Exciting times! Currently traveling for work but can’t wait to give this a try once I’m back home.
looking forward to your perspective
1 Like
Mixed bag so far, but probably this was never going to be for me so I might not be the right person to ask. And these are just impressions from a few hours scratching the surface, take with at least a couple of pinches of salt.
tl;dr
Opened a few old projects without major issue - other than mutes - they were pretty well organised which helped, it turns out that was something you could actually do on MPCs all along.
For the first dive in I decided not to piss myself off immediately so started with some chops I’d already worked up on the SP404 rather than going from scratch and encountering the bits where imho they’ve really fucked it for what I like to do.
The old process of going to the sample editor to a program to a track still works more or less the same, it’s just a little bit janky now. The program editor also feels kinda buried. First time I went to load a program it took me a while to figure it out.
I’m fine with the new look, I like being able to see the sample waveform in the sequence main screen, not sure if I’d ever use it for doing edits or moving around start points, feels a bit cramped for that, but I think it looks nice at least. Some of the icons do look a bit 2003 to me, but maybe they look better on a bigger/newer screen than my first gen Live.
Really, I was kinda relieved but also a bit disappointed at the large amount of stuff that’s basically the same. The graphics are nice on the mixer, but really the bread and butter stuff isn’t hugely different. Pretty much a reskin. Would’ve liked to see more advanced routing options if it’s really going for the DAW in a Box thing, tbh the graphics don’t really change all that much.
I have honestly no idea what the arranger panel in the sequence page is trying to achieve or what you’re supposed to be able to do with it - possibly it will need a few more versions before it’s useful. Equally, I didn’t go too deep with the arranger in the main menu, but tbh I personally don’t see the point or usefulness of it really, it seems like you have to go back into the grid to make any edits and I’m not sure what being able to see midi events really adds, usually I can use my ears for that. I guess if I used audio tracks more it might be more of a thing - and to be fair this was never going to be for me, it may have clicked with others straight away.
In general I’m finding it hard to grasp how sequences and the arranger interact, it seems like there’s kinda a tension there. I thought it would be an arranger for the whole track and drop in sequences, but it seems like it’s tied to a particular sequence. I was thinking of a conversation upthread about how sequences work with the Force firmware, the answer seems to be that they don’t - feels to me like they didn’t want to throw out sequences completely at this point, but haven’t really integrated them in the linear view either. I could be completely wrong, like I say I haven’t dug too deeply because it’s probably not going to be for me no matter what they do with it.
Other good stuff - it feels snappy, I was never really bought the “ATM touchscreen” stuff, I always thought it was fine, but possibly even an improvement? But deleting midi events can still take a few goes.
But the main thing is that I had an ok time putting together ideas in the normal way, with the caveat that I already knew exactly what material I was going to chop and wasn’t sweating the drum sounds too much, just loaded a samples from mars program and went from there. And happy enough with the results, although I did stop and think at one stage that I’d have had just as much fun and probably gotten a lot further along with the track doing it in Logic or Ableton. Didn’t bother trying to arrange sequences or go into song mode because of the mutes thing. Also didn’t explode tracks because of it.
Really where I anticipate the big problems is with my favourite way of using the MPC, i.e. pulling together a whole bunch of pre-chopped programs and seeing what sticks. I think that’s clearly dead, the program loading times aren’t excessive but still enough to create friction for trying out alternatives and in general it’s not a great workaround as against loading a bunch of programs and trying things out.
But for now I’m kinda relieved that it still does a serviceable impression of an MPC, just appreciably worse in a bunch of ways and I’m really not seeing that there are any transformative changes elsewhere to compensate. Won’t revert to the previous firmware right away without a few more sessions though, even before this the 404 had largely taken over that early creative/experimentation phase for me, so I guess I might see if there’s a sweet spot for me to land in on this version.
My overwhelming impression is that it’s even more between two stools at the moment, it’s nowhere near enough of a DAW - mixer and editing tools in the arranger view just aren’t there right now - to make it a viable proposition for doing full tracks - for me at least - but the MPC foundations have also been seriously cracked, if not quite broken just yet.
