MPC Plugin alert: Air OPx-4 Expansion - Pro Motion!

Well this came out of nowhere - FINALLY! Curious if we can install these Expansions on standalone…

What is a vst plug in expansion anyway? I know what a plug in is, and I know what expansions are.

EnochLight wrote:Curious if we can install these Expansions on standalone

OPx-4 isn't a resources hog, so I'm hopeful !

jaymack wrote:What is a vst plug in expansion anyway? I know what a plug in is, and I know what expansions are.

I think you can answer your own question - it's an Expansion (as in, a collection of presets) for the OPx-4 VST plugin. Nothing unusual in general, as sound expansions via presets are sold for many other VST/AU/etc by other companies. This is just the first time that I know of that Air has made an actual Expansion for one of the plugins that can be used in MPC/Force standalone (well, we're still trying to determine if this can be installed like any other Expansion in standalone)...

Not the first plugin expansion, I made one for Fabric several months ago:
https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php ... n-presets/

And yes, these can be installed in standalone, as well as MPC Software.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Not the first plugin expansion, I made one for Fabric several months ago..

Sorry - I meant that have been officially made by Air Music or Akai.

MPC-Tutor wrote:And yes, these can be installed in standalone, as well as MPC Software.

Good to know!

Apparently Akai haven't even included an installation guide with this expansion, so currently no one knows what to do with it (in terms of standalone installation). I assume, like mine, you copy the presets inside the 'Synths > Air (whatever plugin) > Presets' folder. Not sure what they suggest if Opx4 is pre- installed to the internal disk (MPC Key 61, MPC X SE?)

MPC-Tutor wrote:Apparently Akai haven't even included an installation guide with this expansion, so currently no one knows what to do with it (in terms of standalone installation). I assume, like mine, you copy the presets inside the 'Synths > Air (whatever plugin) > Presets' folder. Not sure what they suggest if Opx4 is pre- installed to the internal disk (MPC Key 61, MPC X SE?)

Hmmm... that's disheartening. I was hoping it could be installed like any other (Air/Akai) Expansion, which is to say - using the desktop MPC Software Expansion manager to export to your external drive. But yeah, built-in factory storage plugins... that's a problem.

EnochLight wrote:

jaymack wrote:What is a vst plug in expansion anyway? I know what a plug in is, and I know what expansions are.

I think you can answer your own question - it's an Expansion (as in, a collection of presets) for the OPx-4 VST plugin. Nothing unusual in general, as sound expansions via presets are sold for many other VST/AU/etc by other companies. This is just the first time that I know of that Air has made an actual Expansion for one of the plugins that can be used in MPC/Force standalone (well, we're still trying to determine if this can be installed like any other Expansion in standalone)...

Yeah kinda figured that after posting. Sounds great. Esp for opx4. That plug in is tricky to create sounds with

EnochLight wrote:

MPC-Tutor wrote:Apparently Akai haven't even included an installation guide with this expansion, so currently no one knows what to do with it (in terms of standalone installation). I assume, like mine, you copy the presets inside the 'Synths > Air (whatever plugin) > Presets' folder. Not sure what they suggest if Opx4 is pre- installed to the internal disk (MPC Key 61, MPC X SE?)

Hmmm... that's disheartening. I was hoping it could be installed like any other (Air/Akai) Expansion, which is to say - using the desktop MPC Software Expansion manager to export to your external drive. But yeah, built-in factory storage plugins... that's a problem.

I had assumed they would be distributing this stuff via the 'Activate Plugins' screen (possibly expanding it to a full store), but based on what I've seen on Facebook this is potentially just a folder of presets with no instructions, so people have been trying to install it like they would a sample expansion. Someone else mentioned it had an installer for PC/Mac and that they had to fish out the presets manually to install into standalone.

With my Crush expansion I have included it as a standard expansion as well, as you can load plugin presets via the expansion browser if you wish (I attached browser audio previews to assist with this), but the option is there to install it directly inside the plugin. But it is quite clunky (from a developer perspective) and you have to jump through a few hoops to get it to play nicely if you want to use categories.

TBH I'm baffled that Akai haven't introduced a way to simplify all this, or perhaps they have and they just haven't told anyone about it yet. My suggestion to them was to allow for users to just copy all their additional presets into a 'Plugin Presets' folder on their disk, similar to the way you install additional expansions. The MPC would then auto-map the presets accordingly (which would deal with the internal plugin installation issues).

Actually, it does seems like something like this could be possible now, as I can't believe they would release an OP4X preset pack that can't be installed on the two MPCs that have OPX4 installed as standard.

Well it's "officially" standalone, as it comes with an installer for that. But yeah, not sure how it works as I am away from my studio right now. But it comes with it at least, though as you said - it's likely a collection of presets since it's a ZIP'd folder:

Let me know what that standalone option gives you when its unzipped

EnochLight wrote:Well it's "officially" standalone, as it comes with an installer for that. But yeah, not sure how it works as I am away from my studio right now. But it comes with it at least:

guess i picked the wrong week to talk myself into trying to penetrate the OPx-4's programming interface

MPC-Tutor wrote:Let me know what that standalone option gives you when its unzipped

Looks like it's manually copying a single folder (and merging all content if it's already there). Here we go:

So it sounds like they've implemented the mapping option, so now we have to create a folder called 'Plugin Expansions' which will map the presets to the correct place. Good stuff, makes life much easier. I'll grab a copy in a bit to see what the naming convention needs to be and will update my Crush pack accordingly.