib) is because it emulates that dirty 1200 sound quite well and sounds good in its own right with the lo-fi thing and it's effects are kind of neat. It's also a nice middle man between the record and the computer.
is there a firewire pad controller that you can assign samples to that are in your computer already? (no copying them to the device's memory - ideally the device would be only a controller/instrument)
and if so, can you then record the beats you play/program on the pad device back into your recording software and thereby record the results - no need for midi, etc?
if this exists, thats what i want.
by the way i have a minty mpc1000 that i know ill never touch again. PM with reasonable offers if you need one.
I know you said firewire, but if you don't mind using midi instead, you can just use the mpc 1000 and use those pads to trigger any internal sounds through midi. They can be recorded in as audio as well ... when you are on the sequence page in the mpc, change where it says "DRUM:Off" to "DRUM:1A" (that's how it is on my mpc 2000 at least). Make sure you have midi cables running both out and into the mpc and you are good to go.
However for USB operation instead of MIDI, the MPD24 looks like a potential option, although i'm not sure how this unit is , I am assuming the pads are ok ( http://www.akaipro.com/prodMPD24.php ).
Oh, and whomever said the 2000 doesn't have "hip-hop feel"....??? I'm going with Day on this one, in that case that "feel" comes down to the individual making the music.
i dont know of any firewire pad midi controllers that arent extremely expensive. usb is more than fine for transmitting midi in most cases.
korg and akai both have out pad controllers and they're both solid depending on what you need. korg has a x y touchpad like the kaos things which you should probably use or watch a video on to get more info on. akai has transport controls and a lot more knobs and sliders than the korg.
well i had a long response to karlophones reply but i lost it someone else said what i was goin to say anyways. cant the mpc 1000 use that usb to transmit midi notes? if not the midi cables will do. you should try that option out. you may find it easier than you think
and as for using a computer to make music? i guess it is to each his own. i cant stand using a computer to make beats. i will record into it, but thats about it. i went the computer route long before it was popular and tried to stick with it. not really for me. personally, id rather listen to my music and create that way than try to create while lookin at a screen. that mpc 60 screen has trained me well
well, on another note (or maybe it's been covered) what would be the best way to go with external hard drive for an mpc and what are peoples experiences?
depends with certain models, they can only "see" 760 or so megs regardless if its a 1, 20 or 200 gig hard drive. may be more trouble than it should be. what model mpc do you want to use a hard drive with?
there is no real chart ive found this will help though with the 2000, 2000xl, 60, 3000 http://www.mpc2000xl.com/ for the newer models do a search at an online music store, like www.zzounds.com the models that are in production now are the 2500 has lots of nice features, usb, effects, chopping features, more midi ports 1000 more compact travel mpc with less features then the others. usb, effects, 500 real compact travel sampler, battery powered, 12 pads 4000 full rack sampler engine, lots of midi i/o, hd, cd-r, lots more editing features,
This is a pretty portable machine - small enough to fit easily in any kind of bag/rucksack, and pretty light. I use it to produce with, only problem as far as I'm concerned is you can't turn the quantize off, but a lot of its limitations can be worked with...
this thing is really fun to work with, kind of reminds me of older FL versions. Plus it's cheap as chips (bought mine for about 200 euros) and it can resample.
Depending on your Model of MPC you can use Compact Flash disks. Most newer models have them built in already.
You can grab external SCSI card readers off ebay for pretty cheap, and you get like upto 1 gb (again the model would determine what the border is to accessible memory). What I like most about this is, you can just sample some shit off the record and then just load the shit into wavelab, fuck around with it, and just go back to the mp.
Also for storage its great! You can just copy all your old beats to your PC-HD and back em up to whatever you want.
Only problem with this is that the older models (60 & 3000) dont take every card reader. A PCD-25 from Microtech would do the job for those.
ThesOne can tell you a story about that ....
I'm not a friend of installing new drives in the internal bay where the disk drive used to go (for the older models w/o usb etc.) so you can stay true to your old floppies with chopped breaks and/or also have the possibility to just pop in the old OS or whatever you need.
Also, dont forget: The SCSI outlet on the mpc has multi-ID so you can connect various devices to it in a chain, maybe of which one is also chained to a pc (only possible with newer models)
Since I'm having a little trouble with my old card reader im back to zips for now
So, if you come by a pile pof pcd25'S shoot me a PM.
BTW, about SCSI hard disks, the weak thing is, once you filled it up you will have to detach it and put it in storage and just hope the OLDE HD wont die on you while youre giving it the back because it is not really possible to access the HD from the computer if it has the mpcs filesystem printed to it (again this doesnt apply to the new generation mpcs: 4k, 2,5k 1k, since they use the modern file system and usb storage instead of SCSI aswell)
You should be happy to hear that Rohan Mansell off MPCforums camp has almost completed his BRAND NEW MPC 3000 OS which is at Version 3.28 B(eta) right now!
