Here's a link that explains more about the MPC2000XL. It also contains a tip about the "Adjust" feature when timestretching. I wonder if this is in the "Making Beats With The MPC2000XL" book...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec99/articles/akaimpc2000.htmHere's some of what is being said about the 2kXL...
"In fact, when testing the time-stretching for the first time, I decided to go for the best quality (ie. the longest processing time) and was pleasantly surprised by how quick it was;
a four-second sample was processed in less than 30 seconds. Now my surprise may just be an indication of how long it has been since I did a time-stretch on a hardware sampler (I have mainly been using computers for this recently), but clearly the processors used in hardware samplers have, like their more talked about personal-computer equivalents, got much faster. Indeed, it may well be that
Akai chose not to include time-stretch on previous sampling drum machines simply because of the time it would have taken to process. If this is the case, then the faster speed of this processor is another clear improvement."
Something that was said about the 2k...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/apr97/akaimcp2000.html"I trust you will forgive the impetuousness of your humble reviewer if I pursue this line (instead of the conventional 'this is what the box looks like', 'how you make a sample' and so on), but I feel that I may not be be alone in having been put off previous MPCs by their lack of looping. A little more detective work in the manual -- the list of expansion options, to be precise -- reveals
that it has many things in common with Akai's S2000 sampler, and it therefore seems that the MPC has inherited its looping ability from its sampler cousin rather than from any dormant MPC gene. You might argue that this could be deduced from the shared numbering,
but the similarities are much greater than between the S3000 sampler and its
MPC numbersake..."
About the S2000...
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/nov95/akais2000.html"Technically, the
S2000 is closely related to the S3000; it's a 16-bit sampler, mono or stereo, and comes with 2Mb of memory upgradable to a maximum of 32Mb using standard computer SIMM chips. Resonant low-pass filters give the instrument synth-like capabilities, and in acknowledgement of the importance of CD-ROM sample libraries, a SCSI interface comes as standard. What's more, sample CD-ROMs intended for other machines can be loaded in, though there may still be a little tweaking required in some cases.
As you might expect from a modern sampler, the S2000 features full 32-voice polyphony, up to 16-part multitimbral operation, and a choice of
44.1kHz or 22.05kHz sampling rates....
Sampling may be carried out in mono or stereo via the line inputs, and these will also take a mic if you don't expect to need vast amounts of gain. You have a choice of just
two sampling bandwidths -- 10kHz or 20kHz.
Those interested in the
Timestretch function may be pleased to know that it's exactly the same system as used in Akai's S3000. This means you can change a sample's length by up to five or six percent without altering the pitch before the sound quality starts to suffer too much. There are various settings for different types of material, and what works for drums won't produce the best results with a sustained tone.
Some experimentation is in order, and because the process isn't all that fast, expect to spend some time working with it before you get the best possible result..."
This should help to give a good understanding about the timestretch capabilities of the S2000 and the MPC2000XL. Before trying to hang me, please read the articles. There's lot of data there that helps to answer some of the questions asked earlier in this post. Thanks again for your time and your consideration.
Mad Cherokee
