MPC Thread : MPC Live - MPC X - MPC One (Part 3)

The Lounge Other Gear
373

Technically it’s still an MPC but worse, but yes it’s still an MPC … more or less.

I feel like they gutted the thing that’s really unique and sets the device apart - i.e. sequence/track/program/sound all being more or less standalone units.

For me, it is really not the same workflow at all, it feels like an entirely new box - somewhat familiar but also alien in a lot of pretty important ways.

And for me, the stuff they’ve added on the flip side is just a worse version of a DAW, so at the point where it really comes into play I’d rather use a DAW nine times out of ten. Subject to revision when if/when they reinstate per sequence track mutes at which point I might try going a little deeper.

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374

Surely if that the case for you, you can just not upgrade? 2.15 will still work…

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375

For sure, still in the testing phase. Like I said, the first thing was to check out if it was what I expected … and it is … right now I’m just trying to work out how and whether I can work with this new thing on its own terms to get something out of it.

On the DAW stuff, it really has so far to go if that’s what they’re aiming for. But I do think that’s what they’re going for - like with the linear arranger views I was kinda wondering if I was missing something because they’re so basic, but I guess they’ve got to start somewhere.

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376

I mean this ball that gonna continue to bounce around until akai finally drop the penny and releases the full os for better or worse, are the guys that want all the old school stuff to stay gonna get shafted or will the massage in just enough of the legacy workflow to keep everyone happy?, I love what they’ve done so far but I think it could be a bit more transparent regarding what’s on the road map for a potential relates candidate now that it’s a public beta, I’m mean it’s not as if the legacy features are a closely guarded secret, a simple yes were going to implement it or nope we can’t make it work would probably quiet things down a bit, or it could be pouring petrol on a bonfire 🤦🤷

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377

I am a pretty basic user, but all I really want is to build patterns in the MPC way, arrange them (I found the old way pretty strait forward) and then record several ‘linear’ tracks over the song from start to finish (vocals/guitar etc). If I can do that I’ll be a happy camper and the one offilca AKAI video so far seems to show both methods

It wont replace my DAW, but it gives me a fast, fun and portable mini studio (its more than a drum machine, more than a groove box…) which is how I view it personally. I also have a DAW…this won’t replace it, but that was never my intention and I dint think its AKAIs (although who knows what the PC Version of MPC3 will be like…may give some DAWS a run for their money)

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378

https://youtube.com/shorts/U5RtlCgSSss?si=CQKgcyDkaTClwCGm

More Eurorack/MPC 3 collabs :wink:

379

Sorry, I was out cutting the grass this afternoon and remembered that I’m conflating OSs and the pencil was the old way of saving, now so long as you’ve got the correct track selected, it’s in the main>save menu as you’ve found.

Sorry for misinfo.

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380

No need to apologise, totally understand. Just funny how it took me a good hour [of minor panicking] to finally ask here and eventually finding it.

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381

I also had same wtf about saving drum tracks when I switched too.

382

use some of your clout to get Akai to include mouse support :smile:. I’m sure they listen to you than any of us despite numerous requests

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383

I mean mouse support is already there, they just chose not to let us have it :unamused:

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384

I know, why don’t they just give us an option. to enable or disable. It doesn’t affect the performance or usage. It just boogles the mind.

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385

Already mentioned it to them!

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386

At a guess it might be to minimise the amount of support tickets they would get about people’s specific model of mouse not working and their ability to trouble shoot it or something? IDK.

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387

It looks like ‘clips’ is in the code (someone on MPC Forums is looking at the code for the mouse and clips etc!) so it has been there, but turned off for now…maybe get the core feature working first and they have the 3.1…3.2…ready to go…

Akai MPC Forums - MPC 3 – Let’s GO!! : MPC X, MPC One, MPC Live & MPC Key 61 - Page 85 (mpc-forums.com)

388

Yep, I really feel like there’s a tension in the current one where they’ve blown up most of the MPC core but some of the remnants are still there in a quite confusing way. Like, I was looking at the arranger in the sequence page for the first couple of days wondering what’s the point of this and what is it supposed to be for assuming they were going to add a bunch of stuff later or whatever - when eventually it clicked that they’re assuming your sequence will be the full song in most/all cases and it’s for navigating to punch in / overdub. Which is cool, but if this is what it’s all about what’s the point of sequences - see also per sequence track mutes being omitted.

tl;dr

It is what it is, but their biggest problem at the moment is that the new features are also pretty underwhelming to compensate - if you’re trying to be a DAW in a Box and it’s getting to the point where people are plugging in a mouse, keyboard and 19" monitor, then you have to compete with proper DAWs.

