In wondering if it could possibly be the replacement for Ableton and push. Plus provide longer phrases of synth lines that are hard to program on the OT.
I donāt use Ableton or Push, but would be interested in hearing if it is a good replacement.
Not so hard for me to program; but less then amusing, and Iāve never loved Elektronās approach to midi sequencing.
Yeah, perhaps hard was the wrong adjective; awkward may be better. I just find there are times I go back to Ableton, create a long developed synth line, flatten it then import it into the OT. If like to have something outside of my computer that could do that.
I also want to have one shot samples that I can trigger on my live sets. Things like SFX or vocals or stabs etc.
So, Iāve been a good boy, and RTFMāed a little bitā¦ but not, nor have ever been an MPC boy; so some daft Questions and Understandingsā¦
U: You can store multiple Projects with the onboard storage (or additionally SSD, USB drive etc.); but you can only load one Project at a time.
Q: The time it takes to load a Project is dependent on the number/size of Samples the Project uses? And the sequencer has to be stopped to load?
U: It has 2gb of RAM for samples; but this also holds the OS and all audio files (which are converted to 32-bit float)
Q: Realistically this is more like 1.2gb of RAM because the OS is ~800mb?
U: Each Project contains 128 Programs. These are sample maps (Drums or Keys)
U: Each Project contains 128 Sequences. These are analogous to a Song, or a section of a song.
U: Each Sequence contains 128 Midi Tracks and 8 Audio Tracks (128 in the software)
U: A Midi Track is just a midi track; but this can be either āinternalā midi sent to Drum/Key programs to
playback samples; or āexternalā midi to play synths.
Q: What is an Audio Track? Just a way of playing back static audio, useful for long backing tracks kind of thing?
Q: You could get clever then, and play different Tracks of the same Sequence as different parts of a song? e.g. Tracks 01-08 equals intro; Tracks 09-16 equals verse etc.
Soā¦ potential 8 song live rig with an Octatrack and a Virus for example:
Use 16 Sequences per Song (Sequences 01-16 as Song 01, Sequences 17-32 as Song 02 etc); and Octatrack Bank 01 = Song 01 etc.
Cheers for that information and those questions Rusty; thatās the kind of stuff Iām trying to get my head around.
So, the MPC has the potential to store 128 patterns? And a pattern would be similar to a pattern on the OT although we have 256 individual patterns per project on the OT. But the MPC can have a new kit for each pattern? We have four parts per bank on the OT so 4 kits per bank of 16 patterns . . . So the MPC potentially allows for more kits across the patterns . . . Is that right?
Q1 = the more samps and programs you have, the longer projects load. Not sure if you can load a proj while playing back another, need to testā¦ But saving while playback works (might hickup but usually doesnt)
Q2 = yeh, more like 1GB of RAM, possibly lessā¦ More than 512MB though at least
Q3 = An audio track is kinda like an audio track in a DAW like pro tools, you have audio with regions and can cut it up and rearrange on the timeline, freeform without a quantized grid. The audio regions can have gaps of silence between em etc
Q4 = Absolutely! There are even mute groups if you fancy something like that
For anyone on the fence about the MPC live, you might want to wait a bit. New update is coming soon which will bring improved FX, those always seem to get bashed everywhere. The new FX and multitimbral MIDI input will be the big updates Iām personally waiting for the most, those will make the live the badass machine I originally bought it for 
3 Likes
Great feature for recording I had with MPC1000 JJOS2XL.
Still not possible to send Prog Changes when you want (step edit) ?
not without going to event editor AFAIK
So you can edit Prog Change send ?
I read it was not possible to send them exept with sequence or programs (kits) changeā¦ 
Thanks @tsutek much appreciated 
Next question is what is the polyphony? A quick search of the manual shows references to 8 for midi tracks; and vague references to audio polyphony:
(unless they exceed the total number of voices available).
From PraxisAxis on GearSlutz: Load times between projects are a few seconds, but it cannot playback while loading.
From faq:
āStandalone, MPC and MPC Live can reliably handle up to 128 simultaneous tracks per project ā¦/ā¦ MPC X and MPC Live also feature 64-voice polyphonyā
I guess you can go up to 128 midi tracks, with midi bandwidth limitations.
1 Like
Curious about the audio tracks / Q3:
Is it possible to use only audio tracks? So to use MPC as a HD recorder with all kinds of edit possibilities? And is it easy to make a sample (program) out of a piece of an audio track?
Awsome! Where did you get those tabla and sitar samples from? I want them so bad!
I swear I didnāt see that in the manual / quickstart at allā¦
1 Like
sure, you could if you really wanted to. Would be kinda overkill just for that though. You could export the edited audiotracks and reopen the exported samples, assign them to a program, done.
hmm, guess it is 64? Not sure, never ran out of polyphony on an MPC to be honest
1 Like
Thnx, yeah probably overkill just for audio tracks only. Seems like a daw in a hardware box alltogether. Mmm (gas or not to gasā¦)
You can run out of polyphony when you use a sound in a pattern then mute it to forget that you used it. What also eats polyphony is layering sounds. If you have white noise under a kick drum layer minus two notes from the polyphony. Max layer is 4 notes per pad. If you buy some of those mpc forums drum libraries they use round robin techniques and Iām sure that eats up four layers per pad.
Sometimes you lay the right pattern down on the mpc and you want to audition how each sound set handles the pattern and thatās how you eat polyphony too. For example you want to see how the pattern sounds with your 16 pad house kit and you copy the same pattern to audition with the House 2 filtered kit. You will be muting between pads to find out which sounds you like and donāt like. That could be 32 notes down the drain.
Hope all this makes sense
3 Likes
hmm? I just change the pgm of a track if I want to hear how it sounds with another kit. That shouldnāt eat any extra poly should it?
1 Like