Hands On Review! MPC5000 Kicks major A** !!!!

Mini Review

Had a chance to thoroughly mess around & play this new MPC5000 for myself.

I now understand, that the 5000 is clearly no joke really. The built in synthesizer triggered by the ARP generator is a real beast I must say! The sounds are MASSIVE! I mean MASSIVE & FRESH ! I'm warning you could blow the roof off if you crank out sounds like I did. You could create some unique synth sounds like I did and then ARP and RESAMPLE them up into something funky, I mean the unit is really a REAL beast.

In a couple of minutes I was cranking out hard core hip hop that even DR DRE and Timberland would love with the funkiest basslines & leads ever created!!!!! ALL unique basses and lead & fx sounds! Then I added leads after leads after leads and even more synth sounds on top of drum loops and guitar loops and original sounds until I had to stop from the chill bumps that overwhelmed my body!

All I can say is man, that MPC5000 was kicking like a mule unlike anything I ever played or experience in my mpc experiences and I own the mother of them all the MPC4000. It really surprised me much more than I thought coming from a MPC4000 perspective though.

A Roland MV8800 with one mono bass note and one midi output can't compete or even come close to the MPC5000 IMHO. You have 20 analog synth voices and 4 midi outputs. People even mention the LINNDRUM II but after reading the specs it don't look to exciting to me.

Original Beat junkies out there will probably love this unit. Techno/House producers will probably jump for joy on this too & commercialize the sound potential more faster or just as fast as hip hop producers because of the umlimited opportunity to also create the trance & techno sounds & tracks this thing can produce.

If you use MPCs to create beats and own anything less than a MPC4000 I say run out and buy this if you can afford this, and step up into the 21st Century. MPC4000 users if you want some instant onboard originality along with your samples and be able to cut vocals or play live instruments instantly through the 8-track HD recorder you might want to add this to your arsenal for world domination.

This unit may not pack as many features as the MPC4000 but it may well be the greatest MPC ever created I think.

The only thing I don't like about it is the name. Akai should have kept the MPC numbers below the 4000 so it wouldn't create confusion or a backlash as to people expecting to be identical to all the features they think they may need from the 4000 in comparison. Maybe Akai should have named it the MPC 3500 to you folks and everybody probably would have been totally satisfied to it being what it is.

I can live with 192mb of memory and a DVD burner and a 20 voice funky fresh onboard synthesizer with a fresh ARP generator and the Chop Shop 2.0 and Phrase Pad generator and all the other new stuff.

For $2,500 this thing is totally unbeatable and now nothing compares or even comes close to features per price ratio.

Just my .02cents

^^^ Anyone else think that almost sounded like a paid advertisment???? Is akai that desperate to sell these things.

Are you really billy maze ? ( I would toss in a screen shot of him with a akia if i knew how -- I guess we can wait for jimbo to do it )

Yeah. kinda sounds like an ad. FUNKY?? FRESH? GTFOH!

if you buy a mpc5000 will you toss in a some oxi clean to get the smell of cheap off my hands after i play with this thing?

Damn.....you did a much better job of selling it than I.

At least there is one other person who is excited. I have to agree. If you are using older MPCs, especially models like the MPC 2000XL you are about to witness a machine that is 1000s times more powerful and feature packed. Back in the 90s when the 2000XL was released, if you tried to max it out with the 8 outs, FX card, flash rom card, add an internal zip drive for storage, you would have paid close to $2000 and not have scratch the surface of what the MPC 5000 can do...or what the MPC 2500 can do now with the official Akai OS or the unofficial JJ OS.

Shit like this makes me not wanna buy the 5000. Why you gotta diss the MVs and Linndrums?

Why you gotta diss the MVs and Linndrums?

Because I hate both of those machines. LOL Just kiddin.

Folks in need of a new MPC or new innovative machine will buy what they need regardless of opinions only a small fraction of the MPC buyers actually even read these BBS and base their opinions off of it instead of their own actual experience.

A lot of you folks are stated here as tired, mad, bitter, sad, angry, disgruntled, depressed, psychotic, suicidal, that Akai made a new MPC.

So of course I gotta come in and brag about how great the experience is with it that's all.

kday wrote:

Why you gotta diss the MVs and Linndrums?

Because I hate both of those machines. LOL Just kiddin.

Folks in need of a new MPC or new innovative machine will buy what they need regardless of opinions only a small fraction of the MPC buyers actually even read these BBS and base their opinions off of it instead of their own actual experience.

