I’ve been using Elektron boxes for over a year now and have a blast on them, especially the Digitakt.
For my birthday in April I’ve decided to get a non-Elektron unit to expand my palate / set-up a bit, so I thought I’d ask people here their personal preferences.
I’m between getting a Polyend Play+ or an MPC Live II. Realize they are totally different, but I’m mostly interested in being in a different production environment and coming up with a beat on the spot.
The Polyend Play seems more immediate, but all of my favorite producers (Moodymann, Andres, Dilla, etc), have historically used MPCs, so my curiosity is mostly piqued there by its historical influence.
I prefer using samples, but am fine with using IBC presets as well.
Curious about what people who have used both would say!
Oh also, a key thing for me would also be ease of exporting stems on Ableton.
The MPC is a whole DAW in a box. It’s not really comparable to anything but a computer with a MIDI controller and audio interface attached. Comparing it to grooveboxes doesn’t really work anymore.
It’s got everything in it. It’s also quite hands on for sampling and playing into. It can sit as a brain of everything. It’s made for every sort of music but works best with live music that you tap into it or record / sample into it. It’s got a step sequencer but it’s terrible. Plug your Digitakt into it and it’s amazing again.
You can put together a whole track on your sofa with its battery and speakers and nothing else attached and then mix and master it all in the device. It’s amazing. But it’s a very different beast to all the things it’s usually compared to.
Thanks! Actually very curious what you mean pairing it with the Digitakt. Would that mean using the 8 MIDI channels on the DT to control the MPC? Or just having them run side by side and manipulating things on either / both machines?
Yeah, routing the Digitakt’s audio tracks into the MPC and the MPC back into the Digtakt also works but mostly here using the Digitakt as a midi sequencer for the MPC.
There’s a giant caveat though. There’s currently a massive bug in the MPC that makes incoming multichannel midi stuff not work well (note off messages are shared). This is such a big issue that Akai are now putting a note that they’re working to fix it on every piece of update / release note press so I suspect it’ll be gone soon.
one of my biggest regrets was waiting so long to buy an MPC
i would recommend that over the polyend if you want something really different to Elektron
not a big fan of using the MPC with other gear though, Elektron can’t be beat when it comes to that and their midi implementation.
i would treat it like it’s own device, a place you take all your good loops and samples and compose them into full tracks. Finishing full arrangements was much easier for me with the MPC as well. Many of the paid plugins are cross compatible as a VST as well, which to me is a huge bonus if you have a hybird workflow.
I have a play+ and it’s a beast for quick composing. It has usb multi track, and a lot of features that make it an incredible instrument.
My friend has a MPC live and he always spend a lot of time configuring things and wasting precious time with (at least for me) a complicate workflow. When we make jams I always always have to wait.
Do you want to compose an 80% - 90% very quick inside the machine and you don’t mind an extensive sampling features? Do you want to enjoy composing and making ideas very very quick and jam a lot? Get a Play+. And the synths sound amazing.
Do you want waste a lot of time configuring things and making intricate changes to samples? Get an MPC live. I’ve witnessed incountable time lost wandering around a MPC live to make simple adjustments.
For me, life is for compose quickly and jam, I don’t have time to mess around with one million of options. I want to make songs and jam. And Play+ is a great machine for that. I’ve composed a 30 minutes live set streamed last year. Search Bardial live on 2023 if you want to hear a little bit of Play+. It’s not the best live set but P+ is a superb compositional tool.
Yeah this is ad hominem. I get you’re trying to push your view but you’re going a little overboard. Not saying you’re over exaggerating or anything but that’s just one person’s workflow that “you” think was wasting time.
yea and i think more importantly, is that so different than how OP is using his digitakt/elektrons?
Polyend play is a great device, but i still stand by the MPC bringing much more “different” to the table especially if OP has strong interest in making music similar to other artists that use an MPC.
Play + is going to get you to a fun jam quickly through a playful workflow, but you are going to quickly hit a limit of the level of production that you can achieve.
