To all the 500 Haters

I have to say, I never owned an MPC before my 500. I am technically adept at learning new gear. It did confuse the f** out of me when I first got it because it's not intuitive (can't change volumes for all pads at once, tracks are not traditional DAW tracks, the process of saving samples, sequences and programs is a bit strange), but, I do see it's usefullness. I have learned to love it and would be lost without it now. I respect the classic 2000's but come on 32mb ram max? Yeah I wish I had $2k to drop on the 2500, but my iMac does my editing for me, and can't justify that cost.

With a 2gb card and 128mb ram, the 500 is a small powerhouse. I have recently made a really good autoload program that makes my life alot easier when powering up the MPC.

So to everyone who misunderstands the 500, take some time and let it grow on you.

I'll pass. For 650, around the same price as a new MPC500 I can get an used MPC1000 which does easily 3 times as much as a 500 and increases your workflow by a great deal. The only upside of a 500 is portability, but lets be honest how often is any producer (I'm talking ones that make money and do this for a living, not basement producers) not near an outlet.

128MB is nice but realistically even at around 12 tracks and more than 2-3 dozen samples loaded I still don't even get close to anything over 50-64 MB loaded up on my ram.

I got rid of my 500 a few weeks back. The only reason is because I found a 1000 for cheaper.

The 500 is great IMO. It does take a bit more to work it that the 1000. But the ability to work using batteries is awesome. I just got back from a trip on the coast. There was more than a few times when I wished I had a 500 to work on. I did get a chance to plug my 1000 in once but it was kind of a hassle.


Keep on rockin' the 500. Get a 1000 later for the house if you can, they compliment each other nicely.

Lithion wrote:For 650, around the same price as a new MPC500 I can get an used MPC1000 which does easily 3 times as much.

What? How can it do 3 times as much? Apart from a few fiddly little sample or edit features on the MPC1000 that a lot of people wouldn't bother with anyway, they're essentially the same.

Plus, even if you're close to power outlets, with the 500 you can just pick it up and walk off somewhere with it, like out in the backyard while you're eating lunch or whatever. No stress over finding an extension cable, another outlet etc. I sold my MPC4000 and kept the 500. With the smaller screen it's a lot quicker to work with as there's no time wasted navigating around a bigger screen.

Lets not forget, the MPC1000 is notorious for it's dodgy pads.

Auto chop

Grid edit

waveform edit

high pass filter, band pass filter

need I go on?

Yes, go on. Name a useful feature.

Auto chop - No auto chop is accuarate. Not even programs like Recycle. Put in the effort and do it manually, otherwise you'll end up with samples that have slow attack times, clicks at the end, double hits and so on. I'm serious here, if you value your music, don't trust that stuff. Badly trimmed samples can ruin the feel of your beats. Here's why. An auto chop may slice your samples at -28db. Now the actual start of the peak of the sample may not occur until the sample reaches a level of -10db. Between there and where the sample was chopped there may be a 6ms fade in. If you're after the tightest sounding drums, or any other instrument for that matter, you're not gonna want that fade in. Then still, to gain the benefit of a -10db slice, a much smaller fade on from zero would then be needed to avoid any loud click. I've found a length of somewhere around 5 samples usually does the trick. You don't get this kind of accuaracy on an MPC lcd.

Grid edit - Personally, I hate it. The MPC4000 had it and it sucked because it was slow to navigate. Moving dots and squares around a tiny LCD screen? That's nothing but a gimmick. I'm glad to have the old Roger Linn style step edit in the MPC500 where you only see the details of the event you're editing, and can then easily click to the next event using shift+ >. The beauty of hardware sequencers is that they force you to use your ears rather than looking at those dots or squares on a screen. Leave the grid edits for programs like Cubase where you can actually use them properly.

Waveform edit - Same thing again. If you need to edit your sounds on an MPC itself, use your ears. There's 'Play loop', 'Play To', 'Play From' and 'Play All' options on the 500. They make it easy. The MPC60, 3000 never had waveform editing, and that never stopped people like Dre, DJ Shadow etc putting together a number of classic albums using them. Plus samplers with waveform editing were around long before then, but those guys still chose tools with no waveform editing. If you want to edit your samples accurately, USB them to a computer and use an editing app such as Soundforge and dump them back again once you're done. Same deal as auto chop, you're not gonna be able to see enough detail on a tiny MPC lcd to determine where the actual peak of the sample is. I know this for a fact from using the waveform display on the MPC4000.

