The Live 2’s I/O, battery, and speaker are parts of the device that I would miss dearly if I switched to the One. Being able to take the MPC anywhere, around the house or otherwise, and play it without even plugging in headphones, is an incredible thing to be able to do. The speakers and battery life are actually good enough, and that means quite a lot.
I bet there are some things I could do a bit faster if I built a muscle memory with the buttons on the One, but the only really glaring oversight (in my opinion) in terms of missing buttons on the Live 2 is a dedicated Program Edit button, and that can be somewhat remedied by putting it in the little slide out drawer on the touch screen that they introduced a year or two ago (I also love having the save button in that thing). I haven’t used a Live 1, but the idea of not having the physical buttons that they added to the Live 2 is a scary thought.
I can’t count how many times I’ve used the 2 separate DIN MIDI outs. It’s also really nice to be able to send different programs out through the 6 outputs into a mixer. Two built-in USB A ports (I believe the One only has one) have come in handy many times. Putting an SSD in the SATA slot when I bought the machine was a great decision and has made many things possible for me by keeping the SD card slot free, like saving samples into the proper folders structure on the SD card for my TR-8S and loading them directly into the drum machine without ever touching a computer. I have even used the built-in Ethernet port.
I honestly think the extra features on the Live really set it apart when working with other equipment and it would probably be worth the extra cash. If only the “All Channels Receiving MIDI Note Off Messages” bug were fixed, it could be reliably sequenced by other hardware, but as long as you’re not triggering the same MIDI notes in multiple MPC Programs with MIDI data from some other sequencer, that won’t make a difference.
Looping in live guitar/vocal stuff looks fairly straightforward
The MPC looper unfortunately does not work when it is receiving MIDI clock from an external source. I wanted to get fancy sampling in phrases while DJing… doesn’t work like that
Yeah, don’t worry about that… I’d guess it’s very rarely an issue to a small amount of people.
The C in MPC is a clue to how it should be used.
Also, I’ve never owned a One, but have a Live 2 and an X, and I’d recommend the Live 2 every time… you don’t appreciate how useful the speaker and battery is until you get it.
I think it has more to do with whether you’ll value the battery and speaker or not. I find the battery to be indispensable, and the speaker a nice to have. Learning to press Menu+Pad4 instead of a direct Program Edit button is no big deal, I had no problem transitioning from a One to a Live 2 from that regard. It annoyed me the first week and then I forgot about it.
Just got the 20V PD Birdcord and can report back that it seems to work flawlessly with my 65W PD powerbank! So now the battery life of the MPC went from 3-4 hours to “as much as we need” for our regular music making camper van trips.
I bought the live 2 as I wanted portability.
I thought the speakers were a bit of a joke initially but honestly, I use them all the time.
They sound way better than I anticipated and if I’m in a private space, I almost always prefer them over headphones.
Having the battery is nice too as it’s always “on” so going from my desk to anywhere else is a breeze.
Wow, thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies everyone! If I could trouble y’all with one more question. At my local GC, they have a used Live 2, so I could save $200, but I’m concerned it would make registering the thing more difficult. Any issues buying an MPC used?
No problem there at all, transfer of basic ownership and registration is made simple by Akai, however I’m 99.9% sure that Akai’s warranties are non-transferable so if that’s an issue, consider it. Also the “cooling down period” with used gear is a lot shorter, so if you question whether you’ll get along with the MPC and you want to keep your options open for return or exchange, then there’s that to consider as well.
The benefits of buying new tend to decrease as the price of the used gear drops. So if it’s half the price of new to purchase used, then the cost to benefit ratio changes significantly. If the used model is $200 less than new then I’d still be on the fence, if it’s $600 less than new, then there’s far less benefit to buying the new one.
I see good prices on used Live 2’s online and I actually got my live 2 retro at a really reasonable price by being extremely attentive towards the used market for a few weeks (more like a couple months). Being able to see it in person is nice though, and you can’t discount the benefit of “try before you buy” so I think it’s going to come down to how much difference say $250 in either direction of the guitar center price means to you as an individual.
If saving 200-500 over new is very advantageous or if paying an extra $200 for peace of mind is worth it, you probably know better than anyone else which kind of shopper you are. I’m most certainly the former, almost to a fault, but when it comes to a situation where like, $50 is the difference between a warranty or no warranty, I’m more likely to be swayed towards the new item.
For what it’s worth, I purchased my relatively new MPC Live 2 from a private person who purchased it at a retailer that will honor the warranty regardless of who owns it. I got that confirmed via email from the retailer, just in case.
Yeah, I should have definitely been more clear that I was only talking about AKAI’s policy but that retailer policies on warranties can be different and even at times outlast the manufacturer warranty.
Guitar Center (who I think snipecatcher has a specific reason to buy through) unfortunately doesn’t have that type of store warranty in place on used goods, although they may offer a paid warranty through a third party because I see that a lot these days at online checkout.
Surprised nobody had mentioned the ssd… that is one of my favorite features… no stupid USB stick always sticking out of depending on a card for everything… basically unlimited storage all in a ssd in the device.
I have a SanDisk extreme in my live 2 since it is portable, and a ultra in my XSE. It is crazy how much faster and smoother the extreme is.
Oh… And spring for the retro, you will regret it later if you don’t… it is worth the difference since your buying used anyway.