4 Likes
initially on first poke around: 
after about an hour: 
mutes needed. adjustable loop points based on diff track lengths needed. wrap nudge within loop points wanted.
looks really good. easy to pick up flow. might be perceived experience, but feels more responsive? 
personally…I like [so far]
3 Likes
I really like the workflow and the improved ui. And I can adjust to not having programs. It’s great that song mode is still there, but pad mutes aren’t per sequence, they stay the same for the track. I don’t get why they changed this. I can adjust to everything else. Maybe I just haven’t adjusted to an easy way to do this using the arranger. I was fine with the way song mode worked before.
I hope that will be addressed.
Anyone care to share their experience activating version 3.4 on the MPC One?
I’m going to be a piss poor beta tester as I can’t get plugins to activate with the ridiculous and mysterious serial code activation, so I’m not looking forward to downloading 3.4 only to find I can’t activate it. But the new firmware and features look great.
I’m away at the moment, so can’t brick my MPC right now.
Any success activating 3.4 with MPC One users?
It follows logically from locking programs to a single track to also have a single mute state to cover the track. To me it really feels like they haven’t quite bottomed out a bunch of stuff around how they’re going to integrate the remnants of the MPC way with the new direction they’re taking it in. So far it’s still a bit of a mystery to me how sequences and the arranger are supposed to interact.
But fwiw I’m confident this one will get sorted relatively quickly because of how much pushback there’s been and the fact that the arranger doesn’t look to be really much of a substitute for a while. But it might not be easy or soon given that it goes against the direction they’re taking in general.
3 Likes
I think you’re supposed to create a bunch of sequences, then go into song mode and from song mode you turn those sequences into a big sequence, then you can do your finishing touches using the arranger to polish the song structure that way.
5 Likes
It’s def more snappy than before. Moving around page to page seems significantly snappier on the X compared to the previous version. I wasn’t expecting that.
7 Likes
100%
Trying to contribute rather than add to the noise, I would like to see the track mutes per sequence come back. And with that, it’d be great to record sequences and performances into the arranger. Mutes can be automated.
On the Main page, they should change Arrange to Grid - it’s confusing
In the sample edit window on the main screen, it’d be nice to tune the sample, not just adjust the start and end points.
And please put the midi notes in some type of clip (container) in the arranger.
Here’s some noise though. Who the F did they consult when thinking about MPC3? I highly doubt long-time MPC users were like, “yeah, get rid of the programs and no one uses track mutes”
It’s like their development team got caught up reading forums instead of talking and engaging with actual users…
5 Likes
some ex native instruments employees 
4 Likes
3 words:
Sample to pad
why has this only now become a feature?
on the downside, my external audio interface (zoom ams 44) starts crackling after a few minutes (no problems on 2.15), so I have “failed to internal” for now.
2 Likes
Hmm i feel like sample to pad is the same as normal sampling? Instead of choosing the pad to assign it to after sampling, you’re just picking the pad to sample to before hand?
Sooooo is there no way to save a drum program \ track? I can’t find it anywhere.
The pencil menu has become context sensitive depending on whether you are on the track part or the arrangement part of a track.
Go to the track part > pencil and it should be there (from memory as I’m not in front of my mpc right now)
The physical save button now also opens a pop-up where you can choose what to save (project, track, keygroup, drum program etc. )
3 Likes
Ohhh I see it at the save menu but not under the pencils. Omg that had me worried for a minute.
Thanks.
Bump!
Has anyone tested MPC3 beta USB sound with Tascam Model 12 or other digital mixer?
I will be testing the next beta versions. Not for me at the moment. I need 32 in/out USB in MPC and then send the sound from the stage via Ethernet (RJ-45). I can do this with StudioLive rack with MPC firmware 2.15.0
There is a bug. USB audio in MPC 3 Beta with errors. I play with MPC one and Presonus StudioLive 16R. In 2.15.0 it works ok, sometimes it also bugs, but it can work smoothly for a very long time (several hours, all day long). In MPC3 Beta the sound crackles after a minute. I restarted MPC and mixer, I also changed the sample rate in StudioLive to 44.1 kHz, but it did not work with MPC3 Beta. Finally I downgraded firmware to 2.15.0 and it works again with Studiolive 16R in 48 kHz. I really like 32 inputs/outputs in MPC ONE, but it does not work in beta version. Has anyone tested USB sound with Tascam Model 12 in MPC3 beta?
I report this bug.
Can it do multitrack audio recording now out of interest?
And is there now an easy way to capture quantised audio clips to a pad with one tap, like on push / force / Ableton? (I know there are long workaround ways to do that on mpc).