DAWless Live Performances, Can MPC Do These?

Considering purchasing an AKAI MPC Live II. Can it perform all these operations?

Play 8 stereo audio tracks? WAV stems created in primary DAW. Each stem is a 4-5 minute complete track.
Mix them, remember mix
Change key (except percussion audio tracks)
Change tempo if needed

MIDI inputs (DIN/USB) can play internal instrument plugins? Piano, Pad, Strings, Organ, Poly Synths

MIDI Track to play metronome and send to output 3. I have the 2 click samples.

MIDI Track to play song cues (prompts) and send to output 4. I have all these samples. Can simply make a drum kit out of them and have a MIDI track trigger the samples.

Send MIDI Program changes to external gear? (MIDI DIN/USB)

Route MIDI input (DIN/USB) to external MIDI gear (DIN/USB)?

Smooth transitions from song to song?

* This.

EnjoyRC wrote:Considering purchasing an AKAI MPC Live II. Can it perform all these operations?

Play 8 stereo audio tracks? WAV stems created in primary DAW. Each stem is a 4-5 minute complete track.
Mix them, remember mix
Change key (except percussion audio tracks)
Change tempo if needed

MIDI inputs (DIN/USB) can play internal instrument plugins? Piano, Pad, Strings, Organ, Poly Synths

MIDI Track to play metronome and send to output 3. I have the 2 click samples.

MIDI Track to play song cues (prompts) and send to output 4. I have all these samples. Can simply make a drum kit out of them and have a MIDI track trigger the samples.

Send MIDI Program changes to external gear? (MIDI DIN/USB)

Route MIDI input (DIN/USB) to external MIDI gear (DIN/USB)?

Smooth transitions from song to song?

Play 8 stereo audio tracks? Yes.
Mix them, remember mix? Of course you can mix and save your Project on MPC.
Change key? Yes, though not in real-time.
Change tempo if needed? Yes, per Sequence.
MIDI inputs (DIN/USB) can play internal instrument plugins? Piano, Pad, Strings, Organ, Poly Synths? Yes. Think of your MPC like a standalone DAW. Connect a MIDI controller, and you can play any loaded instruments, plugins, keygroups, drum programs, etc.
MIDI Track to play metronome?
MIDI Track to play song cues?
Send MIDI Program changes to external gear? Yes.
Route MIDI input (DIN/USB) to external MIDI gear (DIN/USB)? Yes.
Smooth transitions from song to song? Yes, assuming your "song" is saved as a single Sequence. Load up multiple songs (sequences), and the songs will smoothly transition during your performance. Just watch your RAM/CPU.

I don't think a MIDI track needs to know what kind of a role and meaning the people around the MPC are giving its notes. Like, if the notes are used as bass, drums, melody, cues, a metronome click or instructions to the stage lighting or fog machine, the MIDI track won't care really. Right?

Thanks for the responses. I'm excited to have an alternate portable setup to my MacBook Pro / Ableton Live / Gig Performer weekly rig.
As far as internal memory and storage memory... I plan to install a 2TB SSD in the MPC Live II. I know the RAM is still something I need to keep an eye on. The track stems average around 55mb each. I'm not sure how to calculate the memory they will consume. 8 x 55mb = 440mb. Something like that. Plus 1 or 2 instrument plug ins (piano / pad / etc...).

You'll be able to have 2-3 songs of that size loaded into memory at the same time. And then a very non-seamless transition after that. No way to have your whole song catalog available with seamless transitions between random songs.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:You'll be able to have 2-3 songs of that size loaded into memory at the same time. And then a very non-seamless transition after that. No way to have your whole song catalog available with seamless transitions between random songs.

A drum machine will take care of the transition.

I used to run a 1k/25k side by side. Drums on one synths other other. Gave me time to load up.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:And then a very non-seamless transition after that. No way to have your whole song catalog available with seamless transitions between random songs.

Thanks, Our non-stop segments (transitioning between songs) are usually around 4 songs, then a break that I can manually play/transition through those areas. Sweet! I'm excited about the MPC Live II.

EnjoyRC wrote:MIDI Track to play metronome and send to output 3. I have the 2 click samples.

