Official 2.6 Firmware Update Thread

The MPC was a studio focused machine, made to push external gear. It was all about the sequencer. On stage the loading process was too long, the machines were too heavy, and expensive. Bring a 5000 dollar mpc 60 or 3600 MPC 3000 on the road was not happening. Honestly, I didn't see MPC on the road until the 1000 came out. Compact, quick to load, and inexpensive.

This is why they made the LIVE and X. One for on the road and one for the studio. The MPC X with that screen is not made for the road.

Caustic Yoda wrote:MPCs have always been a live focused machine from the moment you could load 16 sounds to the pads and tap them, much more live than any kind of ableton/sp404 set, tweak the filter and pretend the knob is on fire or that changing sequence in a quntized environment is some kind of thing worth doing on stage, MPCs have always been dope from live drumming and anyone who knows what they are doing can hold down the drums/samples for a band, mcs or live show

Eyalc wrote:Yeah the engineers did that. Was still a lot of good sounding music coming out when ProTools and Waves were hot.

Yeah, that was engineers listening to A&R. We need to make it louder for the radio. They made it louder, sent it to the radio and the stations would compress it anyway.

I remember going to the studio and everything was Pro Tools, MAC and WAVES Bundle. (Windows would crash, just from sneezing at it.) Remember when they would send spies to studios, claiming to have PT on the equipment list. Digi did not play around. A whole bunch of studios had to pay up.

Unlike now, updates were FAR in between, maybe once a year. Honestly, I don't even remember how we updated the programs. It had to be CD Rom, right? I tell you, it still amazes me, that Akai Pro released this many free updates in the last 2/3 years.

Ive seen tons of industrial/electronic/rave shows and saw plenty of MPC2000s on stages back when it was the current model?? Some bands wouldn't be able to function live without one.

Monotremata wrote:Ive seen tons of industrial/electronic/rave shows and saw plenty of MPC2000s on stages back when it was the current model?? Some bands wouldn't be able to function live without one.

I would not doubt that MPC 2000 and 2000XL were used during shows, but the point was more that the MPC was never a live performance focused machine. In the 1990's I remember seeing TB 303, Alesis HR-16, Roland R-8 drum machine, ROLAND TR-808, ROLAND TR-909, Turntables and whole bunch of vinyl.

Also it was easier to use the Akai ASQ-10 on the road, which was the MIDI sections of the MPC 60. Loading MIDI was quick. Now only if Akai Pro, would update the Sequencer and make it tight like the Akai ASQ 10. Perhaps 2.7?

The success of Mpc was the possibility to bring a small studio on stage
That was the idea behind it.

And yes, I am not blaming Protools/waves for anything, I am just saying that the standard of recording studios became worst with digital revolution, at least at the beginning.
And I am sure Waves plugins will be fogotten soon, they just sound sterile and outdated already.
There are tons of much better solutions, PSP, Soundtoys and so on.
And also protools is outdated.

well so far with automation, it's WAY better than not having it... but it has a few issues. There are parameters missing (I think) .. the XY fx you can make an automation for "enable" (basically an on/off for the effect) but you can't seem to do that for the insert fx. I did not check if this was the case for every effect, but for the air parametric EQ i could not seem to do it. you can't even automate turning on and off the 4 different bands. some patterns (like the verse sections) you may want to filter your main sample a bit and not have that filter in the chorus.

Frisbi wrote:The success of Mpc was the possibility to bring a small studio on stage.
That was the idea behind it.

I never heard that before, always thought it was successor to the LinnDrum 9000 aka Forat F9000 and with the sequencer idea of the never released LinnDrum Midistudio.

Frisbi wrote:And yes, I am not blaming Protools/waves for anything, I am just saying that the standard of recording studios became worst with digital revolution, at least at the beginning.

