Thinking about buying one, but need answers

Hey guys,

I'm playing in a metal band and we use lots of electronic music base in the backing track. I'm triggering the sounds on computer using Ableton and Akai MPK 25 while the backtrack is playing on Ableton, but I really don't wanna use computer on the stage, it would be a nightmare if my computer dies, it happened before while practising.

So my question is, can i play the backtrack, and during it plays can i trigger my samples? I will be needing to send one output to my drummer for metronome, I managed doing it on my sound card sending backtarck as stereo outputs on the monitors and metronome as mono output (headphones) to my drummer using Ableton, can I also send a different backtrack let's say, to only headphones?

Is there any other recommendation what to buy or do considering what i need?

Thanks for your further help!

Yes, yes, and yes. All this is possible.

U can trigger samples while the beat is playing. You can assign every single sound and sample to one of the assignable outs. Even the metronome if you use the 3rd party software JJOS.

i was talking about this same situation with my bro.. hes got a metal band, and wants a stereo electronic backing track as well as a click track on a separate channel.. harder to find in an all 1 easily managed solution than it should be.

i suggested the mpc but then ran into the problem that due to only being able to have 128mb of sound loaded its a struggle to fit a whole sets worth on there..

ended up coming to an idea of 2 x roland sp404's (or 404sx if you wanna go for easier management at higher $).. one for click track output and one for backing output .. and then a common midi device like a mpd to play both of them at the same time (so a different note will trigger song 1 song 2 etc on both.) - havnt put it into practice yet tho - but on paper it works and is relatively cheap.. you could then double the function of the mpd to trigger samples from other slots in the 404's.

or - ideally MPC1000 as controller and samples + 2X SP404's.. killer

some other people also suggested the old roland sp-808 asd its got multi outs and can load a whole sets worth at once - but its old school, so a pain in the ass with zip disks.

golfdogz wrote:i suggested the mpc but then ran into the problem that due to only being able to have 128mb of sound loaded its a struggle to fit a whole sets worth on there..

Happy to hear I can do all, but what about external card? Can't i simply load the sounds in some 16 gb memory card? Or what is that external card for? I will be here tomorrow, so sorry for my future late reply.

yeah you can have GB's worth of samples in your memory card or optional hard drive - the only thing is they cant all be loaded to the MPC's RAM at the same time....you might be able to get away with it if your click track is a loop and you play all samples live.

but once you push past the 128mb internal limit you would have to load up samples /programs / sequences a few times in your set.. which might be ok for you depending on how you play.

in our situation tho as each click track and backing track is a full length audio track and everything needs to be preloaded all at once so the drummer can just press play for each song..the sp-404's stream directly off the card - so you can have up to 1GB loaded on the sp-404 and 32 GB loaded on the SP-404sx - easily enough to cover a full sets worth of audio.

I was thinking of writing click tracks and the backtracks as full lenght audio tracks, simply hitting play button, but also triggering some sounds live while click track and backtrack is playing. So you say, to hit ''play'' button to start backtrack&click track, i gotta first load it to mpc's ram from the external memory right? and for each song i have to do the same as far as i could understand (please correct me if i got it wrong my english is not that good). So negative part of it is, loading full lenght audio tracks to mpc takes time?

yep - thats right - to do it on the MPC you would only be able to have 1 or 2 tracks loaded at once if they are full length audio tracks.

so in between each song you would have to unload the ones currently in the ram and reload the next ones.. it does take time to load long files also. maybe 15 seconds (cant remember exactly but there definately is a wait).

for playing full length audio tracks as backing, unfortunately the MPC isnt so suited..

15 seconds sound pretty much, do you know can I unload a song and load another while playing the second song? And what about writing backtracks in really compressed audio like all the sound samples in one .wav or in one .mp3 file? would it sound too shitty?

yeah - i cant remember exactly if its 15 secords or not.. but i remember it is a wait. unfortunately i cant test it at the moment for you cos my mpc is packed up in a box

you have to stop playing to load a song / sample / program whatever

and all your files have to be 16 bit stereo or mono wav... no mp3..

yeah id really recommend looking at pretty much any of the roland sampler series, the way they function and how much they can store at once makes them much more suited to full audio tracks. you can still trigger samples on the fly with them also.

if you were willing to have your audio track and click track each as mono - you could get away with one sp-404sx and pan each left and right to split them and give you 2 tracks.

12 samples x 10 banks.. you could use bank 1 for all your songs (audio left and click right) - and then use the other 9 banks for 108 samples you could trigger live.. (with the 404sx)