MPC 5000 as playback player

Hello guys, I am looking for some opinions based on experiences (which I don´t have:))..

We have a musical band (4 members). I make music (let's call it playback) on my PC and I would like to use my MPC 5000 as a WAV player. MPC has several outputs and I would like to send via these outputs my playback tracks. One song (one playback) contains several tracks (one track = one mono WAV file):

1. L channel MONO (left channel taken from STEREO playback song)
2. R channel MONO (right channel taken from STEREO playback song)
3. L channel MONO (left channel taken from STEREO playback song enriched by metronome click for drummer)
4. R channel MONO (right channel taken from STEREO playback song enriched by metronome click for drummer)

1. and 2. are for public loudspeakers.
3. and 4. are for private headphones.

Is it possible to use MPC 5000 for these purposes ? I mean, we have about 10 songs for live performing, and I am currently playing via iPad. But there are only 2 outputs, which I can use for sending "L mono with playback" and "R mono with playback enriched by metronome click". And I just want to hear stereo...

I can only think of loading programs sequentially (song by song) but there is so much time needed to load these 4 wav to RAM...and this is not good approach for live performance.
Moreover I can´t imagine how to map WAVs in program to specific output.

I hope you understand my problem...Every idea is very welcome.

Luki

Hi Luki, I have done pretty much the same setup with a band. You just need to use the hard disk playback mode to import your .wavs and set the relevant outputs for each tracks. One thing that works better is instead of using the internal click, bounce a metronome click out of your D.A.W in sync with the backing track as a separate file, then import this as a .wav and use on its own output as the click for the drummer. This way you don't have to program tempo changes etc in the mpc and the click will be spot on in time. I found if you try and match the .wav with the internal click it can be slightly out. If you need to use the mpc as a sampler on top of the playback .wavs then match the length of your sequences in bars to the length of the songs .wav, when you move from one song to another the mpc will switch any used programs to the correct song.
Hope this helps, it's a bit clunky and takes a little to import all the audio, but I found it ran stable once setup. Remember to take a backup of the set on say compact flash, just in case the hard drive gets corrupt.
Regards
Nic

BulldogNic wrote:Hi Luki, I have done pretty much the same setup with a band. You just need to use the hard disk playback mode to import your .wavs and set the relevant outputs for each tracks. One thing that works better is instead of using the internal click, bounce a metronome click out of your D.A.W in sync with the backing track as a separate file, then import this as a .wav and use on its own output as the click for the drummer. This way you don't have to program tempo changes etc in the mpc and the click will be spot on in time. I found if you try and match the .wav with the internal click it can be slightly out. If you need to use the mpc as a sampler on top of the playback .wavs then match the length of your sequences in bars to the length of the songs .wav, when you move from one song to another the mpc will switch any used programs to the correct song.
Hope this helps, it's a bit clunky and takes a little to import all the audio, but I found it ran stable once setup. Remember to take a backup of the set on say compact flash, just in case the hard drive gets corrupt.
Regards
Nic

Thank you very much Nic,

I am so glad, that it is possible. But I still can´t imagine, how to correctly use "hard disk playback mode" to import several WAVs together and set the relevant outputs for them. I can´t find anything about that in MPC5000 manual.
Btw: I agree with the click setting, as a separate file mapped to own output. That´s definitely better idea.

Hi Luki,
First,connect your MPC to your computer via USB and move the backing tracks and click .wavs to the MPC hard drive or use CompactFlash.
Page 66 of manual..... Enter HD Recording mode ( mode & pad 16 ). In song field, close song to add .wav.
Press F4 (TKView) to open track view.
Choose track, ie-1&2 for a stereo .wav.
Press F6 (edit) to open audio edit page.
In edit field, select "import track"
Press F5 (do it)
Choose file and directory for .wav to import
Press F5 (do it)

That's it to import various .wavs, just repeat for the other backing tracks on tracks 1&2 and change the tracks to 3&4 for the click .wavs.
You then just need to adjust the audio outputs for the playback of the tracks , so you can send the click to a separate input on your mixer / headphone amp.
This is on page 67. In HD record mode as above, press F3 (TRKMIX) to get to the track mix page.
You can use the pads to select the tracks or the cursor. At the top of the internal mixer it shows the outputs, just set them however you want. Ie L&R for the MPC sampler/synth, 1&2 for your backing tracks .wavs and 3&4 for the click .wavs
Hope this helps you out. Good luck, it will work
Nic

Thank you so much, finally I got it ...I don´t know why but there was a problem because manual instructions for playing WAWs from hard disk are little different than my own experience with trying to solve my problem. One of the differences is that I can´t see (TKView) tab. In my MPC there is only HDView tab. And there are some other small differences, I have no MPC here so I can´t describe them further.
Some things still confusing me. For example, I can´t play pads with samples/synths if I´m still in HD Recording mode ( mode & pad 16 ).
Or another exploration - I can assign PADs with samples/synth ONLY over L&R channel. They just don´t want to play in any other outputs .
But the biggest mystery for me is that I don´t understand what does it means track 1&2. I can assign my WAVs to track 1, or track 2. It works but when I´m trying to manipulate with track 1&2 (or track 3&4 and so on), there is no output audio in any of MPC outputs...I just don´t understand what does it mean "track 1&2" - what is purpose of this property. But anyway, thank you very much for your answers, BulldogNic