MPC X MIDI OUT PORT D: Hardware Effects,

I admit it, I’m one of those producers who never took full advantage of using MIDI to control their hardware effects, but that changed this morning when the realization that I could be using my MPC X to automate my modest collection of hardware effects to do some highly creative things I never considered before.

Now I’m on a mission to drive over to Guitar Center today for some more MIDI cables so I can connect these devices to port d so I create a new MIDI chain that I can control each effect rack on a separate channel.

Computers and the effects plugins we use are cool and all, but sometimes you gotta look beyond what’s right in front of your face and sniff what’s right under your nose.

I mean, why not send specific information to my Yamaha SPX90, or Eventide H3000 SE, or Digidesign Eleven Rack, or Ensoniq DP/4 to get specific results?

Isn’t that what their MIDI functions there for?

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking “Meh”, maybe this will be an eye opening revelation for you, maybe you’re a know all, see all, f u c king genius who’ve been doing this for eons, I just figure it could be helpful to someone who’s likeminded.

external synths and fx are over rated... just throw them away.. FYI.. I'll make sure your Eventide H3000 SE makes it in the trash. I'll send you my address!

Yes, I would absolutely utilize them!

renegadebliss wrote:external synths and fx are over rated... just throw them away.. FYI.. I'll make sure your Eventide H3000 SE makes it in the trash. I'll send you my address!

Yes, I would absolutely utilize them!

Seriously, you should invest in your own hardware if you don't have any. AU/VST plugins are cool and all, but there's a lot of freedom in using hardware.

I used to have a lot of off board gear, but been totally digging midi controllable guitar pedals lately. Takes up less space and often just as powerful. The neat thing with guitar pedals is that they usually have a port for an expression pedal, which you can route CV to for a bit more granular control over the effect than standard midi CC allows for.

I make use of the midi on most effects I have. Really dope on analog filters to get the lfos to sync.

I don’t do a lot of programming them, but some effects are really nice to have synced.

As I’m still working out the kinks with a newer setup I’ll look into maybe getting controllers or such to help. Lexicon would be doper if I had more knobs instead of menu diving so much, same for eventide but to a lesser extent. Other effects are just perfect for quickly dialing in a sound and don’t need much in terms of external control.

+1 hardware effects are where the fun is it.

The things I discovered tonight that you can do by connecting my Akai MFC42 and Electrix FilterFactory to my MPC X via MIDI...

that's why i bought a DP/4, EMU RFX and RV-4 (kawai) in the first place
+ bring in the modular (EFX) and (horses in the) sky rockx!

I don't use midi that much but the 5/6 output of my Mpc Live is always busy to send sounds to external effects.
I think that is where having more outputs become interesting.
Nothing against Air internal fx but hardware effects have their own flavour, and gives me the time for example to loop a small portion of a sound and tweak it while changing project on Live.
And I think these modern boxes are very good to mix them and use them together.

it would be even better if these/some were sends/inserts but helas

Ive always had mine connected through MIDI. I hardly ever actually tweak effects or anything with them, but its handy as **** for keeping patches together in your songs. I still use it with the MPC, since they're all connected to my AMT8. I just make a bunch of empty MIDI tracks at the bottom of my sequence and send over the program changes at the beginning of each song so everything is ready to rock.

You can ad an Elektron analog heat or maybe a used biscuit. The heat is a stereo unit while I really like the concept I diden t like the filter on the unit. But I didn t spend the much time with it.

For distortion I use trash 2 and decimort. I bought the eventide 3000 vst and wasn't really impressed. It's dated and I prefer the soundtoys

tiger001 wrote:it would be even better if these/some were sends/inserts but helas

If I remember right the mpc 60 had this

Analog heat takes a lot of time to really know it’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had mine for three years and always use it but I don’t always have the filters engaged.

The low pass is ok, but the other filters are actually pretty good. More “surgical” but I actually prefer the high pass and band pass more than other units I have.

Better low passes in my opinion are the Dave Smith prophet filter- the one on Toriaz line, it sounds really good but can get noisey I noticed.

Moog mf-101- awesome low pass, no midi but an envelope follower, fresh can get on his soap box but from my personal experience the boog filter was the weakest I have ever used and the reason I sold it. The moog is also a great driver without the effect to add some “heat” to your sound. Pretty easy to dial in.

Moog midi murf- I am still trying to figure this one out. It has a fixed array of the moog filters, similar sound to my moog graphic eq but it can be automated. Sometimes I feel it’s limited but then I either dig into it some or use the app to customize it and it changes everything.

The new filter on the sequential prophet x is definitely on my top two but it’s attached to a 3-4K synth so it’s to be expected and you can’t really use it to process external sources without loading samples.

Mutronics mutator- besides the prophet x filter there isn’t anything I have used that even gets close to this one. Easy to dial in, the envelope follower leads to craziness on top of that. Hard to find, but not really replaced very easily.

Other mentions I haven’t used:

Schippman ebb and flut- from what I have seen it seems to be on the same level as the mutator but with more control options.

Sherman filterbank- has a ton Of external control but had that Roland 303 filter on meth sound. Really not my flavor but worth a mention.

Sherman restyler- now this Sherman I could vibe with, no midi which is why I never pulled the trigger but I do believe it has an envelope follower. I need to look into this one again.

