So being very interested in this I’m curious as other people have said they have started receiving their orders form places like Sweetwater although they are still listing the device as “pre-order”. I looked at Amazon and they list the release date as 4/15??? What is up with that?
That’s based on their PO shipment receipt date. If it arrives earlier they will move it forward.
Oh boy… I am weak and could not resist. At least I sold a couple of things to make up for half of it. 
My first MPC… I wanted something standalone and reasonably small with more features than the Digitakt (which I also have). I’m hoping the two pair well and compliment each other. Other devices look very cool too, but this is just really resonating with me for some reason where I wasn’t very intrigued by the Live or X. I like this form factor and size from very first impressions.
I’ve got a couple weeks to dive and take it back worst case. Quick break and back to learning it.
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Enjoy brother. Don’t forget to run the MPC3000 effect and put the output through the silver bullet (drools). Your kicks and snares will sound amazing.
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Just got mine. Really love using the touch screen for velocity in the step sequencer. So much easier than “hold pad, move knob” on so many other sequencers.
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So, 5-6 hours in and thought I’d give some super early thoughts and impressions if it helps anyone. Bear in mind I’ve never owned any MPC devices previously. Someone left a 2000 at my studio for a couple months in the late 90’s which I didn’t mess with much (just wasn’t into it at the time), but that’s it.
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The overall build feels good. It’s light, but not too light… feels sturdy, but definitely not ‘metal’ sturdy. Encoders feel good. I really like the overall size and shape.
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It’s hard plastic, not rubber like some thought. It’s not too shiny, but does have a sheen to it. The oils on your fingers do rub/stick to the finish quite a bit, but wipes off. It didn’t bother me while playing. Only when I stopped for the night that I wanted to wipe it all off.
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Pads feel fine to me and size isn’t a problem, but I’m not a finger drummer either. The pads feel better and are bigger than my Push 2, but much smaller than Maschine pads. They’re larger than Rytm pads and light years better in feel.
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The software / OS feels pretty responsive? I didn’t know what to expect. There’s only been a couple of times so far where I got ahead of it and that was when typing too fast. I updated to the latest (2.7.2 I think). I’m pretty lost with it, but that’s to be expected. I watched 3-4 of the getting started videos and have been figuring it out from there. Haven’t had to get out the manual or search yet, but at the same time I’ve only done a fairly basic 8 bar loop with some insert FX and a few envelopes.
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Haven’t done any sampling yet and only used the included sounds. I’ll try that tomorrow, but I did edit some of the sounds and liked the process/tools so far.
Something on the overall build quality… so, I returned the 1st unit I got today. Came home with it, unboxed and within a few min I saw what I thought was some very faint scratches in spots around on the top deck. They varied around 2-5mm each and maybe 4 or 5 of them (didn’t count exactly). I only live like 5 min away from a Guitar Center, so I boxed it up and took it back to exchange it which they did no problem.
Got home again, took the new one out and it has basically the same exact marks and in the identical places. I took a closer look and they aren’t actual scratches, but they look like possibly a defect in the surface of the mold used to make the lid/deck cover. They’re very small and very faint… enough where I had a hard time under the store lights and reflections trying to show the guy why I wanted to exchange it and he just took my word for it.
Since the 2nd one has the same thing that’s why I think it’s a production process or mold issue and not actual scratches. I’m pretty OCD about these things (I just notice every detail), but as I get older I’ve tried to deal with it more (for my own sanity) and not obsess about things, so I’m not going to stress over it. It is what it is and I’m just going to enjoy the machine. If it was that bad, I’d return it, believe me. I certainly can’t say that it’s all of them though. Maybe it was a batch and I got two out of that lot. In any case, I thought I’d mention it.
I’ll try to answer questions if anyone has them, but since I’m incredibly new to the OS I doubt that I can answer anything too specific or technical (especially on workflow).
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it’s intriguing… is it possible to export a while song as stems? the manual seems to say yes. there are a few different export options but not famliar with the akai lingo i’m unsure… can export each track/sequence on its own if it’s poart of the selected program so i’m unsure what exactly that means… is it possible to have more tha none program in a sequence?
I used MPC1000, 2500 and 4000 before I got the latest gen (MPC live). I dont really miss the old ones anymore aside from the footswitch functionality they had.
Any feature specific comparisons you would be interested in?
