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By Tomás From Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:02 am
Hello everyone,

I'm a composer who primarily works on Logic Pro.

I am wanting to buy an older MPC to use it as a instrument to jam with and come up with new ideas. I was thinking about getting either a 1000 or a 2500. But I am also looking at a 2000XL.

Could anyone explain to me a little bit what the difference in compatibility would be between these machines? I am assuming that with the 1000/2500 I can simply transfer samples from and to the computer using USB. How is this done with the 2000XL?

Other options I've seen are the 5000 and the Renaissance. Would any of these be a better idea?

Thanks!
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By Sense-A Fri Aug 05, 2022 2:45 pm
Neither machine caters well to rapid transfer of audio files back and forth to PC.

The MPC 1000 can be recognized on a PC as a storage device. That's about it. And while you are transferring files from or to MPC 1000, you can't do anything on it. The screen is locked to file transfer.

The mpc 2000xl is probably even more limited than that. I doubt it has USB at all. You have to get a goTek floppy emulator that lets you save to USB, or deal with floppy disks, or maybe some kind of legacy SCSI device such as zip disks or SD2SCSI adapter.

I only connect my MPC 1000 to PC to back everything up once a month or so. Other than that, I save everything internally to the internal HD or to CF card.

The MPC 4000 allows a little more functionality through AK.SYS but even that only works on older operating systems and allows limited control of MPC 4000 and is probably more hassle than it is worth in some regards.

Frankly, the onset of 120GB hard drives reduced my need for connecting to PC. And I want to do most of my work on the MPC itself anyways. Mouse clicking sucks.

I recently got a great deal on a Roland MV8000 that lets you plug in a VGA monitor and a mouse directly into the unit and it puts out its own VGA display and let's you click around the internal OS with the mouse. I think this is a good option if you want that big computer monitor display and mouse navigation in your workflow.

Some people use their DAW as their sequencer which probably makes their workflow different than mine. I usually don't touch a DAW until I'm tracking out something resembling a final song and I might do two different long versions and condense it into a final track inside DAW. Even then, I'm just tracking out audio tracks and not recording midi notes or anything like that. I keep the sequencer and midi tracks inside the MPC.
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By Lampdog Fri Aug 05, 2022 11:19 pm
Out of the ones mentioned, I’d go w/ 2500jjos.