Depends on what recording studio you went to. The one's I frequented sound great, they still tracked through SSL, NEVE, Harrison, Focusrite, etc. Had great mics and many selections of pres, compressor, effects, eqs. All Pro Tools did was replaced, Tape as the recording medium.

mr_debauch wrote:well so far with automation, it's WAY better than not having it... but it has a few issues. There are parameters missing (I think) .. the XY fx you can make an automation for "enable" (basically an on/off for the effect) but you can't seem to do that for the insert fx. I did not check if this was the case for every effect, but for the air parametric EQ i could not seem to do it. you can't even automate turning on and off the 4 different bands. some patterns (like the verse sections) you may want to filter your main sample a bit and not have that filter in the chorus.

This seems like this is something the 3.0 updates will address, from what I hear. It feels like 2.6 was really a bug fix, with a couple of updates to slowly re-teach people. If they did all of this as a full update, it would've been confusing. Like learning a new machine.

CharlesRandolph wrote:

Frisbi wrote:The success of Mpc was the possibility to bring a small studio on stage.
That was the idea behind it.

I never heard that before, always thought it was successor to the LinnDrum 9000 aka Forat F9000 and with the sequencer idea of the never released LinnDrum Midistudio.

Frisbi wrote:And yes, I am not blaming Protools/waves for anything, I am just saying that the standard of recording studios became worst with digital revolution, at least at the beginning.

Depends on what recording studio you went to. The one's I frequented sound great, they still tracked through SSL, NEVE, Harrison, Focusrite, etc. Had great mics and many selections of pres, compressor, effects, eqs. All Pro Tools did was replaced, Tape as the recording medium.

mr_debauch wrote:well so far with automation, it's WAY better than not having it... but it has a few issues. There are parameters missing (I think) .. the XY fx you can make an automation for "enable" (basically an on/off for the effect) but you can't seem to do that for the insert fx. I did not check if this was the case for every effect, but for the air parametric EQ i could not seem to do it. you can't even automate turning on and off the 4 different bands. some patterns (like the verse sections) you may want to filter your main sample a bit and not have that filter in the chorus.

This seems like this is something the 3.0 updates will address, from what I hear. It feels like 2.6 was really a bug fix, with a couple of updates to slowly re-teach people. If they did all of this as a full update, it would've been confusing. Like learning a new machine.

I am not talking about the purpose of.the manufacturers, but about the way people used it to make it famous.
You can see many Mpc in the electronic bands of 90s on stage. It's been used as a mini studio to carry on stage and play live.

As for recording studios, of course good ones rely heavily on gears, preamps, racks compressors and so on.
But I am sure the Waves maximizer was always at the end of the chain, and that is where the trouble starts.
Today there are better maximizers and fortunately we can start to fix the trouble but, at least in pop and dance music, the sound is still a shit so I guess they still use it

Frisbi wrote:I am not talking about the purpose of.the manufacturers, but about the way people used it to make it famous.
You can see many Mpc in the electronic bands of 90s on stage. It's been used as a mini studio to carry on stage and play live.

I think the success of the MPC, was from it's usage in studios, not really from the stage. Not discounting it's usage on stage. However, it was all about what records it was used on. On stage with Electronic bands, I remember a whole bunch of synth keyboards. Moog, Korg, Roland,

Frisbi wrote:As for recording studios, of course good ones rely heavily on gears, preamps, racks compressors and so on.
But I am sure the Waves maximizer was always at the end of the chain, and that is where the trouble starts.
Today there are better maximizers and fortunately we can start to fix the trouble but, at least in pop and dance music, the sound is still a **** so I guess they still use it

Waves Maximizer was never the issue. Digital was never the issue. The problem starts and ends with the recording, mixing, and mastering engineers. Just like the effects put in the MPC Live/X. With all these updates. it's still up to the user to make is sound good.

CharlesRandolph wrote:

Frisbi wrote:I am not talking about the purpose of.the manufacturers, but about the way people used it to make it famous.
You can see many Mpc in the electronic bands of 90s on stage. It's been used as a mini studio to carry on stage and play live.

