mattskillz1000 wrote:thanks for the reply. mainly the zoning and timestretch/slicing that is not available on the 1000 that i have. it would be nice to load up my old akai cd's as well. what is all this about the mpc's sounding different??? i guess people are reffering to the sampling??? sequencing should all be the same right?
Hi, I'm probably not the best person to discuss to the sound as my first
MPC was the 4000, but my musical partner has a 2000XL, and in setting
up for our live show, we were figuring out who would be playing which sample, and when I loaded the exact same sample as his (from his 2000XL
program), the 2 did actually sound different. He thought the 2000XL sounded more analog like and I thought the 4000 sounded clearer. They both sounded good but different. I didn't think that it wasn't anything that I couldn't do on the 4000 by uisng Q-link resample features and adding some
EQ and filters. But maybe somebody with both can comment on that aspect or somebody who used to have a 2000XL.
As for Zoning, the MPC beats the 60, 1000,2000,2000XL, & 3000 hands down. The main reason that I say this , is due to the "Program Modulation" window that is available on the 4000 that comes from the Z4/Z8 sample engine.
The Program Modulation matrix gives you a 64 point grid to setup
Program Modulation and Zone cross fading is one of them. So you can
set up Midi Sync'd LFO's, Envelope's' or any of the other 30plus Sources
that can be used to control the Zone's.
Slicing is nice on the 4000 compare to the 2000XL, as the 4000 not only
has the slice option so that you can split a loop into from 1 - 32 pads , but also has a create sequence feature (ala Recycle), so that it will create a sequence and place it on sequence and track of your choice, so that
it will play the loop automatically. So you can speed or slow down the
BPM and it the loop will stay in sync. You can also use a feature to switch
around the regions, so the resulting slice ,will be adjusted to your settings.
I usually use slice, but if I need to move a 90BPM loop to 134 or something then I'll Timestretch it. I think the Timestretching is pretty similar to the
2000XL's. SOmething like 32 different algorythms depending if you are using vocals, percussion, rock, and such. Not sure if 2000XL has the
BPM timestretch or not, but you can give the 2000XL, the current
number of beats in the loop, and then tell it the BPM that you want it to be.
Has worked fine with me. Others indicate computer software that does this is better. I don't use the computer much so can't comment, but i can
usually get what I want from 1 of the included algorhythms
One of the other nice things about the 4000 compared to the 1000 or 2000xl is the abiltiy to modulate things in real time. You have realtime
control of the filter, pitch, lfo, envelopes, or any of the other internal parameters via Q-Link or Midi CC. Couple that with Q-Link sequence (a 6 x 16 step step sequencer to control these real time modulations). It definitely helps bring this out of a sample player to a sample processor type of machine.
Sequencing pretty much the same , except that do to the 960 PPQ
you can get a bit more realistic feal by moving to 960.
Hope that details a bit more.
Dave
