New to the MPC production world? Got a music production question that's not really specific to any particular MPC? Try your luck here and get help from our experienced members.
By allstarrr Tue Oct 18, 2022 12:31 am
Hopefully the title was sufficient, and I won't be asking bad questions. I just picked up a MPC1000 with a 1gb card and 16mb of RAM (as stated on the bootup) and a JJ OS. Are these specs sufficient for what I want to use this for, to create beats but without recording samples and chopping and editing (at least to begin with)? I just want to find a nice variety of drums sounds and synth sounds to create with. I haven't done a lot of reading yet and thought I start by asking to perhaps save some time if the setup I want could be easy to get. There's stuff on the card I think I'll just discard since it's not the stuff I'm talking about, just samples from the previous owner that I don't want using up all the memory. And I assume I'd download the sound inventory from the computer to the card through the unit? Also, how can I determine exactly which JJ OS is on it? So, my main question is how and where to get the sounds I want onto my MPC?

Thanks!
User avatar
By NearTao Tue Oct 18, 2022 10:55 am
Been a while since I had the 1k, so won't be able to remember how to walk you through everything... but

16mb gets you just about 3 minutes of sample time if I remember correctly... half that if you are going to work in stereo. Honestly, one and a half minutes of stereo is plenty to make a lot of songs, but depending on how you want to produce it might feel tight. On the other hand, if you're mostly going to be working with one shots and short loops, it can take you a long way. As for the card, 1gb again should be plenty to last you a long time, and certainly delete anything you don't care about. Sure it's nice in some ways to have tons and tons of samples, but the more you have, the more time you spend looking for what you want. With 1gb, you're going to want to be more selective of the sounds you want to store and keep, instead of just being a pack rat and keeping everything.

Long term, you may want to consider upgrading to the 128mb of memory... it opens up a lot more possibilities with longer samples, and how you may approach song construction, but certainly not a requirement. Similarly, the internal drive upgrade is nice, but getting harder to find. My biggest advice would be to limit how much you eject the CF card, as those pins can bend super easily... even though it is slow, it'll be better to copy files over the USB on the 1k as the USB port is much less likely to fail.

Good luck and have fun! The 1k with JJOS is great... and certainly worth upgrading to the paid version for v2 or v3 (both are on the same license) if you don't have it already.
User avatar
By NearTao Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:58 am
One other thing I forgot to mention... if you do want more storage... I know I used to run a 128gb CF card, used to use one. Pretty sure I had a 256gb card that worked fine as well... but I forget :D
By Christov Thu Oct 20, 2022 4:33 pm
I built in a HD with the kit from mpcstuff back when I had one. Worked great with USB. Never used the cf slot.
User avatar
By Lampdog Thu Oct 20, 2022 5:01 pm
I’ve made complete songs w/ rap vocals, 3 verses, using only my ASR-10 maxing out the 16mb, saved on floppies.
User avatar
By JDSY Thu Jan 05, 2023 11:40 pm
I would say you picked a nice machine for just using drum sounds! 16mb is a lot to work with. For example, you could even make your drum sounds mono, and also pitch them up (speeding them up too) and fit more per second into the memory. Just pitch them back down, which also may add some desirable LO-FI crunchyness.

I don't have access to the files on this computer but if I can remember to come back, I'll send you a folder of drums. Hats, snares, and kicks!