Highpass & bandpass filters - Ok, that's one feature the 500 lacks, but if you end up mixing your tracks in a DAW, you wouldn't need them anyway. Or you could use the mastering eq for high pass / bandpass style filtering and resample through there.

Avene wrote:
Highpass & bandpass filters - Ok, that's one feature the 500 lacks, but if you end up mixing your tracks in a DAW, you wouldn't need them anyway. Or you could use the mastering eq for high pass / bandpass style filtering and resample through there.

Citing "I can just use a DAW" is kind of a weak arguement. Not to mention you are talking about another X amount of dollars for a computer plus a DAW if you pay for one. With the onboard mixer, effects and filtering capabilities of the 1k, you technically don't even need a DAW to complete projects, its an all in one box in that sense.


But I will keep going

LFO, twice the envelope generators, Digital (SPDIF) I/O's, six outs, Internal HDD, input through, auto sample assign, 4 extra pads, extra Q-link slider, bit grunger, oscillator generator, autochromatic key assign, extra midi in and out, MTC...

Still, as I said you could resample through the eq if you're after eq. So the MPC500 could still be used as an alternative to a DAW. In which case why would 6 outs be needed?

An LFO, nice, but I just use the MPC500's Q-link slider. Up and down in time with the music will give you more of a hands on LFO experience. Record the results and then move on to the next sound you need a Q-link applied to record the results, then continue... One Q-link is fine.

An extra extra envelope generator. Yeah, that could be useful, but nothing to stress over. I've used the Q-link as a real time enveleope generator before, and resampled the sound. Gets the job done. If you're creative you'll find ways to do things. That's what I love about the MPC500 and it's limitations. The less of these features there are, the more you find yourself freaking the thing to do that stuff and end up coming up with a whole bunch of mad stuff in the process that you would never have thought was possible.

Digital I/O? No way! I love the how dirty the MPC500 sounds through it's stereo outs. I applaud Akai for giving the thing it's own character.

Internal HDD? No way, it would only be a drain on the batteries. Plus, I've got a 2GB card. That's more than enough and has no moving parts like a hard drive. Plus, for over 12 years I was storing all my sounds on 1.4mb floppy disks. One the MPC500 I create multiple tracks from just one bank of sounds.

6 outs, don't need em, input through - just sample other instruments instead of running them live through, auto assign - the process is already simple enough, 4 extra pads - from what I've heard about the MPC1000's pads, 4 extra aren't gonna make it any more appealling, extra Q-link - don't need it, bit grunger - if you're creative, you'll find hundreds of other better ways to mess up the sound of your samples, oscillator generator - haha, you're digging deep here!, autochromatic key assign - could be useful, but makes you lazy, extra midi ports - no loss, MTC - haha, nobody in their right mind would use that, for the simple reason it just doesn't stay in sync.

At the end of the day, none of the features you mention could be as useful or as powerful as a set of batteries. The freedom to work on music, beats or whatever pratically anywhere. I'm planning on having an aux input added to my car stereo system, just for the MPC500! It's gonna be nuts.

Also planning on grabbing a couple of decent dynamic or battery powered mics for recording sounds directly into the MPC500 from anywhere. There's so much you can do with these things.

so much of your argument is based on inexperience. not being able to slice accurately with a graphical waveform? please. download this zip and TRY to tell me that my samples aren't chopped where they should be. you don't have to load the song (you won't be able to, because it was made on a machine with 10x the functions)

http://excommence.com/VOICE.zip

At the end of the day, none of the features you mention could be as useful or as powerful as a set of batteries.

then you TRULY do not understand any of the features you've prematurely dismissed. here are some more items for your shaky consideration.

NO SAVING BUG
NO SYSTEM FREEZES.
alternate loop
realtime qlink graphical display
midi CC graphical display
an actual chopping function (rather than spending a day extracting a file into upwards of 100 some files)
bit converter
ring modulation
direct record
midi roll edit
polyphony monitor
a superior program mode w/ mass-assign functions
32 voice polyphony
maximum of 300,000 notes
a PROGRAMMER WHO GIVES A DAMN

realize this: before os 2.1 or any jj os for the MPC1000, the MPC1000 was basically marginally beefier than MPC500 is now: something to sample and sequence waves with, and do basic qlink records. having gone from that world to what i'm doing now in my machine, i would say that "3 times as powerful" is an understatement.

simply put, no set of batteries would EVER make me drop all of the above in addition to what was already patiently mentioned by Lithion. likewise, NOTHING would make me want to go from JJ's code back to AKAI's code.