I just noticed the built in Metronome can be routed to any output. Can it be routed to a single output? MONO, like just Output 3? Can another track be set to MONO and sent to Output 4?

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:You'll be able to have 2-3 songs of that size loaded into memory at the same time..

Huh? No, you can load far more than that. Just depends on how much RAM you’re taking up with samples. And re-use Drum Programs, Keygroups, etc - in all the sequences/songs, and you’ll be fine.

EnochLight wrote:

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:You'll be able to have 2-3 songs of that size loaded into memory at the same time..

Huh? No, you can load far more than that. Just depends on how much RAM you’re taking up with samples. And re-use Drum Programs, Keygroups, etc - in all the sequences/songs, and you’ll be fine.

Very unlikely, if he uses 8 times 5 minutes long stereo audio tracks per song. Remember that the MPC Can load 1 GB of sample, at best.

Play 8 stereo audio tracks? WAV stems created in primary DAW. Each stem is a 4-5 minute complete track.

https://pamaproaudio.com/free-audio-fil ... alculator/

80MB * 8 * 2 > 1GB .

The Force has disk streaming thus doesn't have this problem.

OP, please keep us posted on whether you ended up purchasing and if you were able to play live without the MPC crashing/freezing/weird behavior. I am curious to hear your experience.

Thanks!

EnochLight wrote:

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:You'll be able to have 2-3 songs of that size loaded into memory at the same time..

Huh? No, you can load far more than that. Just depends on how much RAM you’re taking up with samples. And re-use Drum Programs, Keygroups, etc - in all the sequences/songs, and you’ll be fine.

As explained in the opening message, each song consists of 8 stereo stem tracks, 4-5 minutes long. That's 30-40 track minutes per song. Given that the MPC loads everything to RAM before playing anything at all, and everything is first converted/expanded to 32 bit float, and there's only room for about 52 minutes of stereo audio, it's not actually enough for even 2 songs. You can have about one and a half songs loaded to memory.

https://www.mpc-tutor.com/how-much-memo ... ive-mpc-x/

As explained in the opening message, each song consists of 8 stereo stem tracks, 4-5 minutes long. That's 30-40 track minutes per song. Given that the MPC loads everything to RAM before playing anything at all, and everything is first converted/expanded to 32 bit float, and there's only room for about 52 minutes of stereo audio, it's not actually enough for even 2 songs. You can have about one and a half songs loaded to memory.

https://www.mpc-tutor.com/how-much-memo ... ive-mpc-x/[/quote]

Easy to get that down by chopping and sequencing parts of the stems that repeat.

Takes some effort to get the set sorted though.

Seems pointless playing full stems on a mpc. Old hdd tracker in sync would make more sense and free up the mpc for live duties

What's with the quotes within quotes on this forum. Pain in the arse to edit out.

eLuSiVeMiTe wrote:Seems pointless playing full stems on a mpc.

That was my thinking as well. But that's what the OP is asking. I could consider a Force for that, not an MPC.

What you do with an MPC is, you use MIDI notes and relatively short samples the size of a single drum hit, or loops of a few bars, which you slice up. Full-track stems... doesn't fit that picture. You use the MPC as a sampler and MIDI sequencer. Think of the MPC as your instrument, and build your song with that instrument, and in the live show you play the MPC like you'd play any other instrument.

BUT... Akai may release a new software version in the near future which changes the situation. But who knows when and what, and when it's actually stable enough for live use.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:

eLuSiVeMiTe wrote:Seems pointless playing full stems on a mpc.

That was my thinking as well. But that's what the OP is asking. I could consider a Force for that, not an MPC.

What you do with an MPC is, you use MIDI notes and relatively short samples the size of a single drum hit, or loops of a few bars, which you slice up. Full-track stems... doesn't fit that picture. You use the MPC as a sampler and MIDI sequencer. Think of the MPC as your instrument, and build your song with that instrument, and in the live show you play the MPC like you'd play any other instrument.

BUT... Akai may release a new software version in the near future which changes the situation. But who knows when and what, and when it's actually stable enough for live use.

Exactly. Some projects don't have any audio loaded at all. Pure midi to hardware.

At worst. A drum program.
A sliced drum loop
And maybe a keygroup.