Here's some of the most interesting "new" features:
- New "Timing Correct / Step Size" options:
1/128 and 1/192 timing correct OFF note value resolutions added. Note repeat and swing are not available for these timing correct OFF note value resolutions.1/4, 1/4TRPLT, 1/64, 1/64TRPLT timing correct note value resolutions added.Note repeat and swing are available for 1/4, 1/4TRPLT, 1/8, 1/8TRPLT, 1/16, 1/16TRPLT, 1/32, 1/32TRPLT, 1/64, 1/64TRPLT
- Samples can now be real-time edited and/or processed while the sequencer is Playing or Recording. (WOOHOOOO)
- A load of bugfixes AKAI never caught, and plenty things that will make the 3k man feel good.
For those that don't know. Rohan Mansell has been utilising the MPC 3000 for quite a time now and is an expert on the 3k OS. He even released his own Version, which was nicked off by Roger Linn himself and is also downloadable from the Linn site for free a while ago and it addressed plenty old errors and bugs on the 3k. However if you dont like booting from a floppy every time you should contact Rohan for the Binary chips that go right on your mainboard.
Comments
This is EXACTLY why I'll NEVER stop using my ASR-10. Old technology is the way to go with hip-hop, baby!!!
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
http://afterthemac.com/product.php?id=akai_ext18gb
Seems too good to be true.
All those click of death stories put the fear in me.
But on another note, I understand all the talk about the processor quality making the quantizing more 'perfect' but seriously, if you want that 'imperfect' sound, just turn the quantizing OFF. The more you rely on the technology, the less organic it will sound in the long run. Especially when working with loops.
I remember reading in that "Making Beats" book that Prince Paul talked about how RZA would manually play all his drums for the entire duration of the song (i.e. no copying an pasting a 4 bar loop) and that's why his shit sounds so grimy.
yeah im cool
im drunk and im cool
i feel mad complete with it, my decks, my synth, and my sp 303, thats all i need to get my beats done the way i like em.
i dont feel like making that spaceship crap you maybe can do in fruityloops n stuff, fucking import pictures of yo momma and it becomes a synth patch n shit haha! wack shit represent..
www.myspace.com/fredfades
I still say there isnt such a huge difference between the machines. But then i like to do alot of southern type shit, so i need my quantization on point when it needs to be.
for everything else though, just dont quantize! simple solution.
related threads.
Anyways, I never owned an MPC in my life but it's most def.
a piece of equipment that I would love to have in my
possesion.
Last night, I was messing around with my brothers MPC 1000 and
what I like the most about that is the ability to program drums.
Also, the sequencing is nice.
I use an ASR-10 (which I love) but sequencing and drum programming on
that sampler can be a bitch. Maybe, just maybe, sometime in the future
I'll get at least a 1000.
NOTE: I don't think this post have shit to do with this thread.
I just think the MPC don't suck balls.
any of yall used that 500 that came out? it seems like a lil toy but that thing is pretty small and it works with batteries.
This is a pretty portable machine - small enough to fit easily in any kind of bag/rucksack, and pretty light. I use it to produce with, only problem as far as I'm concerned is you can't turn the quantize off, but a lot of its limitations can be worked with...
Been doing beats off the computer and am sick of it...
We'll see what happens... Dope post btw...
i do wish i could use pads to build beats "with my hands" sometimes though.
is there a firewire pad controller that you can assign samples to that are in your computer already? (no copying them to the device's memory - ideally the device would be only a controller/instrument)
and if so, can you then record the beats you play/program on the pad device back into your recording software and thereby record the results - no need for midi, etc?
if this exists, thats what i want.
by the way i have a minty mpc1000 that i know ill never touch again. PM with reasonable offers if you need one.
I know you said firewire, but if you don't mind using midi instead, you can just use the mpc 1000 and use those pads to trigger any internal sounds through midi. They can be recorded in as audio as well ... when you are on the sequence page in the mpc, change where it says "DRUM:Off" to "DRUM:1A" (that's how it is on my mpc 2000 at least). Make sure you have midi cables running both out and into the mpc and you are good to go.
However for USB operation instead of MIDI, the MPD24 looks like a potential option, although i'm not sure how this unit is , I am assuming the pads are ok ( http://www.akaipro.com/prodMPD24.php ).
Oh, and whomever said the 2000 doesn't have "hip-hop feel"....???
korg and akai both have out pad controllers and they're both solid depending on what you need. korg has a x y touchpad like the kaos things which you should probably use or watch a video on to get more info on. akai has transport controls and a lot more knobs and sliders than the korg.
What's up,
Personally, I think everything suck except a computer, I do all my beats since 1992 with a computer, that's my shit though, to each his own.
