MPC5000 Dilemma to get or not to get...

Coz wrote:Lazy producing is the problem, not the software.

Amen!

wavemartian wrote:That's funny and quite true, if the presets sound good people will use them cause they can't do better themselves, hence they all sound the same, that is why sampling from obscure sources and arranging those sounds is more inventive and adds the difference to stand out.

actually, learning how to play an instrument and understand musical theory is more inventive and stands out more.
Using patches is pretty much equal to using samples. You're still manipulating premade audio. Its fun, and sounds good, but not very inventive at all.

The last thing most people on the planet thinks about when listening to music is what patch an artist used to create music with. If they cared so much about things that sound the same, then the popularity of T-Pain colabos wouldn't be flooding the markets.

guys here is the audio for the live PA I performed! It was great and staying with the 2500 until the performance was indeed the correct choice! But now, time to move to the 5000!
cheers!!


Audio: http://disono.com/music/Ri_Caragol_Live ... -26-08.mp3

Tracklisting:

1) Ri Caragol - Age of Elegance
2) Ri Caragol - Come With Me
3) Ri Caragol - 808 Dream
4) Ri Caragol - Stellar Voyage
5) Ri Caragol - Latin OD
6) Ri Caragol - Bassem
7) Ri Caragol - Rave With Me
Ri Caragol - Progress (time frame edit)

Video of the last 4 minutes: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AgCrshmhpYY


-ri

Askia Shaheed wrote:The last thing most people on the planet thinks about when listening to music is what patch an artist used to create music with. If they cared so much about things that sound the same, then the popularity of T-Pain colabos wouldn't be flooding the markets.

Nerds do, but f*ck em who gives a f*ck about the forum audience?

Ritec, nice live set there! Were you using some live synths as part of the set also, or were those samples?

As for the mention of guys using Ableton with the Apple logo.. So true.. I hate that stuff. With the extra q-links for sound manipulation, I think the 5k would be perfect for live sets.

Let us know when you pick up the 5K and what you think about it.

The MPC is great but Ableton is a very powerful and entertaining tool if done the right way.. I use my MPC to write all of my stuff with my analog synths , track it into ableton and manipulate it in ways only an MPC can dream of.. The fact that you can stack tons of effects on top of each other alone makes it a godsend.. And as far as looks I have 2 MPD 24's an Evolution uc 33, Novation Remote 25 , and Korg Pad Kontrol, all assigned to different controls effects ect . I agree just a computer on stage looks lame but with the plethora of cheap MIDI controllers out there you and look like Orbital and do some mind boggling s--t.... Dont get me wrong MPC's are the best sequencers around but Ableton is a completley different beast and the whole sound and sounding the same comes from using the same samples ect not the program itself.. I would say your 2500 setup for live PA is problably better due to the fact the 2500 is more portable and the 5000 is a big boy...

Avene: Yes I use an access virus indigo I synthesizer in multi mode as my synth, the mpc2500 as my sequencer drum machine and just general brain and a kaoss pad 3 that only runs the access virus through it.

Alright so I have an MPC5000 in front of me. To be honest I am still exploring it and I am glad I did not buy it for my live PA. Reason being that it's a a bit more complicated than the 2500, because it's considerably bigger and also because it's still somewhat unstable. So staying with the 2500 until the live PA was indeed the right choice.

that said, I am currently loving the mpc5000 and I can only think of the amazing things I will be able to do with it once it's stable and I get the hang of it just like I used to have the hang of the mpc2500. The synthesizer is pretty nice and although I've only played with it for about 2 hours I have been able to get a wide variety of sounds... from grinding basses to rich pads to subs to weird fxes. The effects on the machine are also very nice and definitely one of the big pluses on the 5000. It's quite refreshing to be able to assign those 4 busses as desired to any sound you want, it really expands the possibilities you have.. specially if you consider that you can bounce down processed sounds and keep reprocessing them. Same thing with the synth, and with the added 64MB of RAM you can really push the envelope with this internal resampling. On the Mpc2500 I would run out of memory, but now with the Hd streaming I will be able to push the envelope even further.

All in all I love it, but I do wish it was smaller, this thing is a beast. Once I have more experience i will be posting some videos, photos and maybe even some tutorials. right now I still have the 64 on board memory so I can't even load my live PA... today the extra 128MB was shipped from canada for about $160. (this thing can get really expensive)

Also the price is a bit outrageous($2,500)... $2000 dollars would sounds fair and I have seen it for that price on ebay but $2,500 is a bit steep. I would probably wait for it to go down in price or snag one of the $2,100~ on ebay, while they last.

What else... mmm the pads feel better and more bouncy, and the jog wheel is not as responsive as the one on the 2500. it would be great if every tick would decrease / increase values but for some reason it skips ticks and sometimes it takes several spins to move values up and down.

overall I give it a 9 / 10 .

ritec wrote:
that said, I am currently loving the mpc5000 and I can only think of the amazing things I will be able to do with it once it's stable

Thats how I feel about it

5000 is DOPE. Originally was excited...then became concerned about the bugs...updated the os...worked through most of the 1.01 bugs I encountered...now realizing how dope this machine is. Buggy...but being excited about finding new ways to make music is overpowering the frustration of occassional bug encounters. Hope they at least get one more updated OS out this year though.

8 tracks hard disk recording is really a cool new feature The new synth it comes with doesn't sound all that great but is a cool add in. , Added effects are really handy n nice. extra faders are nice to . I'm gonna go for the 5k for the extra effects and the 8 track hard disk recording. I think Akai is trying to somewhat emulate the roland mv-8800

I don t know how you guys are doing !!!!

I m working more than 3 hours a day with the 5000 & more than 12 hours each week end without any issue exept those i mentionned in the bug thread

None of those issues is stoping me to work.

I can work with the MPC on for more than 12 hours without any freeze...

I guess you d better learn how to use it :p

Also about the OS update, WAIT, more you WAIT better the update will be & more bugs will be soved !!!

Be patient & make music instead of forum flamming

tomazzzi wrote:
I m working more than 3 hours a day with the 5000 & more than 12 hours each week end without any issue exept those i mentionned in the bug thread

None of those issues is stoping me to work.

I can work with the MPC on for more than 12 hours without any freeze...

I guess you d better learn how to use it :p

Dude, alot of us have been using various MPC's for over 10 years, and dont have a freeze yet on any of the others(besides, the MPC 2000XL before a update, use to sometimes have a screenload of Jibberish where you had no other option but to restart, which was fixed, i havent seen that screen in maybe 5 years). Now we get the 5000 and when you get in the zone, and it freezes up, thats an issue. First of all, you might not be doing the same processing that we are doing or things that we are doing. If you are doing much at all using it 12 hours a day, you should have a lot of beats made if you are using your MPC that much from the 5000 and its not freezing, or is your workflow not productive like that.

Just Blaze cant even get this thing to run well.... but you are using it 12 hours a day without no issues... read the new posts about working with this thing, apparently he agrees, and reads these exact posts