Post your questions, opinions and reviews of the MPC1000. This forum is for discussion of the OFFICIAL Akai OS (2.1). If you wish to discuss the JJ OS, please use the dedicated JJ OS forum
By griffzero Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:54 pm
I'm having a hard time getting my drums to sound full over my samples. I have the mpc synced with reason. So I have my computer sound card and mpc going into my 2 channel mixer and have the mixer go out back in to my sound card to record everything. The problem is that even with the sample at a low level the drums have a hard time competing. The only way they can be heard is blasting all the levels of the channel the drums are going through. So what I end up with is a track with low levels and slightly distorted yet weak drums. I know this a long post and maybe hard to follow. But if anyone can give me any suggestions it would be a great help.
By BustedPads Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:01 pm
I dunno-not much info but- Maybe yer stock drums where recorded/transfered to 1k at too low a level or just crappy recording (no offense, its happened to everyone at some point) have you tried normalizing yer drum samples? my guess is you need to resample and mix drums to 0db then adjust in the mix. dont try to mix down to one track until you have mixed all tracks individually. My advice (take or leave it)- but when mixing, throw in yer baseline first, then mix in kick- then snare- then percussion (each on seperate track), adjust levels to suit yer preference making sure the dynamics of each track are legit(add yer compressors, fx, etc. if desired), then and only then mix in melody/sample whatever on seperate tracks for each piece (if polyphonic- or "layered") and mix to appropriate levels. and boom there you go. now you can mix down to one track. from my expirience- reason sounds are "juiced" compared to raw feeds out of the mpc, thats cuz sounds in reason are individually mastered and pre processed to give you pro sound right out of the box (or card in this case!) on the 1k you dont have this luxery unless youve taken the time to do it yerself (i use protools for this process, and I would 100% reccomend it- it has versatile plugins, and reason opens right up in it's own window/track), so you will not get the same pristine sound from raw audio straight out of the 1k as you will when taking sounds out of reason. hence the track for track mixdown I described to adjust dynamics individually before attempting final mix. hope this helps, send me more info and I can tell you for sure. peace