Reviews and questions about the entry-level MPC500
By mineralman Sun Jul 25, 2010 12:01 pm
Can an MPC 500 do this?

We are a small 3 piece band that play using 3 synths, a Yamaha csx1, Micro Korg, and an Alesis Micron along with a Boss 505 groove workstation/ drum machine. We are all from a more traditional instrument background, guitars, bass, drums etc, so we are very much learning as we go along. At first we would use basic beats from the Boss and play the other instruments over the top, using midi sync for arrpegiators etc.

However we have increasingly been turning to LOGIC to create our backing tracks and drums beats as we find it a far more immediate and creative tool. Only thing is our backing tracks are now becoming more complex. The problem then becomes playing them live.

We don't have enough hands between us to play with the drum machine on stage, so we have been chopping up our Logic compositions into segments and loading them onto the Boss as patterns to build the songs. That way we can basically press 'play', and play along, but still be able to sync our keyboards to the midi signal coming from the Boss. However that process is incredibly time consuming, and you are limited to a pattern of 8 measures in length on the Boss. It take hours and hours to transport the backing tracks onto it, and then if you want to make any changes to the song you have to start again.

So far our best solution is to have laptop onstage playing the logic sequences and sending a midi sync using a USB-Midi converter. However we are trying to get away from having to rely a computer onstage, as the only laptop we can use for this we have to borrow from somebody else.

With a MPC 500 can you load in a bounced down song from logic in it's entirety (as a .wav) as a sample? So you can play it back and still output a midi sync clock, so we can still play along live with arrpegiators etc?
By bluesoul Sun Jul 25, 2010 1:12 pm
mineralman wrote:Can an MPC 500 do this?

With a MPC 500 can you load in a bounced down song from logic in it's entirety (as a .wav) as a sample? So you can play it back and still output a midi sync clock, so we can still play along live with arrpegiators etc?


If i undestand correctly you need to trigger, for example, a sample 5 min long?
Well, i don't have tried that, but for what i know there isn't a time limit for samples, but a ram memory limit.
So if your song is 40mb heavy i think you can do it, considering the memory upgrade of 128mb on the MPC.
With no ram expansion is not possible to do it.

Of course the midi clock is still working as you want, master or slave.
By mineralman Sun Jul 25, 2010 2:26 pm
Thanks, yes you are right. We would basically want to be triggering 1 sample that is 5 mins long.

If what you say is right, then even with the memory expansion we could probably only ever have two songs loaded into the RAM at any one time. So every couple of songs we would have to erase those two from the RAM and load in the next two? Or turn the machine off and on.

Do you have any idea how long it might take to load in a 60mb sample in the memory? are we talking seconds?

Of course looking ahead we would want to start using an MPC properly to generate our beats!
By bluesoul Sun Jul 25, 2010 5:06 pm
mineralman wrote: So every couple of songs we would have to erase those two from the RAM and load in the next two? Or turn the machine off and on.
Do you have any idea how long it might take to load in a 60mb sample in the memory? are we talking seconds?


Yes you have to load the new sample as a project file (the memory will clear by itself).

I have a piano multisampled which is 44 Mb, and I can tell you for sure it takes 35/45 seconds to load.

Maybe you could consider the roland sp-404 for your live needs, which don't have that memory issue, but is a toy for its sequencer ability, compared to the MPC.
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By NearTao Mon Jul 26, 2010 10:22 am
While I think you may be able to do this on an MPC, depending on your workflow this can become a huge headache to work with. To go from Logic to the MPC you will still probably want to chop up your song as clips, and you may want them to be separate layers for drums/bass/lead etc... so that you could still gig while a buddy is sick or whatever.

Anyway, if it was me... I'd probably track out loops to Ableton Live, which would give you a lot more options for managing songs.

If you really want to go the MPC route though for whatever reason, I'd probably suggest the MPC 1k, as out of the box it is a much more complete system than the 500, especially when you load up JJOS.

Good luck!
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By NearTao Mon Jul 26, 2010 10:26 am
bluesoul wrote:Yes you have to load the new sample as a project file (the memory will clear by itself).

I have a piano multisampled which is 44 Mb, and I can tell you for sure it takes 35/45 seconds to load.

Maybe you could consider the roland sp-404 for your live needs, which don't have that memory issue, but is a toy for its sequencer ability, compared to the MPC.


To be fair... loading up a full song probably isn't the way to go on the MPC anyways. You'd be much better served chopping everything up into the smallest components and then replicating the songs on the MPC instead of loading up full loops for most sections. Of course doing this would naturally want to pull you away from Logic and more to the MPC since it'd mean you're duplicating efforts.

If you do decide to go for the MPC route though there are plenty of people here who can give you some tips/tricks to help you maximize those 128mb of memory and 32 notes of polyphony for your usage. Just don't be put off if it requires a bit of effort on your end to squeeze 10 songs into there :P.
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By jibber Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:32 pm
mineralman wrote:So far our best solution is to have laptop onstage playing the logic sequences and sending a midi sync using a USB-Midi converter. However we are trying to get away from having to rely a computer onstage, as the only laptop we can use for this we have to borrow from somebody else.


For the price of an MPC, you could also just buy your own laptop computer... :wink:
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By ceetheproducer Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:29 pm
WOW WHAT A WASTE OF AN MPC! You brought an mpc500 just to trigger 1 sample! Yes ovcourse the mpc500 can do that!

I REALLY DON'T BELIVE PEOPLE ARE ADVISING YOU TO GET A 1000 (when you already have a 500) JUST TO TRIGGER 1 SAMPLE!

Why (since you want to use the mpc500 instead of a laptop) dont you actually use the mpc? as in actually load some samples into it and create your own backing track on it?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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