Overall stability AKA would you trust this MPC for live use?

Been reading here for awhile and have been intrigued by the MPC Ren/Studio setup. I currently run Ableton, but am unhappy with v8/v9's stability and get a lot of crashes (no it aint cracked, and yes I know wtf I'm doing with audio optimization in Windows).

I would ideally like something like the Studio and it's software for home production as well as live performance.

I'd be using 1 hardware synth, I have a good soundcard (Focusrite Scarlett 8i6), and I would use a handful of legit plugs.


Would you trust your Ren/Stu for a live gig? Also, how well does the software work as far as loading new sample banks/patterns so you can have a continuous set?

I wouldnt trust this thing for a live gig for another 6-7 months at this rate
the ren finally at the point it shouldve been during release, give it some time though
itll get there

right now, you perform this during a live gig, youre gonna be playing with fire
like "i hope it doesnt crash if i do this..., etc.."

Damn, that's how Ableton is for me right now. Well I really hope the Ren get's there someday.

Schmidi wrote:Been reading here for awhile and have been intrigued by the MPC Ren/Studio setup......

Instead of reading or asking questions....I suggest you observe the MPC Ren being used in a live performance. Check out You Tube. There are multiple videos of the MPC Ren being used in a live performance with the pads taking a beating.

I've used my Ren live last week for the first time, didn't have any problems... I've tested it while rehearsing with my band couple of times before the show, just to be safe, didn't have any problems also. It runs on my Open Labs Dbeat, and it runs perfectly, never crashed. Will let you know how it went through the summer, after a tour...

For me its a hate love relationship when I use it live .There things I still think needs work with a few crashes here or there .I think if they added master bpm sync which I can control all the bpms of my sequences and load programs while a sequence is still playing .

You can trust it to be stable as long as you have everything loaded (don't load or open anything new) and don't duplicate sequences.

More or less I'd trust it live as long as everything was already loaded and ready to go.

If you are just triggering samples you should be fine.

well if ableton is crashing then you got problems, i've hand no major problems with 7 8 or 9 using macs

i wouldn't waste any money on the studio until you got your computer sorted out

my advice save your money get a macbook pro use your old windows crap for surfing your twitter, facespace, mybook, bandcloud and soundcamp and downloading 3 and half men season 69 boxsets

i keep my imac for music only and offline and use a hacintosh for my surfing and general crap i've all ways stuck to those rules and never had any problems

yeah the ren software crashes but its getting better and more stable but if your computer is flaky with ableton then your asking for trouble right off the bat !!!!!

just my advice take it or ignore it

Danny wrote:well if ableton is crashing then you got problems, i've hand no major problems with 7 8 or 9 using macs

i wouldn't waste any money on the studio until you got your computer sorted out

my advice save your money get a macbook pro use your old windows **** for surfing your twitter, facespace, mybook, bandcloud and soundcamp and downloading 3 and half men season 69 boxsets

i keep my imac for music only and offline and use a hacintosh for my surfing and general **** i've all ways stuck to those rules and never had any problems

yeah the ren software crashes but its getting better and more stable but if your computer is flaky with ableton then your asking for trouble right off the bat !!!!!

just my advice take it or ignore it

+1 to downloading 3 and half men season 69 boxsets

Im absolutely confident It isnt even near stable enough To even consider Using It live... Period! Hopefully 1.4 is gonna change that

I've been using it live since 1.1 (1.0 was bad, though). No crashes or hang-ups to report after x15 1-hour sets.
My setup is to load the song projects as sample groups across programs/sequences so I don't fumble around with my laptop as much as possible.
My mobile rig for 1.1/1.2 was an Origin Eon 15, Win7 pro, with 32GB of ram. I set aside 24 GB for use as a RAM disc to store/access my live project.
Since 1.3, I've switched to a Macbook pro since the OS feels snappier and it's easier for me to see what's happening on the screen during a show due to the Retina display.

I have had some laptops that just couldn't do live performances. Here's a list of what I've tried and why it didn't work:

Alienware m14x with 16GB: after a bunch of failures it was finally narrowed down to a) the horrible drivers that control switching from the IGPU to the Dedicated that would stall out the entire machine intermittently, and b) the memory host controller would dynamically reduce the bus speed of the RAM if you were using less than 3GB (Ren = 32 bit= sub 4 GB max access).

Dell Latitude series: The i7s crashed alot. The i5s seemed to be really stable. BUT they overheated really quickly, thus causing system stalls/errors.

ASUS G-74: chipsets issues from the manufacturer. Wasn't willing to wait for the next update.

Toshiba(s): thanks to the local Costco, i was able to pretty much try every toshiba laptop they had available. Nothing positive worth mentioning. Tons of random failures.

JAH wrote:

Schmidi wrote:Been reading here for awhile and have been intrigued by the MPC Ren/Studio setup......

Instead of reading or asking questions....I suggest you observe the MPC Ren being used in a live performance. Check out You Tube. There are multiple videos of the MPC Ren being used in a live performance with the pads taking a beating.

Taking a beating is being modest. I maul the f*ck out of my pads. Ordered 3 sets of thickpads from MPCStuff. 1 to as a replacement and 2 for standby.