Assigning a plugin to a pad forces it into submix – a featur

Sorry if this has been discussed before.

I just don't get the logic; you assign an insert plugin to a pad and it's immediately forced out to a submix and you can't have it go out to track mixer unless you de-activate the inserts.
Why?

An example why this is annoying:
I often have 16+ drum samples in a program.
I realize there's one that's not loud enough so I want to bring it up a bit.
Well, I know the easiest way would be to bring it up in prog mix or to bring its level up, but if they're already at max, that won't help, and then, bringing all others down is an arduous task (I wish you could "select all" or something) – so a good solution is to assign a simple gain plugin to the pad that's too quiet and boost that by, say, 2–3 decibels or however much you have to.
However, what it does is that it forces the pad to go to submix.
And why this isn't good is that now, if you want to go to track mix and bring down the drum track in question, the pad that just got forced to submix isn't affected by the track's volume fader anymore so every time you want to bring the drum track up/down, you have to manually do that to the pad in question.

Why is this? Super annoying, imho.
Is this a bug?

The mixer is working as intended. The ever so popular 'archaic' mixer is based off of the mixers of legacy MPCs with some improvements. It is actually the first MPC mixer that even allows Inserts on Pads and Track Mixer channels. While this bit of history won't ease anyone frustrations with the mixer...just know that the developers are aware of the gripes some users have with the mixer. The mixer is projected to have improvements.

The alternatives...don't use the Insert Fxs on pads. Render your FXs at the track level. And of course..you can mix within your DAW.

But why is this behavior intended? I mean, what is its purpose? Why can't I have the pad go out to main if it has a plugin on it?

Fanu wrote:But why is this behavior intended? I mean, what is its purpose? Why can't I have the pad go out to main if it has a plugin on it?

The mixer is 'archaic'..meaning old-fashioned. The Ren is still based off of hardware MPCs and this is a feature that hasn't been improved upon much.

Why? The same question can be applied to numerous aspects of the software. The best answers I can come up with is there are aspects of the software that have a higher priority then this one or the amount of time needed to implement and test an improved mixer is the reason for the delay. These are my opinions/guesses and in no way reflect the position of the Numark/Akai as I am just an MPC user like rest here.

Fanu wrote:Sorry if this has been discussed before.

I just don't get the logic; you assign an insert plugin to a pad and it's immediately forced out to a submix and you can't have it go out to track mixer unless you de-activate the inserts.
Why?

An example why this is annoying:
I often have 16+ drum samples in a program.
I realize there's one that's not loud enough so I want to bring it up a bit.
Well, I know the easiest way would be to bring it up in prog mix or to bring its level up, but if they're already at max, that won't help, and then, bringing all others down is an arduous task (I wish you could "select all" or something) – so a good solution is to assign a simple gain plugin to the pad that's too quiet and boost that by, say, 2–3 decibels or however much you have to.
However, what it does is that it forces the pad to go to submix.
And why this isn't good is that now, if you want to go to track mix and bring down the drum track in question, the pad that just got forced to submix isn't affected by the track's volume fader anymore so every time you want to bring the drum track up/down, you have to manually do that to the pad in question.

Why is this? Super annoying, imho.
Is this a bug?

+1 I fuvking hate that!!

This is basically a duplicate of several threads on the very same subject.....

JAH wrote:

Fanu wrote:But why is this behavior intended? I mean, what is its purpose? Why can't I have the pad go out to main if it has a plugin on it?

The mixer is 'archaic'..meaning old-fashioned.

I know that what's archaic is that all sequences have their own mixer settings in terms of track levels. As we haven't been able to f00k with plugins before, this is not an archaic feature – this is more like dysfunctional.

Well, at least Pete's Twitter update today says "Back on the MPC train. Let's see what the latest build does..."

I'll soon be getting an MPC 4000 which seems to have several features the Ren is missing. I'll still keep my Ren as I definitely like it to an extent and have accepted the fact that I'm an early adopter.

Yeah Fanu, that features is indeed annoying. Please sort it out Akai

You're getting the 4000? That's a beast, got the Akai Z Series sampler built in so sample mangling/resampling/etc can be taken a couple steps further than the MPC Ren.

Enjoy my friend (I know you will)

Btw-How much for and where from??? They don't tend to go up for sale that often.

Ya faun this has been one of my main requests. Even if they left the it with this separation of track mixer/program mixer setup as it is. They need to make it linked to all sequences. If you have 5 seq well you have 10-15 damn mixers to tweak and quad tripled efx on the multiple mixers you now have. This is abvious lay not ideal for workflow or your ram. So I'm sure it will be solved.

Although this is very frustrating, id have to give a positive note: the ren has become the beast I expected. They have done a good job at getting it back to the expectations and bug fixes. So I'd expect this mixer c.r.a.p to be fixed soon.


*edit, c.r.a.p is a bad word!

Nubian Mindz wrote:You're getting the 4000? That's a beast, got the Akai Z Series sampler built in so sample mangling/resampling/etc can be taken a couple steps further than the MPC Ren.

Btw-How much for and where from??? They don't tend to go up for sale that often.

Yeah, a person I know is selling one and offered it to me first; I'll pick it up soon.
Not sure about the price yet but I'm guessing not too much.

Reasons to get one (in addition to "because I can"):
-no fx->submix annoyance
-LFO retrigger on/off
-decicated resample with FX feature (I can see myself doing stuff like snare EQing)
-ability to sort tracks as I wish
-reverse loop (this is huge for me, really, and Akai's had it since 1986 at least)
-realtime quantize audition
-crossfade looping
-glide

I hear what you're saying Fanu, those things you mentioned are very important for me when using Akai samplers.

I'm hoping the Ren gets an injection on the sampling synthesis side of things because it's what Akai do so well and have strangely cut down in the Ren.

Nubian Mindz wrote:I hear what you're saying Fanu, those things you mentioned are very important for me when using Akai samplers.

I'm hoping the Ren gets an injection on the sampling synthesis side of things because it's what Akai do so well and have strangely cut down in the Ren.

Yeah man.
I've got more than an album worth of very decent stuff in the works with the Ren but the aforementioned things (I actually made a list of those yesterday) and some others make me think "Ah, you really can't do this with the Ren?" every now and then, causing some annoyances. It almost feels like they haven't consulted some REAL sampler heads at all, and what we've been going thru (and still are) is the actual development phase.

That's not to say you can't make absolutely dope music with the Ren, of course...

Fanu wrote:-no fx->submix annoyance
-LFO retrigger on/off
-decicated resample with FX feature (I can see myself doing stuff like snare EQing)
-ability to sort tracks as I wish
-reverse loop (this is huge for me, really, and Akai's had it since 1986 at least)
-realtime quantize audition
-crossfade looping
-glide

I can't believe they bypassed the crossfade/reverse loop... on a 2013's gear...

I too am annoyed by this feature

I was just think if it went to channel mixers just like the actual tracks do then it could also save us doing drums on separate tracks as they would automatically be sent to a separate track

Its just the fact they are sub mixes with little round knobs with no meter like the rest of your tracks

It would be much simpler to have them as normal tracks