General question from someone who's considering buy MPC500

Hi everyone,

I'm sure I could find answers to my questions, but please - forgive me - I don't have time to read more than 500 posts.
Anyway.
Let me describe what I'm doing and what's my plan.
Frome time to time I'm composing (using PC + Xboard49 + ableton) some music for media (video, flash websites etc.) which usualy covers a wide range of styles. I used to, but I would like to come back to this, have been giging with some techno minimal kid of things - I was using MC303 and JX305 from roland for that plus some toys. And that was good.
So now what I'm looking for is something universal.
I've got Korg R3 synth for synthetic stuff - it doeas really great job as the engine comes from Korg Radias. It's got full MIDI conections and up to 2 chanels at once can play (through MIDI).
Next thing I'm planning to have its Korg MicroX for the sake of 640 voices, combi mode, double arpegiattor etc.
What I need for that setup is a sequencer and sampler.
I'm thinking about Korg ESX-1 as everyone saying this is the best thing for live acts - in that price. But ... I need something that got proper sequencer and I think MPC500 may be good enough (for that price).
So ... can someone tell me if MPC500 will be able to be a good live machine (as central unit stering KorgR3 and MicroX + own samples) and at home when I got some idea for tune for adverts etc. to record it.
Also ... I'm not sure if I've got it right from manual - can I play sequences in loop - ie 8 bars, mute and unmute tracks in realtime, change some values like volume, pan, filter, fx etc., and then switch to next sequence and so on.
Another one thing I'm not sure so far - how many drumkits I can use at once ?

Regards - Matt.

The sequencer is quite good, can be a little fiddly with the restricted screen, but you can do most everything you need to once you learn it.

With the 128mb RAM upgrade you can load up to about 124mb+/- worth of samples. So figure out how much your current drum kits use and see how you can load them up.

You can mute/unmute tracks on the fly... but you're muting the midi note triggers, which means for a long one shot sample (say brass hit) it won't stop as soon as you kit mute, it will continue through, but the next note won't trigger.

A more likely problem for playing live is that to record a performance on the fly you cannot really start/stop and move around so much. If you're not into recording new loops on the fly though, and instead plan on triggering samples/mute/unmute tracks you'll get a lot of mileage out of it.

Thanks for response.

The way I was working before was like I had prepared paterns (or sequences) and I'm not considering record antyhing - a part of everything from the sum to some external recorder, so I think I should be fine then.

About the display - I think is enough to composing material by seeing it - its time for ears.

I'm still wonder how many multi sample programs (for the drums ... like program contains ie. 24 samples over 24 pads / keys) you can play at once.

Regards - Matt.

It's 32 note polyphony... 16 note if they are all in stereo.

If you're drum kits are small... you can probably load up all your programs to the max 99 programs. That works out to what, about 1.1-1.2mb per drum kit. For 24 samples each that's about 50kb per sample on average. Is that what you're looking for for info?

Hi again.

No ...

What I'm looking for if there is some limit in amount of drum kits can play at once.

Let say for exampe: track 1 - this going to be external MIDI instrument, track 2 - Drum kit no. 1, track 3 - program nr 1 - one sample over all keyboard, track 3 - drum kit no. 2 ... How many of those drum kits can I use at once.

Cheers - Matt.

rtofvnt wrote:Hi again.

No ...

What I'm looking for if there is some limit in amount of drum kits can play at once.

Let say for exampe: track 1 - this going to be external MIDI instrument, track 2 - Drum kit no. 1, track 3 - program nr 1 - one sample over all keyboard, track 3 - drum kit no. 2 ... How many of those drum kits can I use at once.

Cheers - Matt.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the MPC can do or does and how it works...

The MPC 500 has 32 notes of polyphony. It can play up to 32 monophonic samples at the same time, or 16 stereo samples at the same time. It can hold as many drum kits as you can reasonably throw at it (up to 128mb worth of samples). So regardless of how many drum kits you actually have loaded or playing at the same time, the most samples you can have playing at once is 32. If you're sequencing external gear that's a different story, as you can have it generate far more midi notes than the 32 samples it alone is capable of playing.

If you want to know how much internal/external gear it can handle at the same time... well I cannot answer that for you, but my guess is it can probably suit your needs.

If you're thinking of drum kits as a program in the MPC, well... you can have up to 48 tracks per sequence, each with their own separate program. So for one sequence you can have up to 48 drum kits programmed on different tracks. As long as you aren't triggering all of the drum kits at once on each track, you can technically have all 48 tracks (with different drum kits) playing.

I can explain more, but if you're not taking all this in I'm not sure any more information will help you.

Thanks guys, thats the answer I was looking for. Sounds fantastic to me. Don't you think is it worth to double the money for 500 and try to get 1000 - HD and better operating system. Does that o.s. make that big difference ?

Cheers.

I have the 500 and 1000, the 500 is great if you want battery power. Otherwise if you can afford it, the 1k is much more full featured especially with JJOS.

Is the 5k the only one with more than 32 voice polyphony?