ext. synths - sample or MIDI?

For those of you who use your MPC 1000 with external synths, do you leave the MIDI tracks as is, or do you sample them back into the MPC and assign them to a pad? I'm still debating this in my head. When I sequence with my RM1x, I record the midi dump of patches from my Virus b into an init/intro section of the song. That way, I could just play back that init section before starting the main song and my Virus b would be cued up and ready to go. With the MPC 1000, I could skip the midi dump and just record the part as a sample and assign it a pad. The pros are that I don't have to mess with sysex, multi-mode, and running out of polyphony on the Virus and the song is self-contained in the MPC. The cons are that it's difficult to edit once it's in audio format and it takes up space in memory and in storage. What do you all think?

I'm doing something like that with my Kawai K5000S. If I use it in a track I have a little "InitMIDI" 2-bar sequence at the top, for all the MIDI commands.
e.g. I have to send bank change 101/0 to switch the K5000S into multi mode, then it needs a program change to bring up the Multi I want. Haven't needed to do SysEx yet, can do if required.

I haven't settled on a technique, but I've been multi-sampling a few patches from the K5000S anyway (for download, see my site), and I'm using those Programs too during development. The idea is that I use the sampled synth if I need to work on the MPC alone, then switch back to the live synth during the final phase of a track and mixdown. I can then take advantage of all the nice stuff I bought the K5000S for - portamento, complex sound modulations, evil resonance. etc.

Sample IT!!! - turn it into Audio - that way you still have your midi file if the audio doesn't fit later

But leaveing midi as is, your setting yourself up to loosing what you've been working on or it not coming back sounding how you left it - know what I mean?

Audio is your friend - plus you can take that audio where ever you want to later - import into another sequencer or sampler over at friends or use it in a another song - you have more options with audio (but save your midi file)

Midi is cool, but strange things happen from time to time

lately I've liked using Ableton Live for that...

Keeping my synth riffs all as midi in the MPC1000 but recording them as audio in ableton.

You can then control Ableton with the MPC1000 midi clock as well... mute the midi channel in the MPC1000 but still have it there just in case.


___I've gone through 100 different work flows...
just happens to be what I like these days.

yeah! I totally agree with djadonis206.

Nothing more humbling than inviting your friends over to hear your great new track... which mysteriously has changed since when you saved it.

Depends on how your mixing it I say..you will get a much different sound using audio sampled of your synth. This is niether bad nor good, depends on what your trying to do...you will get a much cleaner synth sound if you are mixing down the track with the synth basically being triggered and controlled live alongside your mpc. This is how I do it. Djandonis makes some good points about not being able to bring the exact sound back quite as easily. But if you can save presets on your synth you can work around that. All depends on how you mix down as well and what type of mixer and preamps you got on your synth running through as well.

Thanks for all the replies! On the current song I'm working on, I'm doing it both ways. I'm triggering my ESI-4000 sampler in multi-mode for several of the tracks. But, for the Virus track, I decided to sample as audio and add it to my program. It's easier doing it this way than putting the Virus in multi-mode and dumping the arrangement in sysex to the MPC, which is how I would save the data on the MPC. I've done it that way before and although it works fine, it's a hassle to set up initially. On the other hand, my ESI-4000 is a cinch. I simply save a bank on my zip disk that contains all of the instruments and their corresponding midi channels. Then I just manually load this bank into the sampler before I start the song on the MPC. If I decide to go 100% audio, I'd have to get out my programmable calculator to set the sample start/end points