MPC for stereo backing track (replacing Maschine for live sh

Hey guys, new to the forum thank you in advance for your views and replies!

I've looked through the forum about this subject but couldn't find a definitive answer. Here's my situation now:

Using a laptop, MBOX3, and NI Maschine controller for my live show currently. We have 8 songs with stereo backing tracks that also have some samples (short samples; hand claps and stuff) that need to be played while the backing track is running; all while the drummer is getting a click. What I'm doing with maschine is loading up a WAV of our backing track onto a pad, then loading a WAV track of a click that coincides with that particular song on a different pad (Maschine does not have the capability to change the output of the internal click, so it's useless to me for live.) I link those two pads together, so when one is pressed, they both trigger at the exact same time. The house gets the pad with the stereo backing track and my drummer gets the pad with the click in his headphones through signal routing with the MBOX. While this is happening my singer will switch to a different group on Maschine and start playing some samples which don't mess with the backing track or click.

SOOOO..... I need to do all of this but without the computer. I'm sure you all understand how horrible computers can be sometimes. I've been lucky so far, but luck runs out. I want a more stable platform to do these things.

I was originally thinking the MPC-1000. With the multiple outputs it seemed like this would work. Just load the backing track onto a pad, figure out if I can get the MPC click to output separately (anyone? If not I was thinking I would just load the click track WAV and link those pads together like I was doing on the maschine), and then load the other shorter samples that need to be played onto some of the other pads.

Unfortunately, because of the MPC 1000 only being able to load and play these tracks from it's max 128mb ram it seems that this will not work. Lag issues and such right?

Other option is the MPC 2500 with the internal hard drive. Would this suite my needs?
If I can't figure out how to do this with an MPC the alternatives get pricier and pricer. Like the elektron octatrack, $1000+ used and I would still need a way to play the shorter samples....

Sorry I know this was long but I wanted to give all the details I could. Any insight would be appreciated!!

the ram on MPCs don't work the way you think I don't believe...

the mpc can only play samples that are already loaded up into ram. The ram is the defining component for how much sample time you have available... which means you can have a total of 128 megs of samples loaded in the 1000 or 2500. The hard drives have nothing to do with anything because they are for saving samples so you can load them back up later... no streaming from hard drives.

However, a click track can be in mono, and most of the time so can drum sounds that you program into the mpc... samples can be panned later.



yeah you can make a click track (sample a click sound and make a sequence) which would take almost no ram at all.. and have it assigned to an output separate from the rest of the other sounds.

That can be done on any mpc model.

Yeah thank you for clearing that up for me I was not thinking about that in the right way. I thought that the 2500 was actually pulling samples from the internal hard drive. It doesn't seem like the MPC is do-able for this stereo backing track idea. Thank you for your reply

the mpc will probably do the job but with mpcs... it's always a game of compromise and weighing various compromisations.


by the way if you think 128meg isn't enough to have multiple songs loaded, you are simply not accustomed to the idea of what equals what on sample ram... 128 megs doesn't mean anything like what it means on your computer... it doesn't mean two 50 megs songs.... songs take up **** all almost.

Oh I didn't know that either. So what is the equation to figure out how much sample ram something will take up? Also while we're on this, does the MPC accept MP3 or just WAV. I know maschine only accepts WAV which I find ridiculous... Here I am using 75mb or so WAV backing tracks when I could be using high-quality 320 MP3's at a fraction of that size. It's bogging down my maschine software having all the backing tracks loaded into one Project file.

well for triggering entire long files like that maybe you need to use something on a computer... the mpc is more for taking small clips of songs and arranging them.

DAWs manipulate audio in .wav format..... from what I know, the ones that can take mp3s... when loading one it converts the mp3 to wav to manipulate it..

Akayemusica wrote:Oh I didn't know that either. So what is the equation to figure out how much sample ram something will take up? Also while we're on this, does the MPC accept MP3 or just WAV. I know maschine only accepts WAV which I find ridiculous... Here I am using 75mb or so WAV backing tracks when I could be using high-quality 320 MP3's at a fraction of that size. It's bogging down my maschine software having all the backing tracks loaded into one Project file.

128MB of ram is a little less than 12 minutes of sample time on the MPC, in 44.1/16bit .WAV format.

I'm still not entirely sure what you need to get done, but I think it would be possible on the MPC, either 1000 or 2500. To facilitate seamless transitions, you'd probably want two 1000's, with one playing your tracks and the other one cued up for the next song. Loading a sample that is several minutes long may take over a minute.

Keep in mind, the MPC's strength lies in its ability to sample and sequence those samples. Manipulating longer samples--or in your case, entire songs--can be cumbersome.