Support and discussion for all of Akai’s modern standalone MPCs including the MPC X / X SE, MPC Live 1, 2 & 3, MPC One / One+, MPC Key 37/61.
By Fauxstradamus Sun Jul 23, 2017 4:53 pm
Hi all. This is my first post on this site.

The MPC Live is my first MPC and I'm also pretty much a newby to the world of DAWS and MIDI and so forth. So I hope this is not a dumb question.

I purchased a Roland A-49 controller keyboard for use with my MPC Live.

But no matter how I set the velocity curve on the A-49, the pre-loaded grand piano in the MPC Live sounds terrible.

It sounds like none of the velocity curves on the A-49 are nearly as sophisticated as the way the MPC Live pads handle the translation of pad velocity to the timbre of the note, if that makes any sense. I was expecting just the opposite. I expected that the piano samples (instruments) in the MPC Live would sound BETTER using a controller.

The piano sounds great on the MPC Live pads. The timbre and response seems fairly natural sounding. But when using the Roland A-49 controller keyboard, the softly played notes sound soft and warm and quiet . . . and then as you play successive notes with progressively increasing velocity, the timbre of the notes stay soft and warm up to a point when, all of a sudden, the bright, sharp "ping" or "attack" of the hammer striking the string jumps in and the volume jumps up unnaturally. So there is like a ledge or threshold so to speak where the timbre abruptly changes from soft and warm to sharp, loud and bright. The attack or bite (bright, loud, sharpness) that you get from hitting a piano key with force and velocity jumps in at a specific point. On the MPC pads, the volume and brightness increase 'naturally' as you hit them harder. But not when using the Roland controller. So the result is that when you play you get these really odd and unnatural sounding spikes of volume and brightness jumping out at seemingly random or unexpected times.

The A-49 sounds fine when playing the MPC's pre-loaded basses and synths. I do not think the A-49 is defective per se.

Is this $179.00 controller simply not up to the task? I thought I was buying a pretty good controller keyboard??

I also have a little, inexpensive Roland JDXi synth workstation (with a few piano sounds) and I never had this problem on that unit.

Thanks for any insights or guidance you can provide.
By Moho Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:26 am
Yeah I had to almost hit my keyboard with a hammer to get the top sample layer to play, so I had a look at the program and the top layer starts at 120 which is crazy high for playing from a keyboard.

Solution if notice the layers are 0 to 75 and 76 to 119 and 120 to 127 but have names ending in the numbers 42 /85 /127 so set the max velocity to these numbers and you get 0 to 42 then 43 to 85 and finally 86 to 127 and now it plays like a dream from a keyboard.
Almost forgot turn the top layer level down to 100 to even out the volume.

Hope this helps :)
Last edited by Moho on Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
By Cockdiesel Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:33 am
Ive had no issues with the live and an advance 49 plugged directly into it with a usb. One of the features that blew me away from the jump. Controlling external synths works amazing with those two as well. I was considering a different midi key even that roland you are using to keep one dedicated to the live and another for other uses.
Hope everything works out for you.