A lot of you folks are stated here as tired, mad, bitter, sad, angry, disgruntled, depressed, psychotic, suicidal, that Akai made a new MPC.

So of course I gotta come in and brag about how great the experience is with it that's all.

I like that.

A lot of you folks are stated here as tired, mad, bitter, sad, angry, disgruntled, depressed, psychotic, suicidal, that Akai made a new MPC.

To paraphrase another member...

I don't think anyone's mad because they're building a new MPC . I think they are more upset that they never finished building the current MPCs .

Cheap hardware parts ,OS bugs , and customer abandonment make for bitter and skeptical user base.

To paraphrase another member...

I don't think anyone's mad because they're building a new MPC . I think they are more upset that they never finished building the current MPCs .

I love that comment right there its 100% the way i feel.

moyphee wrote:

A lot of you folks are stated here as tired, mad, bitter, sad, angry, disgruntled, depressed, psychotic, suicidal, that Akai made a new MPC.

To paraphrase another member...

I don't think anyone's mad because they're building a new MPC . I think they are more upset that they never finished building the current MPCs .

Cheap hardware parts ,OS bugs , and customer abandonment make for bitter and skeptical user base.

So you believe that other machines problems should translate over to bitterness towards a new product that haven't been released yet huh?

I have an MPC4000 it's rock solid and of quality build. My MPC 2000 was of great quality, so where does it mean to complain & whine about the MPC5000?

Let me know so I can join the bandwagon?

If you bought one of the toy MPCs expect a cheaper build quality but you get what you pay for.

Dj Solace wrote:To paraphrase another member...

I don't think anyone's mad because they're building a new MPC . I think they are more upset that they never finished building the current MPCs .

I love that comment right there its 100% the way i feel.

Which MPCs is that? The MPC 4000 isn't a current MPC. As far as I remember, no MPC received official Akai support after 3 years.

How can anyone be upset about a product that bought and could have easily returned it for a refund? Or the fact that it came with a 1 year warranty.

It sounds to me that some of you bought the wrong MPC..should have gotten the MPC 2500...want to buy mine I got the black pads installed....

kday wrote:A lot of you folks are stated here as tired, mad, bitter, sad, angry, disgruntled, depressed, psychotic, suicidal, that Akai made a new MPC.

Nah Akaiday, we're mad, bitter, angry, and disgruntled because y'all dropped an MPC with very limited features for 2008, new features that aren't innovative (ASR-10 had hard Disk recording in 1993) (and who doesn't have a cheesy VA already?)

Many of us, and especially me, were ready, cash in hand, for Akai Pro (you & your boys) to drop a real flagship with everything that was good about the previous MPC's, and then some newer features that would be better on an MPC than in a DAW:

--960ppq timing (good, you gave us one BIG thing!)
--real sampler/multi structure of the 4000, so we can load our programs
--high quality/distinctive A/D & D/A converters like the 4000/older MPC's, not the scooped out converters of the 1000 & 2500.
--Program modulation matrix for sampler and synth
--more polyphony than the 4k
--at least as many MIDI tracks as the 4k, so we can load our complex sequences and songs
--at least a max of 512mb RAM, so 4k users can buy and load on a 5000

And maybe you could have given us some real workflow/sequencing innovation, as motivation to buy:

--An improved version of Ak.Sys to work with that USB 2.0
--recordable mutes in song mode !!!
--ability to extend sequences tick by tick
--realtime chop&assign per pad tap on sample playback in chop shop (for us folks with rhythm who like to work in rhythm [alpha chop shop])
--EQ per part
--Realtime timestretch on sample tracks to compete with the MV/Ableton


Instead you gave us features, that software world already does a million times better (stereo recording [8 tracks, but only two at a time is not "multitrack recorder], and a sh!tty VA synth that every on has a superior version of in their rack, keyboards, or in software), and you give us useless joke/glitch features that only kids think are cool.

This is why we're mad, because you gave us nothing to buy.

i hope i'm wrong when i think this whole thread is viral advertising...

alpha80 wrote:...and a sh!tty VA synth that every on has a superior version of in their rack, keyboards, or in software),

How do you know the VA synth is sh!tty??From what I've been told be several people who attended NAMM is sounded pretty D*MN good...
I guess we'll have to test it before we can determine if it's sh!tty or not, don't you think???