MPC X, MPC Live, MPC One & MPC Key 61 Forum: Support and discussion for the MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC One & MPC Key 61; Akai's current generation of standalone MPCs.
By T-Monk Thu Aug 11, 2022 9:16 pm
You can if you create preview files. You need to create audio demos of the files named exactly like the file, but with .mp3 or.wav. Then add them to a folder named [Previews] next to the files. It’s a lot of work, and the preview won’t reflect the sound you want, rather just the sound you create the demo with.
By T-Monk Sat Aug 13, 2022 5:33 pm
This works for midi too.

It’s a bit time consuming to make previews, and again they only sound like whatever program you used to create the preview. They don’t preview using the program you have loaded.

Side note: I’ve wanted Akai to enable the Pattern portion of the Arpeggiator for Drum patterns. That would allow you to preview a pattern with your loaded program in real-time. There is a workaround of using a midi track and using the “send to” from the midi track to go to a drum program.
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By MPC-Tutor Mon Aug 15, 2022 9:19 am
Lol, I genuinely didn't know this was possible, I'm sure I tested this a while back, maybe as far back as MPC 1.x, and it didn't work. I even recently submitted a feature request for this without actually double checking to see if they had enabled it.

I just tested with mid, sqx and mpcpattern files and it works just the same as XPM files. Probably works with any file that the browser can load. Have currently only checked in the MPC Software, assume it works equally well in standalone.

To the OP, to add a preview you need to create a folder called [Previews] with the square brackets, and place this within the same location as the pattern files. Inside the previews folder, add an audio preview with the same name as the pattern, remember to put the original extension on the end, e.g.

My_MIDI_pattern.mpcpattern.WAV

Should work with any normally supported audio format, I either use WAV or mp3 for previews depending on the sizes.