I haven’t gotten to mess with the stems update yet but I low key kind of hope it sounds… “weird”
For the music I make, it being a specific effect with its own sound is more appealing to me than simply being able to dissect a song cleanly. The only time I ever really sample full songs I’m microsampling or manipulating things beyond recognition - if this gives me another way to do that I’m all for it. If it’s fairly transparent I’ll probably still have fun with it, but I’m all for garbled weirdness in this case.
More generally, I impulsively bought my first MPC a few weeks back because the non-wifi One can currently be found for incredibly cheap… I got mine for about 350 USD without shipping. I knew I’d have fun with it but honestly, I’m amazed at how much I love this thing. It’s kind of what I’ve always wanted out of a modern groovebox; it feels totally unrestrictive in ways other tools don’t.
I was actually very impressed how many options there are to mix and manipulate things on board, and the included synths are actually quite good… I’m not a huge “sample based” person unless I’m making genres that call for it, so it’s a really pleasant surprise that the new MPCs are totally capable of making interesting sounds, no samples required. I also love that the workflow takes the user seriously, I’m the sort of producer who thrives with an abundance of options and gets a lot of their sound from the mix, which is something I felt was lacking from a lot of newer boxes. It’s the perfect halfway point for me, in that it gives me just enough room to fully execute raw ideas without so much that I’m spending too much time on details that are better left to the computer.
It’s also SO much easier to get what I make on and off this box than with other boxes. Hell, I can literally just run my projects natively right on my desktop if I want, right off the SD card, using the MPC as a controller seamlessly. I’m amazed how much this changes my mentality towards what I make on the machine. Rather than intending to jam for a bit and generate some interesting loops and textures to play with later like I do on most of my Elektron boxes, I feel more motivated to sketch out full rough tracks on the MPC, because I know everything I do will be easy to transfer to another DAW later.
In a few weeks of use now my only real gripes are that some menus are a little obtuse when you’re doing more intense editing and mixing, it’s a little annoying you can’t copy or reposition insert effects, and I really wish it had a few more exciting ways to sequence programs outside of recording live on the pads or using the somewhat finicky piano roll. The step sequencer could definitely use an upgrade. If they put p-locks on this thing though…?
I think it is a mistake… I tried the activation and it will start but won’t download…
The computer version came out in April but the standalone is not out yet.
It sounds like a very compressed mp3. Way worse than the crap acapellas you used to download from acapellas4u back in the day.
Are there any more changes to this update than the stems thingy?
I might buy the stems upgrade to use on the computer if anyone here with spectrasonics can chime in and tell which is cleaner? I already have Rx 10 and the results on that are kinda meh. Not really usable for what i would like to use such a feature for.
MPC platform and devices are based on 2017 (at best) specs. they’ve squeezed all the juice they’re gonna get out of the hardware/software they’re likely gonna get at this point. just refresh the dang line already
Anyone having issues installing the update? My Live 2 tells me it needs to be connected to a power supply, then says it can’t update due to an internal error. Anyone else seen this?
Wow, that sounded pretty awful to me, I wasn’t expecting much tbf but yeah definitely blown away and not in the good sense, am I the only person freaked by accurates not squaring up his key 37 and keyboard in shot? Felt like I wanted to reach in and sort it the whole way through
Wolf-Rami confirmed the power supply thing earlier
Per your internal error, does it call out a type of error or just that generic message? You could do the basic shit like open a blank project to make sure no plug ins are active in the background, disconnect and reconnect to wifi, power cycle the machine. Aside from that, I think it depends on the error but you may need to contact Akai.
It was the generic message, and I had it connected to the power supply. I’ll give your troubleshooting ideas a go, and report back here in case anyone else runs into this. Thanks for the advice!