I think the success of the MPC, was from it's usage in studios, not really from the stage. Not discounting it's usage on stage. However, it was all about what records it was used on. On stage with Electronic bands, I remember a whole bunch of synth keyboards. Moog, Korg, Roland,

Frisbi wrote:As for recording studios, of course good ones rely heavily on gears, preamps, racks compressors and so on.
But I am sure the Waves maximizer was always at the end of the chain, and that is where the trouble starts.
Today there are better maximizers and fortunately we can start to fix the trouble but, at least in pop and dance music, the sound is still a **** so I guess they still use it

Waves Maximizer was never the issue. Digital was never the issue. The problem starts and ends with the recording, mixing, and mastering engineers. Just like the effects put in the MPC Live/X. With all these updates. it's still up to the user to make is sound good.

Well, I made mastering on the studio and I can say that the mix of Waves maximizer and loudness war was the real problem.
It was quite impossible to tell the customers that less loudness meant better results, everyone wanted their music to sound louder.
That was a real problem in the beginning of this millenium.
Now its slightly changing thanks to Lufs introduction and better maximizers, but in dance and pop is still like before.
Now.I don't make mastering for other people anymore, only for myself.
I use Newfangled Elevate, a much underrated Eventide maximizer that doesn't squash the sound anymore if you stay around -16 Lufs.
But uf you make a test with dance music hits, they still go under -14, some even at -10.

Frisbi wrote:Well, I made mastering on the studio and I can say that the mix of Waves maximizer and loudness war was the real problem. It was quite impossible to tell the customers that less loudness meant better results, everyone wanted their music to sound louder.That was a real problem in the beginning of this millenium.

Yes, but that's when you have to tell the customers the truth, that it does not sound good. They come to you for your expertise. It's your name and reputation listed as the mastering engineer. If it sounds like cr@p, you sound like cr@p.

Frisbi wrote:Now its slightly changing thanks to Lufs introduction and better maximizers, but in dance and pop is still like before. Now.I don't make mastering for other people anymore, only for myself. I use Newfangled Elevate, a much underrated Eventide maximizer that doesn't squash the sound anymore if you stay around -16 Lufs.

But uf you make a test with dance music hits, they still go under -14, some even at -10.

I tend to stay away from maximizers. I stick with a Light Touch approach with Multiband Compression, EQ, Limiting, and the master fader. If it needs anything else, revisit the mix or performance. There are times, when the mastering levels are pushed, for a desired artistic effect. However, that is usually done during mixing process.

Maybe in future update Akai will release a mastering suite, perhaps on the MPC X, since it has more Q Links knobs.

CharlesRandolph wrote:

Frisbi wrote:Well, I made mastering on the studio and I can say that the mix of Waves maximizer and loudness war was the real problem. It was quite impossible to tell the customers that less loudness meant better results, everyone wanted their music to sound louder.That was a real problem in the beginning of this millenium.

Yes, but that's when you have to tell the customers the truth, that it does not sound good. They come to you for your expertise. It's your name and reputation listed as the mastering engineer. If it sounds like cr@p, you sound like cr@p.

Frisbi wrote:Now its slightly changing thanks to Lufs introduction and better maximizers, but in dance and pop is still like before. Now.I don't make mastering for other people anymore, only for myself. I use Newfangled Elevate, a much underrated Eventide maximizer that doesn't squash the sound anymore if you stay around -16 Lufs.

But uf you make a test with dance music hits, they still go under -14, some even at -10.

I tend to stay away from maximizers. I stick with a Light Touch approach with Multiband Compression, EQ, and Limiting. If it needs anything else, revisit the mix or performance. Maybe in future update Akai will release a mastering suite.

No man, that time it was like that, people payed and wanted louder and that's it.
Then of course if your mix is perfectly balanced, the maximizer make less damage, so I worked a lot with multiband and eq before the maximizer to have less squashing but it was a pain anyhow.
And the waves maximizer, well, I never really liked it. As with all other waves stuff.
Now I just use PSP for eq and Izotope for multiband and Elevate as maximizer.
But just to polish and finalize the 3 output tracks that I track out from Mpc.
So the most of the mix I make it inside Mpc.

