Emulating hardware (MPC) sound in the DAW

Did anyone ever come close to emulating the sound characteristics of an MPC signal output in the DAW?

I don’t mean specific model characteristics, rather the general richness, warmth and punch of any of the now vintage samplers‘ up to the 5000 series, when routing signal through them including master compressor before output.

I haven’t found a plugin chain yet that would come close to what I achieve when routing the DAW master out through an MPC, even the 1000.

What I found helpful so far are these:

- NLS Drum Bus: beefs up the signal in a very subtle way (and that’s a set-and-forget in production templates)
- RX950: more analog sampler feel through bandwidth setting and filtering

What I‘m still missing are comparable qualities of signal amping and the specific mpc master compression.

Also just just got the AIR music tech fx suite on discount, as it has the modern MPC‘s dynamics plugins bundled, but haven’t dabbled with them yet.

Peace out

Are you already using the MPC desktop version ?

The flavour pro plugin does a decent job. What makes the MPC have that sound is the “op-amps” op=output. So if you had a preamp simulator run the input gain by 1-2 dB. Then play your tracks into that master or bus.

If you don’t want to use flavor pro then just play into a compressor and EQ channel. Do a subtle cut on your low end to let the low mid come out more.

Your strategy in general should cover a lot of the sonics you are looking for. The biggest performance bump is to use some sort of 16 pad controller and play your virtual instrument into it. Most DAWs have nailed down the swing percentages so now it’s up to you to play to the metronome and write your own groove.

I hope that helps.