I tried everythnig from the MPC 60 to the S6000 (never tried the Roland vp-9000), I liked the Akai S 3200.
someone else said what i was goin to say anyways.
cant the mpc 1000 use that usb to transmit midi notes? if not the midi cables will do. you should try that option out. you may find it easier than you think
and as for using a computer to make music? i guess it is to each his own. i cant stand using a computer to make beats. i will record into it, but thats about it. i went the computer route long before it was popular and tried to stick with it. not really for me. personally, id rather listen to my music and create that way than try to create while lookin at a screen.
that mpc 60 screen has trained me well
is it a slow winded experience?
with certain models, they can only "see" 760 or so megs regardless if its a 1, 20 or 200 gig hard drive. may be more trouble than it should be.
what model mpc do you want to use a hard drive with?
dope thread..
I looked for some sort of comparison chart for the MPC models.. didn't really find an all inclusive one..
Could someone link one or post a brief summary of the various models (year by year maybe, approximate prices)
I'm thinking about buying one used this year.
Also, do the models that have zip drives - are they all capable of using floppies?
I have no problem using a floppy disk..
this will help though with the 2000, 2000xl, 60, 3000
http://www.mpc2000xl.com/
for the newer models do a search at an online music store, like
www.zzounds.com
the models that are in production now are the
2500 has lots of nice features, usb, effects, chopping features, more midi ports
1000 more compact travel mpc with less features then the others. usb, effects,
500 real compact travel sampler, battery powered, 12 pads
4000 full rack sampler engine, lots of midi i/o, hd, cd-r, lots more editing features,
http://www.akaipro.com/MPC_Comparison_Chart.pdf
from:
http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=48606
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dont-Buy-Akai-MPC5...1QQcmdZViewItem
He has a few similar auctions, I'm just wondering what this all singing all dancing keyboard could be? My money is on the ASR-10....
this thing is really fun to work with, kind of reminds me of older FL versions. Plus it's cheap as chips (bought mine for about 200 euros) and it can resample.
Thanks for the link! That should work. Consider me AMLWB (Another Madlib Wanna Be).
Aahhahh!!
When I started making beats the dude who has created Garageshit wasn't born yet...
Most newer models have them built in already.
You can grab external SCSI card readers off ebay for pretty cheap, and you get like upto 1 gb (again the model would determine what the border is to accessible memory).
What I like most about this is, you can just sample some shit off the record and then just load the shit into wavelab, fuck around with it, and just go back to the mp.
Also for storage its great! You can just copy all your old beats to your PC-HD and back em up to whatever you want.
Only problem with this is that the older models (60 & 3000) dont take every card reader. A PCD-25 from Microtech would do the job for those.
ThesOne can tell you a story about that ....
I'm not a friend of installing new drives in the internal bay where the disk drive used to go (for the older models w/o usb etc.) so you can stay true to your old floppies with chopped breaks and/or also have the possibility to just pop in the old OS or whatever you need.
Also, dont forget: The SCSI outlet on the mpc has multi-ID so you can connect various devices to it in a chain, maybe of which one is also chained to a pc (only possible with newer models)
Since I'm having a little trouble with my old card reader im back to zips for now
So, if you come by a pile pof pcd25'S shoot me a PM.
BTW, about SCSI hard disks, the weak thing is, once you filled it up you will have to detach it and put it in storage and just hope the OLDE HD wont die on you while youre giving it the back because it is not really possible to access the HD from the computer if it has the mpcs filesystem printed to it (again this doesnt apply to the new generation mpcs: 4k, 2,5k 1k, since they use the modern file system and usb storage instead of SCSI aswell)
You should be happy to hear that Rohan Mansell off MPCforums camp has almost completed his BRAND NEW MPC 3000 OS which is at Version 3.28 B(eta) right now!
Here's some of the most interesting "new" features:
- New "Timing Correct / Step Size" options:
1/128 and 1/192 timing correct OFF note value resolutions added.
Note repeat and swing are not available for these timing correct OFF note value resolutions.1/4, 1/4TRPLT, 1/64, 1/64TRPLT timing correct note value resolutions added.Note repeat and swing are available for 1/4, 1/4TRPLT, 1/8, 1/8TRPLT, 1/16, 1/16TRPLT, 1/32, 1/32TRPLT, 1/64, 1/64TRPLT
- Samples can now be real-time edited and/or processed while the sequencer is Playing or Recording. (WOOHOOOO)
- A load of bugfixes AKAI never caught, and plenty things that will make the 3k man feel good.
For those that don't know. Rohan Mansell has been utilising the MPC 3000 for quite a time now and is an expert on the 3k OS. He even released his own Version, which was nicked off by Roger Linn himself and is also downloadable from the Linn site for free a while ago and it addressed plenty old errors and bugs on the 3k.
However if you dont like booting from a floppy every time you should contact Rohan for the Binary chips that go right on your mainboard.
- http://www.mansell-labs.com/