That's what I love about the MPC500 and it's limitations. The less of these features there are, the more you find yourself freaking the thing to do that stuff and end up coming up with a whole bunch of mad stuff in the process that you would never have thought was possible.

i feel the same way, except my ceiling of possibilities is a ballroom to the 500's wallnut shell. believe me - all of the features you've tried to rebut (but haven't used), i use daily. you've got them all wrong.

i'm not here to make 500 users feel bad AT ALL. it is (could be) a good machine (if only it was coded better!!!). in the right hands (jj's) the mpc500 could really become a useful tool. unfortunately, like the 1000 (was), it was pushed out of akai's birth canal before it was ready. there's no shame or blemish on the 500 users for that, only the company they chose to support. unlike many forum members, i've got zero contempt for an mpc whose numerical suffix is lesser than my own.

that being said, i'd actually feel morally uneasy with myself if i recommended the 500 over the 1000 to anyone right now.

i only hope that the 500 gets as lucky as the 1000 was in terms of code and third party support. the potential is there in the 500.

an addendum to the list - these folks bring up excellent points, all of which have been addressed in the jj os for the mpc1000.

This is a general idea of what the 500 should have been:




minus the rediculous looking 16 pads of course, and the giant data wheel and cursor, but you get the idea.

Dear Akai:


THIS IS WHAT THE 500 SHOULD LOOK LIKE YOU FUKKS!!!!


Sincerely,

Lithion

No way man, hate on the 500 all you want, nobody will deny that there are limitations but I find the design and layout is a hell of a lot more ergonomic than 1000 and 2500s. Going back and playing on a 2500 seems to take me ages to navigate!

Antonym wrote:so much of your argument is based on inexperience. not being able to slice accurately with a graphical waveform? please. download this zip and TRY to tell me that my samples aren't chopped where they should be. you don't have to load the song (you won't be able to, because it was made on a machine with 10x the functions)

Your gbreaks samples are a prime example of what I was talking about! Long spaces before the actual peak, uncorrected DC offsets on a few, and I even noticed a few samples in the set that didn't start on a zero crossing. The way I see it, if your samples are badly edited, most especially the start points, you'll only be compromising your overall production. Better to put in the extra effort and edit them properly. Tightly edited samples do make a big difference, even if you're editng out an actual part of the sample.

I realise some of the features you mention could be useful, but for how I use the 500, I honestly don't need the majority of that stuff in an MPC and assume a lot of other users don't either. I edit my sounds on the computer. Just last week I batch processed over 6700 drum sounds I've been collecting for ages. Created my script, processed them, and they all came out perfect. Using Awave I can automap the samples and export MPC programs from there. Load them into the 500 and they sound great. If I need bit reduction, I can batch process thousands samples the same way through a decent bit crusher plugin I have and they'll be done in less than a minute. If you have a computer in your studio that can do this stuff painlessly, then why waste exrtra time doing it on a tiny MPC screen?

I've still not encountered any bugs on my unit. Maybe I'm lucky?

Remember that the timing of MPCs is flawed anyway, so your JJ OS auto chopped samples with the sloppy start points are gonna be even more out of time once sequenced. My old MPC4000 could NOT play 2 samples simultaneously in perfect sync. I did numerous tests and found that it plays them back sequentially, one after the other. That's the flagship machine too! Playing back 16 copies of the same sample simultaneously, there was a delay of at least 6ms between the first and the last. Possibly the main reason why I sold it. The MPC500 is not that much better. On average I found that it can play 3 samples in perfect sync, then another 3 a bit later in sync, and so on. Better than the 4000, but no match for a sample accurate computer based system. Best way to record it with as close to rock solid timing as possible is to record one or two tracks at a time. With only one stereo out on the 500, it's perfect, even if tracking may take a while longer. Routing your samples through 6 or 8 outs, you're gonna have timing issues.

Batteries, yeah, I was hoping the MPC1000 could run off batteries when it first came out. But no, it couldn't so would have been useless to me. If all the features you guys mention are important to you, then good luck to you. The MPC4000 had plenty of tweaky features. I once created a whole track on there just using a single snare drum sample. It was pretty damn powerful! But do I miss any of that stuff since selling it? No way, the simplicity of the MPC500 is what I love about and keeps me interested.

By the way, this reminds me of brail for blind people -

Lets not forgot, the bright blue screen on the MPC500 looks a whole not nicer than the ugly green coloured MPC1000 and MPC2500 screens.