MPC Live 2 + Zoom L8 = Match Made in Heaven (Guide)

Just got my MPC live 2 after looking at them for a year and watching reviews and tutorials galore. What really made me take the plunge was being able to use USB class compliant audio interfaces for i/o as i already had a Zoom L8 that i use to record my DAWless jams.

I was very skeptical at first because there were a lot of weird quirks to sort out. I thought i'd share my EXP here so it might save some other people the restless nights and grey hairs

Long story Short they work great together once you figure out the weird quirks.

Zoom L8 must be in "IOS" mode, which is the same as a class compliant usb mode.
BUT the Zoom L8 can ONLY RUN OFF OF BATTERIES in IOS mode. This is a quirk with most class compliant/IOS devices, they do not draw bus power.
The fix for this is to go on amazon and buy a dummy battery for AA batteries. They are basically empty metal AA batteries that have a USB plug on the end. You simply install them in the battery bay and plug the USB end into the regular USB power brick the Zoom came with. The one you want comes with 4 AA dummy batteries and is rated for 5v, it basically just passes thru the 5v USb power to the battery terminals. Now you can power the zoom off of wall warts or a usb power bank. Otherwise you'll HAVE TO use AA's and they only last an hour or so.

Now that you're powered on and in IOS mode you can plug your Zoom into the MPC, the MPC can be already turned on. Go into preferences and select 32 input mode and select the Zoom L8 as the sound device.

Theres a couple more quirks tho. When selecting the input on an audio track, the Zoom L8 treats the stereo master track as input 1 and 2. So if you make audio track in MPC and select input 1, thinking its the first input (your guitar for ex), you'll hear everything thats coming into the L8. This racked my brain for some time.
The physical input 1 is actually input 3. and 2 is 4 etc etc. Just add 2 when selecting the input track in the MPC. So if your mic is in the physical input 4 on the Zoom you need to select input 6 on the MPC.

Also, monitoring the MPC sounds was a little tricky. The L8 can monitor audio from USB but it must be enabled. So on input track 7 on the L8 press the input selector switch to "USB 1/2". Now it will route all MPC audio that is sent on output 1/2 into the master mix on the L8. You can adjust that fader, and you will now hear the other sounds of the MPC like your soft synths and drums etc. You can turn down all the other faders and just monitor what the MPC is outputting. It will act the same as if you had headphones plugged in.

Those are the main quirks and honestly took me a few sleepless nights to figure everything out.
Whats really cool though is that the Zoom L8 really works perfect once you address these things. And there are some really cool features and synergies between the two.

I could go on about the cool features between the two but this post is too long already

Lampdog wrote:

Appreciate the breakdown detail.
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Of course! More to follow!


CRAZY LOOP POTENTIAL - The L8 has 4 stereo outputs, one master and three sub mixes. You can choose exactly what comes out of each headphone jack. So what i do is on "Mix C" i take all the input faders and put them all the way down. Even the one for the MPC output. Then the Mix C headphone output is connected to the input of my RC5 Loop Pedal, and the output of the loop pedal goes back into the L8 into Input 6.

Now the cool part, the MPC controls the Loop Pedal via Midi CC. And all i have to do to loop any live input, is press the "mix C" button, and turn up the fader that corresponds to the instrument i want to loop. This input now gets routed to the Mix C headphone out, which goes to the loop pedal and back into the L8 input 6, which has its own corresponding audio track in the MPC.

So with this weird hack i can send any input on the L8 to the loop pedal and back into the MPC with just the slide of a fader! No unplugging anything.

Condenser Mic on input 3? no problem just turn that fader up on Mix C. Done, now i can loop those vocals.
Guitar on input 1? No sweat just turn down the input 3 fader and turn up the input 1 fader. Now my buddy is sending his guitar to the loop pedal.
How about that instrument mic on the drum kit? Done. Turn up fader 2 on Mix C
F*ck it lets send everyone to the Loop Pedal for some crazy weird slow build up type shit. Just turn all the input faders up on Mix C.

THIS IS SO FREAKING COOL. Not to mention even with all this ridiculous back and forth i haven't noticed appreciable latency