Like, the mixer looks nice, but it’s basically a reskin of the previous one. One thing I’ve realised more and more doing sample based stuff is that the sound I always thought was just the MPC60 and SP1200 having that special sauce was actually mainly down to a bunch of intermediate / advanced studio tricks. e.g. when I’m chopping in Logic or on Push / Ableton, I like to send my simpler/quick sampler track to three aux/group channels with filters for bass middle and highs so I can rebalance the sample with the faders and get a feel for it while I’m working it out.

I’d love to be wrong about this, but there’s no way the new (or old) mixer can do something like this other than using three sends from the channel, at which point if you also want a delay and reverb send you need to pick which one. You could resample and copy the pad, but then you’d have to do it again if you change your chops so this only really works for the final mix, and I find how you’re hearing the sample really affects the results you get when chopping. The answer in practice is EQ but there’s a reason it was done this way and the results are pretty different to just EQing - fwiw sometimes I’ll run the MPC into Ableton or Logic when chopping to achieve this routing. Not mission critical or anything, but just one concrete example of how far behind the competition it is - if the goal is to compete with actual DAWs.

The other thing is that while the arranger looks nice for what it is, you really can’t do all that much with it. I guess it’s a shortcut to the grid but that doesn’t really add much. I’d kinda expected that you’d drop in sequences and be able to loop them and move them around at a minimum - the basic stuff you expect from a device with DAW pretensions.

So right now I expect that they’ll try to keep some token MPC behaviours for now because they don’t have much to offer in return on the DAW in a Box side. From a user perspective it doesn’t seem like it needs to be an either/or - on the dev/technical side it might look quite different though. I could honestly see it hitting a point where they e.g. drop sequences altogether. This would imho be bad and severely reduce the flexibility of the box - even further - but it seems to be where things are going.

Actually, what I really suspect is that if/when they reintroduce clips it could come with entry level DAW behaviour in the arranger, which might also be the end of sequences and if so the last traces of an MPC that you could legitimately call an MPC.

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389

Same, I must admit, it’s not difficult to get something going for me but once I got so far with the arrangement page I was like this would have taken literally half the time in Ableton, don’t get me wrong I still love the majority of it but the more time I spend on it’s the more I realise it’s not the silver bullet I thought it might be, I’ll probs just end up doing just what I was doing before and exporting a bunch of dry audio into abes and doing all the donkey work there…

Now let’s all head to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over…:beer:

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390

I still don’t quite understand this take on it. The “MPC core” is the ability to assign more than one track to the same program? That’s pretty much the thing they took away, isn’t it. It’s like that one feature was elevated to become the most powerful feature of the MPC. Clearly it was for some, and I feel for them, but even it it were the MPC core, there’s a workaround by using midi tracks so I’m still not sure why it’s such a big deal.

The MPC is so much more than this one-to-many relationship between tracks and programs. They’ve kept and enhanced a lot of those other things.

But they’re not trying to be more of a daw in a box than they always were (since the current-gen MPC line was introduced). How are the new features making it more of a DAW? I still don’t understand this. To be clear, I’m not trying to be disagreeable or ignorant (there’s a change I am unintentionally the latter), I’m genuinely trying to understand why the removal of the 1:n track:program feature suddenly broke the MPC core.

The point is exactly what you said - that you use the arranger either in a process of turning a loop into a longer structure (the “beats” way), or by leveraging the sequences feature the way you’ve always done it and only using the arranger once you’re done with arranging the song (the “song mode” way).

There’s absolutely no way. Zero chance of that happening. That would indeed kill the core of the MPC in irreplaceable ways!

I agree with this, it would be nice with a visual way of adding another sequence to the cursor/timeline point of the current arrangement to extend it. Perhaps it’ll become more useful in future updates as it’s a little barebones at the moment.

They should also make it easy to drag, copy or erase midi boxes of say 4 bars of midi data. Hopefully they’ll add ways to make it as smooth as possible over the course of the next few updates. After all, they haven’t even releases the first version of it yet.

Yeah, this is what I’d consider a bug and I have a feeling it’ll be fixed. They already acknowledged the other problem with muting the audio/program part rather than the midi/track data. I’m sure those two problems are connected here.

I’m not sure I follow the premise that they’re aiming to become a daw in a box. At least not more than they’ve always been. I mean, it is a DAW, so is 2.x. But it’s a hardware-first experience and none of that is changing with the 3.0 update.

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391

Doing away with the track mutes per sequence and moving to a linear workflow is very different than what some of us long time MPC users are used to.

Yes. It still samples and chops like no other. But it’s a very different machine than what it used to be.

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392

Hope they listen to you, at this point since the MPC is a DAW at least let the user have the option of mouse control. Knowing Akai they may gimp it in certain ways which I hope doesn’t happen.

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