MPC is going to allow you to make tracks that are pretty much radio ready if you put the effort in, but it’s a more considered workflow.
the MPC can use templates… make templates for whatever you want and make music… and I don’t even use templates on an mpc, it’s still feels like a beatmachine to me as opposed to a daw and is very quick in that regard.
guess I should use them sometime, they’re there after all
yea on the play+ side it can be lots of fun. the reverb is lush & the synths sound great.
negatives are:
the synth patch editing is list based and imo is at odds with the rest of the device. a bit fiddly n clunky navigating it with that single encoder.
lack of a 2nd filter ala high pass / bass width elektron kinda jobbo, so you can’t clean up the low end of a sample if using the filter for another purpose. it’s a real oversight imo and places the play+ in “sketchbook” territory.
the whole pick’n’place workflow means that, while fun getting going writing stuff, later on if you realise a sample needs tweaking you have to locate each step in each pattern individually and adjust. that can get a bit much, and I think is another oversight.
all in all a fun, cool device. really fun, but is a bit of a mess in certain areas, and feels unfinished to me.
I’ve checked that not only with Play+. I checked with model:samples, with maschine, with an original tracker… And I’ve seen that for years since the early days of MPC live. Yes, it’s a single workflow of a person, but I really really think that MPC live isn’t for jamming. I’m not against it, only is that (based on my experience from an user for years), it’s not a device for jam and making easy changes involve a lot of movements. I’m speaking about an experienced user with years of experience. Just my opinion.
For me, play+ is deep enough to make very intrincate sequences. Maybe not deep enough for a lot of people. If you want to go deeper, an MPC live is ideal. But in terms of fun and workflow, Play+ is impressive. Is a great compositional tool. Just my opinion.
I understand that the MPC is a DAW in a box and so de facto more complex, but how exactly is the Play+ limited? From the videos I’ve seen it looks like you can do pretty intricate patterns (tho limited to 8 tracks), and load your own samples. I feel like that’s enough to get the bones of a track going, export to Ableton, and add things (either from an Elektron box or IBC) from there.
I will give a different view. How your favorite artists are using it is more important in my opinion. I have my own favorites and reading or listening their interviews showed me they start a track using MPC. But mostly because they are used to or feel comfortable to start the drums there. Then they take it to whatever DAW they use or keep recording from hardware for the rest of the track.
So if your favorite artists are not entirely building their tracks in MPC, you should ask yourself if thats what you need. Just my take.
you could get the bones of a track done on play+, totally. then render & export stuff, or multitrsck record into ableton. I couldn’t get ableton to play ball with it in my brief attempt. even recording a single stereo master was glitching and cutting out n stuff.
I hear if you create an aggregate device on Mac it’ll work better, but I couldn’t be arsed when I was trying. so everything I made on it ended up being half decent individual patterns that I never did anything with. ymmv
Ha no I appreciate it, and understand! Was curious to hear Bardial’s take on its limitedness give that they seem to be very enthusiastic about the device.
Negative things are one single filter, no EQ as said above (but you can fix that later in a Draw), editing synths isn’t fun and when you have a huge (I mean huge) project it takes a lot to load the first trime. And only one chance per step but at the end you need to live with that.
But the positive aspects are: very intrincate sequences, good reverb and delay, Sidechain!!! , a device that invites you to play. It’s fun, the fill function is a great start, you can easily sequence external synths with program changes, Synths sound excellent, and above all, the workflow is so well designed that you’ll make music faster and you’ll jam faster. And the sequencer is almost on par with an oxi one. The sequencer is the heart of Play+.
But if you want to edit more and get deeper, get an MPC.
You need to test Play+, maybe it fit your workflow. You can see a million videos but it’s an instrument that in my opinion needs to test it personally. Sorry for the English.
If the setup on an mpc is taking a long time, then the user is probably either manually chopping samples or making instruments from scratch. If that stuff is done ahead of time the mpc is as immediate as anything else.
The shortcomings have already been addressed: clumsy step sequencing, slightly sterile production environment, chromatic note entry and particularly playing chords with the pads is a bit labored, and sometimes it’s just more than what you need compared to elektron.
Everything else about live II has been quite welcome. I have equal complaints about digitakt just in different areas, so nothing is perfect.
If you need an all-in-one production environment mpc with a midi keyboard makes sense, if you want a polyend workflow it does not.
Hope you find something that fills the void for you!