Jomox moonwind- ive almost pulled the trigger on this one a few times, but for some reason I never have. It’s dope sounding with some digital effects from their other effects. One of the few filters I seen that can run two filters in series or parallel.

Obviously a ton of eurorack but that requires other modules or gear to make use of. I tried some- some were cool some seemed like over hyped expensive little boxes. The new behringer euro rack kind of caught my eye but after seeing how the model d filter was in am cautious about their 500 series filter array which would be of much use to me. The 100 series doesn’t catch my eye much because I don’t really dig the Roland filter sound, which honestly seems static and not very flexible much like my experience with the boog filter.

For true distortion there’s plenty of pedals out there but a few units that stick out to me are:

Rat pedal- nothing beats the classic tried and true distortion pedal not very expensive either

Chandler pedals - they are more of a volume pedal but they do impart a lot on the tone.

The king of distortion to me seems to be the culture vulture. People use it in their mastering chain so it can be clean but it can also mangle a sound like it’s been up for days smoking meth, jumped into a gang and a bad case of food poisoning... lol

Alright I think I had enough coffee and spoke my mind enough. Hope my opinions can be helpful or maybe lead to further discussion.

Cockdiesel wrote:Analog heat takes a lot of time to really know it’s strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had mine for three years and always use it but I don’t always have the filters engaged.

The low pass is ok, but the other filters are actually pretty good. More “surgical” but I actually prefer the high pass and band pass more than other units I have.

Better low passes in my opinion are the Dave Smith prophet filter- the one on Toriaz line, it sounds really good but can get noisey I noticed.

Moog mf-101- awesome low pass, no midi but an envelope follower, fresh can get on his soap box but from my personal experience the boog filter was the weakest I have ever used and the reason I sold it. The moog is also a great driver without the effect to add some “heat” to your sound. Pretty easy to dial in.

Moog midi murf- I am still trying to figure this one out. It has a fixed array of the moog filters, similar sound to my moog graphic eq but it can be automated. Sometimes I feel it’s limited but then I either dig into it some or use the app to customize it and it changes everything.

The new filter on the sequential prophet x is definitely on my top two but it’s attached to a 3-4K synth so it’s to be expected and you can’t really use it to process external sources without loading samples.

Mutronics mutator- besides the prophet x filter there isn’t anything I have used that even gets close to this one. Easy to dial in, the envelope follower leads to craziness on top of that. Hard to find, but not really replaced very easily.

Other mentions I haven’t used:

Schippman ebb and flut- from what I have seen it seems to be on the same level as the mutator but with more control options.

Sherman filterbank- has a ton Of external control but had that Roland 303 filter on meth sound. Really not my flavor but worth a mention.

Sherman restyler- now this Sherman I could vibe with, no midi which is why I never pulled the trigger but I do believe it has an envelope follower. I need to look into this one again.

Jomox moonwind- ive almost pulled the trigger on this one a few times, but for some reason I never have. It’s dope sounding with some digital effects from their other effects. One of the few filters I seen that can run two filters in series or parallel.

Obviously a ton of eurorack but that requires other modules or gear to make use of. I tried some- some were cool some seemed like over hyped expensive little boxes. The new behringer euro rack kind of caught my eye but after seeing how the model d filter was in am cautious about their 500 series filter array which would be of much use to me. The 100 series doesn’t catch my eye much because I don’t really dig the Roland filter sound, which honestly seems static and not very flexible much like my experience with the boog filter.

For true distortion there’s plenty of pedals out there but a few units that stick out to me are:

Rat pedal- nothing beats the classic tried and true distortion pedal not very expensive either

Chandler pedals - they are more of a volume pedal but they do impart a lot on the tone.

The king of distortion to me seems to be the culture vulture. People use it in their mastering chain so it can be clean but it can also mangle a sound like it’s been up for days smoking meth, jumped into a gang and a bad case of food poisoning... lol

Alright I think I had enough coffee and spoke my mind enough. Hope my opinions can be helpful or maybe lead to further discussion.

How do you like Mpc Live internal filters?
I use them a lot, assigned to qlinks, filter on a knob and resonance on the other, and play with them with fun.
Also the Akai grime distortion has a good use for me.
For distortions I find Roland Mc boxes have best ones, they actually are guitar multifx distortions put in a groovebox and they sound very guitarish which can be good or bad depending on your taste.
Coming from electric guitar and being used to that kind of saturations, I find them very usable.
Akai ones are much more digital but sometimes I like that. Air distortion is not so good for me but I sometimes use the Lofi effect with rectify or white noise.

I don’t use the akai filters as much as analog ones but they are usable. By far not the best digital filters but still not total garbage.

To me the newer akai filter seem to have a eq curve or something applied to them. They just seem exaggerated and meant to “pop out” at you. I compared them to the akai mini ak, which has some awesome digital filters btw, and they are very different but similar in a way.

Akai mini ak, seems to have more of a “flat” response but not bad sounding and more “surgical” and “open” sounding. Kind of reminds me of the filters on the 4000

Maybe the filters on the live are meant for more “punchy” drum sounds where the mini ak seem to be more all around filtering.

The elektron boxes have better filters on some of their boxes. The baseline filter on digitone is one of the best digital filters I have used but the other filter you use after it sucks. Makes no sense, and you can’t process external sound through the filters so the box has little use for me. Mini ak can do the same with external sound, but it’s a lot more menu diving to set up.