Frisbi wrote:
No man, that time it was like that, people payed and wanted louder and that's it.

Yeah, I told a bunch of people NO! So they took the music somewhere else. Then they came
back telling me, that I was right.

Frisbi wrote:Then of course if your mix is perfectly balanced, the maximizer make less damage, so I worked a lot with multiband and eq before the maximizer to have less squashing but it was a pain anyhow.

If the mix is good, the mastering is easy.

The L1 and L2 is what started the whole thing I think... I remember when Waves was really pushing them back in 99/2000? When you went to the site to look up their 'How to use L1/L2' tutorial, they pretty much just told you how to blow the thing up and keep it from clipping at the maximum level. That was how Waves told everyone to use it. If you weren't familiar with how a limiter worked before, you were screwed and this was your lesson. Every little pirate that grabbed the Maximizer ran straight for that 'how to' guide and look at where it got us..

Im pretty happy the 'EP' Im working on right now is just about finished. I dropped three of the tracks into Ocenaudio to look at the levels while listening to em, and damn I nailed it. Theyre all a nice big fat line straight through at -12db, with the occasional peak hitting up to like maybe -9db. Im really digging mixing in the MPC now as bare as it is. Went through all the tracks this week, replaced all the Waves/Soundtoys plugs I used with only the Akai ones and tried to get the EQs and stuff as close as possible and its totally working great. I have been using Echoboy and Little Plate but I keep those on busses where they should be so any delay they introduce is cool with me because well its a wet delay, and 2 wet reverbs, theyre supposed to be a little 'off'. If anything I get free predelay added to Little Plate hahaha. I still see alot of folks complaining about 2.6 but damn, Im getting work DONE! Pretty sure this shit is only going to get even better from here on out.

Monotremata wrote:The L1 and L2 is what started the whole thing I think... I remember when Waves was really pushing them back in 99/2000? When you went to the site to look up their 'How to use L1/L2' tutorial, they pretty much just told you how to blow the thing up and keep it from clipping at the maximum level. That was how Waves told everyone to use it. If you weren't familiar with how a limiter worked before, you were screwed and this was your lesson. Every little pirate that grabbed the Maximizer ran straight for that 'how to' guide and look at where it got us..

Im pretty happy the 'EP' Im working on right now is just about finished. I dropped three of the tracks into Ocenaudio to look at the levels while listening to em, and damn I nailed it. Theyre all a nice big fat line straight through at -12db, with the occasional peak hitting up to like maybe -9db. Im really digging mixing in the MPC now as bare as it is. Went through all the tracks this week, replaced all the Waves/Soundtoys plugs I used with only the Akai ones and tried to get the EQs and stuff as close as possible and its totally working great. I have been using Echoboy and Little Plate but I keep those on busses where they should be so any delay they introduce is cool with me because well its a wet delay, and 2 wet reverbs, theyre supposed to be a little 'off'. If anything I get free predelay added to Little Plate hahaha. I still see alot of folks complaining about 2.6 but damn, Im getting work DONE! Pretty sure this **** is only going to get even better from here on out.

Yeah I also used Echoboy and Little Plate when I was using computer to compose.
I think Akai delays are really good, especially the analog one and the tape delay so I don't miss them so much.
At the end, with Akai and Air effects, Mpc is well covered, they are good quality effects, you just have to chain them since they are basic, a sort of modular fx while with computer we become used to ready chained ones.
I actually prefer Mpc style, I am not a lover of already chained fx like eventide, I prefer to build my own chains.
L1 and L2 were the death of music, man.
I can still recognize them when I hear some radio music, I hear it clearly on the hats and high frequencies that become cut and fatiguing as hell.
Did you ever try Newfangled Elevate?
Its a multiband maximizer that works quite differently from the other maximizers, it doesn't cut the sound as the others.