Background Noise

When I sample there is alot of background hissing. I messed around with
the filter and lessened it somewhat but not alot. Any advice on how to get rid of this?

The problem might be in cables or in sound source (the hiss is already on record, old jazz and stuff like that).
Try with different cables for start.
And - what's the sample source ?

Yea I'm thinking the cords. I was thinking maybe the turntable cuz its old (Numark 1520) but when listen to records right out of the dj mixer
I dont get the hiss, even on some of my older records. When I hook it to the mpc I hear the hiss as soon as I go to the sample page. If its the cords, any advice on which ones to get?

Use balanced ones. MPC 2000xl can take balanced and unbalanced cables to input section, so if your mixer has balanced output, use it to send sound like that.
If you can't use balanced cables, remember to keep unbalanced ones as short as possible. And better not to keep them near power cords etc.
If you are in the place of buing cables, try better ones. Sooner or later you gonna have to replace the cheapest ones with more expensive stuff. I'm not talking about high end or something like that...Just don't buy the cheapest cables, my advice.

Sorry if its a dumb question, but what r balanced and unbalanced cables/output?

This should explain everything:

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/balanced/

If it's not enough info, google it. There's plenty of sites with similar explanations.

if you listen closely you can usually hear a little bit of hum in the background when you are sampling onto an mpc..

using a noise gate usally works a treat, it's not normally so bad if it's just one track but if it is a lot it can accumulate..

noise gate, either soft or hard can do wonders for this particular problem.

Is a noise gate built in the MPC or an external thing?