About to buy MPC1000

Dear all ....

About to swap my newly acquired - and greatly disppointed with - Akai MPD32 drum controller for an MPC1000 ( plus a little extra cash to the guy in the deal ).

He tells me that he the unit is only six months old, but it only has the basic 16 meg memory, with a 32 mg CF card.

As I only intend to use the MPC to make drum beats and then run them into my DAW ( Cubase SX ), is the unit's onboard memory enough to load up a full decent kit in one set up ? As I said, I won't be really using the MPC for sampling or other features really ( like recording chunks of records and chopping them up afterwards, like many seemed to do with their MPCs ).
What is the best way to run the beats into my Cubase thereafter ? Should I just record the drum beat in MPC and then record onto an audio track in Cubase ... or can I sync the MPC via midi to record the pattern staright into a midi track in Cubase ?

Can a cd dribe be fitted to the MPC1000, or should I not worry as I understand the unit's sound palette can be run and dumped into your computer ?

Sorry for all the questions, but your advice would ehlp very much ...

.... and sorry for all the 'typos' in my last post - I think my fingers must have been p.ssed at the time of me typing ( or was it me ?! ... Uhmn ... ).

16mb of memory has sufficed for many, think of the countless beats made with older mpcs with far less memory. it also depends on if you use stereo samples, reuse the same samples with diff't pitch, envelopes, etc. I guess it comes down to how creative you can be with sample engineering and the quality of samples (stereo vs mono). Most drum sounds are rather short except for long rides, bass drops, cymbal crashes, etc. so why not try 16 for a bit and see how much you can maximize that space. the simpler the better i think as it forces out some creativeness on your behalf.

you can only control one mpc midi channel from your pc sequencer if you prefer editing that way. the onboard sequence editor on the mpc (jj os2) is rather wonderful too, just doesn't have a mouse.

no cd drive

mpc has usb mass storage interface, you can exchange samples but it's slow as ****, but at least it's there.

might as well get the ram, i got some for 15 bucks on ebay
i don't buy the "less ram forces you to be more creative" statement. it's always struck me as a means of making one feel better about a limited situation. when it comes down to it, if you're arranging furniture in a room, you can do more in a larger room. similarly, years of good beats have been made on tiny RAM footprints, but progress will yield/has yielded better beats as a result of having more resources, if only for headroom.

99% of my saved projects are under 20-32 mb, but thhat doesn't mean i don't use more of the RAM whihle working...like when i'm loading a 4 minute wav of an entire song i recorded from a record and saved onto my HD, for example

[quote="Nym"]might as well get the ram, i got some for 15 bucks on ebay
i don't buy the "less ram forces you to be more creative" statement. it's always struck me as a means of making one feel better about a limited situation. when it comes down to it, if you're arranging furniture in a room, you can do more in a larger room. similarly, years of good beats have been made on tiny RAM footprints, but progress will yield/has yielded better beats as a result of having more resources, if only for headroom.

you really don't think so? sounds like the extra ram just helps your work flow while composing. Whatever helps get you to the finished product easier helps. The ram is cheap for sure if you look so why not just grab it.

But i like having this limitations discussion. The limitations of the NES, C64 and other 8bit consoles with only 3 to 5 monophonic channels with simple waveforms forced a whole new genre of music you wouldn't have gotten w/o the limits. The same goes for any other way of making music I think. Also true that there's a lot of not so good stuff to be heard though b/c you have to know every limit of your gear to know how to make the most of it.

you really don't think so? sounds like the extra ram just helps your work flow while composing.

sure, one way or another, i couldn't do that on 16/32 or even 56 mb ram. to an extent, even 128 is a limit - for example when i already have loaded 2 large stereo files and then seek to slice bits from one of them...alas, INSUFFICIENT MEMORY only flashes up AFTER you've created all the slice points...endless palms to the forehead on my part

regarding new genre of music forced from limited origins - chip tune, lofi, and hip hop all prove your point very cleanly, that's most definitely an accurate observation.

Nym you are totally correct in the thought.
What people seem to miss is with the added features and functions you are able to do more with the unit so instead of the ram limitation adding to creativity it limits your ability to use many of the new features effectively.

That's like me trying to use that old G4 400 that was the best Mac offered instead of a MacPro, because we did so much work many moons ago with it on a PT rig.

A 3k is/was a favorite of mine but I could never go back to it after using the 4k.


inthemix, just follow the specs giving in the 1k forum stickie about ram and you can easily get what you need from eBay for about $7-10.
You also want to get a kit and install a hard drive, and let's not forget a JJ OS password.

ok, cuz this might pass you by... The akai brand ram boasts 128mb. If you do not get the official akai ram, you must get a 256mb chip. the mpc-1000 only uses one "side" of the RAM chip, so you need to double up.