If theres something you get stuck with, let us know! Plenty of MPC 2.7 users on this board, and the one has exct same menus and features as live & x (aside from CV tracks which dont exist on the live but do exist on the x)
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this is interesting but why the master and rec knob on the back?
that big 360° encoder for display navigation and selection via push is unextetic.
for me the best mcp design could be like this
take the mpc x, get rid of that too much screen and put a mpc live/one screen on it and lets run the world
For me the biggest issue with the MPC1000’s is load times. Loading a folder of samples sometimes takes long enough to go and make coffee in the meantime.
In a way, there’s a cute 90s charm to it, but it also makes the experience as a whole feel laggy (even though once loaded, nothing lags).
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I guess it’s more about the overall feel of the new touch screen driven interaction versus the exclusively button & wheel driven interaction of the older models.
The videos I’ve seen make it clear that the touch screen make it so much easier to, say, draw in velocity or notes. However, it also makes it seem like you might have to touch the screen more than once on occasion due to touches not registering. For instance, I love my Qu-Pac mixer, but its touch screen is not as responsive as my smart phone.
So, MPC One’s additional buttons are part of what’s waking me back up to considering this new generation of MPC.
I’ll be looking forward to trying the One out in a shop to see how it feels.
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For me the biggest issue with the MPC1000’s is load times. Loading a folder of samples sometimes takes long enough to go and make coffee in the meantime.
This is so true. The tedious nature of this discourages properly backing up everything too.
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The way a UI feels in use is quite personal, so YMMV as usual, but I dont mind the touchscreen at all tbh. I use MENU + PAD shortcuts to jump between modes, like I did on the 100 & 2500. Typing in filenames eetc is a breeze compared to entering text with the legacy machines. There’s always the + / - keys and the jogwheel for entering parameter values, and for most numeric values you get a big numberpad on the screen that also has halve/double functions. Sample trimming is pretty fast, as is navigating the piano roll compared to 1000 / 2500.
So at least for me, the touchscreen UI with dynamic qlinks, jog and +/- keys is more than fine. Only thing I consider a weakness is transport handling, like the X has. That would come in handy!
Admittedly, the touch screen response isnt nowhere as smooth as with an iPad etc… but I’ve used worse. My A&H SQ5 touchscreen is much worse
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you can export a whole song as stems… you can export each track as its own stem. you can also export each program as a stem
and yes you can have more than 1 program in a sequence.
i use a different program for just about every chopped sample
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I’ve actually started warming up to the screen. I found it was just a matter of developing “memory muscle” (see what I’m doing there 
)to do things faster. And doing a tap, not a touch to the screen.
I was considering trading in the Live for the One. Maybe get a couple dollars back. Don’t really need all the Live extras. BUT, need to try the One. I love it’s layout and the direct buttons. I dunno if I could get down with the small pads tho.
The touchscreen works great for sample chopping I find.
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You may want to check with Sweetwater. In my experience, preorders are not always completed and Sweetwater will check them and make one available for you.
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Ya…I think it was just a matter of familiarizing myself with the layout. It’s actually pretty fast.
Looking for tips/tricks on the most efficient way to handle this for the MPC. It’s been a number of years since I’ve had to slice samples and create drum kits. Before I sold my Jomox Xbase 09 I recorded all of the kits. I have those saved in various ways, but the smallest is by each kit. There’s a good bit of silence at the beginning, end and in between each sound.
I have 96 of these kits to process and build drum programs out of…
I’m guessing the easiest way to do this is something like:
- Load each kit sample (like the one above)
- Use the sample edit to rough set the start/end then trim (discard) some of the silence
- Use ‘trim’ to ‘chop’ the sounds into slices, then ‘convert’ to ‘new drum program using slices’
That gives me a new kit with each of those sounds on its own pad…
Some questions:
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Should I be using ‘non-destructive slice’ option?
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I’m left with a good bit of silence at the end of each sound, but I’m guessing that doesn’t really matter these days with the amount of RAM we have available?
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Confirming to save the drum program I’m hitting the pencil icon next to it and using ‘Save Current Program’? That will save the same and pad assignments as a unique drum program?
If there’s a better or more efficient way to do this, please let me know.
I messed around with removing some of the silence in Wavelab, but there’s no easy way I see to remove the silence in between each sound ‘in place’. I could only see how to set markers using ‘auto split’, then save each of those sounds as individual files. Maybe there’s another app to automate removing silence (doing it in batch would be awesome)?’
UPDATE: I just found that Audacity (which I haven’t used in years) has a ‘trim silence’ function that does exactly what I want! Yay!
Seems like it would be a lot more work to build all of the kits by having to manually assign each sample/sound rather than having the MPC slice it and convert to pad, but maybe there’s a way I’m missing.
If I can figure out a way to do this where it doesn’t take hours upon hours I’d be happy to share the completed programs with the community. Thanks!