What should I know about buying a CD-ROM drive for my XL?

Is there a certain speed I should be looking for, or are they pretty much universal? Will I need some special cable to hook it up to the XL?

I already have an external ZIP drive hooked up, how do I go about implementing the CD-ROM along with the ZIP drive?

Speaking of ZIP, do you think I should purchase a external hard drive for the XL or stay with the ZIP?

Get back at me. Thanks

That it's pointless?

why is a SCSI cd rom drive pointless?

jpw

I've heard there are only one or two CD ROM drives that work with an MPC. You cannot burn your MPC data to them to make your own CD ROMS......you need to do that on a computer & you would need a zip or floppies to get that data from the MPC to the computer.

Also, there are very few commercially available MPC CD ROMs.

I have an old Apple cd rom drive (the ones that are practically free on ebay) connected to my MPC. I use it for dragging wav files from loop cds and such. Where do you get the idea about "MPC CD ROMs"? Any cd that is DOS formatted can be read by an MPC. There are (literally) thousands of sound/loop cds out there that can be used with an MPC. As for saving data from the MPC, that's what we use our Zip drives for.

Any more explanations for the "pointlessness" of CD ROM drives?

JPW

Because you can't save to it, and your computer already has a cd rom in it, you can grab wavs or whatever, convert them, effect them, then bump it to zip and in the mpc she goes, with the ability to save and overwrite.

It is more than pointless, it is redundant. But if your computer is in another room or something it might make sense, but I don't like loading the scsi bus with extra devices, or powering extra equipment.

That there are those of us who use MPCs because we don't want to fool around with computers. Isn't the whole point of the MPC to liberate the serious producer from the shortcomings of general purpose office devices running consumer grade software?

JPW

elmacaco wrote:Because you can't save to it, and your computer already has a cd rom in it, you can grab wavs or whatever, convert them, effect them, then bump it to zip and in the mpc she goes, with the ability to save and overwrite.

It is more than pointless, it is redundant. But if your computer is in another room or something it might make sense, but I don't like loading the scsi bus with extra devices, or powering extra equipment.

[quote="trkkazulu"]That there are those of us who use MPCs because we don't want to fool around with computers. Isn't the whole point of the MPC to liberate the serious producer from the shortcomings of general purpose office devices running consumer grade software?

trkkazulu, good point mate.....

so you never interface you mpc and you computer? you nevertransfer wavs or pgms from you computer to your mpc? or you don't own a computer? Then sure, then it might not be redundant, but if not (ever load an os from computer to floppy?) it's redundant, you can use it, but you can also use the computer (probably with faster loading).

But do your thing.

no. I own an MPC and a DPS. I make a living producing music and doing sound design. I'm a producer, not a sys admin. Why should i waste my time with a hyped up adding machine when i have the best music and sound design tools money can buy?

JPW

About the pointlessness... Well it depends a lot on what you're doing. If you like to use sample cds (I don't) then I guess it's good, but for someone like me who mostly samples from wax it is quite useless. I do have the cd-rom (got it with the machine) but I really don't use it much. Besides compared to the zip drive it's big and heavy, so lugging it around is a b*tch.

Since I got my machine in december, I have used the cd rom less than ten times..... And that was usually on some "let's load up some AKAI drums and make some heavy metal" just for laughs -kind of sh*t.

Bottom line is this ---> _______________________________________

I have 100 mb Zip drive, a cd rom and an external SCSI hard disk. On my computer i have a Zip drive and a cd burner. In other words, i make my own "sampling cds". Periodically i back up my sounds and sequences to cd. Access on the cd rom drive is faster than Zip and (as we all know) cd holds a lot more information than Zip. Cds are also more durable than Zip disks. I've had my current MPC since 1999. It's great to have all of those project files nicely organised on cd rather than having to rummage through Zip disks. I recently acquired the hard drive. I'll use that for storing current work which i'll later back up to cd (via Zip and computer) when a job is completed.

I can understand that a person using an MPC to sample a snare drum hit from a record isn't going to need as much and as many options for storage. Lucky you, Cheech, getting a cd rom drive with your machine. If you have a burner on your computer you'll realise how handy that cd rom drive will be after your library of sounds grows to be multiple gigabytes in size.

JPW

trkkazulu wrote:I can understand that a person using an MPC to sample a snare drum hit from a record isn't going to need as much and as many options for storage. Lucky you, Cheech, getting a cd rom drive with your machine. If you have a burner on your computer you'll realise how handy that cd rom drive will be after your library of sounds grows to be multiple gigabytes in size.

JPW

I don't have a computer at home
Only at work.... And it doesn't even have a soundcard in it! I do everything on my mpc at the moment.. My brother has a ROLAND VS 1680 that I can use if I need to get something recorded proper.. Meanwhile I just record my beats/remixes to minidisks or cassette tapes for my own listening purposes.

I agree with you that in your situation it is very handy to have a cd-drive around. Just to me it is kinda pointless.. Different strokes for different folks, isn't that what they say?

Uh, yeah, like I said above, you do have a computer, but understand you have the option to do either, you can load from your pc or your scsi CD rom.

Like I said reduntant. Because you prefer working that way doesn't make it any less reduntant, just your preference.