FIRST POST ... NEW ROUND HERE... HELP NEEDED!!!

Hey all,

Right here's the deal...

I got an MPC2000XL about 2 weeks ago for a really good price.

I've never even tried producing before but i'm heavily into hip hop music and so i'm knowledgable enough to know that a lot of people in the industry use MPC's. The price was too good to refuse so I decided to throw myself in at the deep end.

So I get my MPC back home, it's in great condition but it's been sitting there doing nothing as I have no idea where to start.

It's pretty much in new conditon, has the original Akai sound library cd, but only the standard floppy drive installed.

I've just gone and bought an SCSI cd rom drive and SCSI 50 - 68 pin cable to get me started (which will be arriving in the next 2 days). So i'm hoping that I can start loading samples through the cd rom straight onto the MPC? This was just my first logical thought after some research.

Is this right?

All I need is a starting point... I just really wanna hear some sound out of it!

I know you can get Zip drives and Multi card drives and i've seen a lot of people reccomend them but I just want to get started with the CD stuff first as it's what i'm most familiar with.

Thanks in advance.

get some records

there is a thread in here somewhere that has the manual for that MPC.

i dont know where it is exactly but if you ask around some1 will post it for you.

best place to start is the manual or even better buy the one from this site.

i copped the one for the mpc 1000 and it was a life saver.

Yeah I think i'm gonna get the manual actually as I know it'll be a great help. Anyone else reccommend it?

I'm just suffering from information overload at the moment as there are so many ways you can go about things.

I was thinking that an external cd drive would be the easiest place to start and then I could move on to the zip, multi card or vinyl stuff later... or am I being stupid?

Thanks Jmessy.

You're on the right path. Download and read the manual (http://www.akaipro.com/contentmgr/showd ... /1117/tt/5 click the "Doc & Downloads" link and the PDF version of the manual should be there), learn the basics, buy a box of floppies to start off with (if you keep them labeled and organized you won't even need Zip Disk or CF Cards), then a turntable and some vinyl will be the next step. That's what I'd do.

no probs man.

i'd say go wid your cd drive option as that is what your used to right.

buy the manual from this site cause it has samples in there for you and it also gets you up to test what the guy is explaining in the manual. so your not just reading boring pages like you would normally but you are actually gettin involved and doing things as you learn them.

trust me best thing you would of ever spent money on would be that manual. no doubt.


then once you start gettin into the flow of things you can take your new skills you would have learned and ramage through your cd collect and be making beats in no time.

Kavie wrote:You're on the right path. Download and read the manual (http://www.akaipro.com/contentmgr/showd ... /1117/tt/5 click the "Doc & Downloads" link and the PDF version of the manual should be there), learn the basics, buy a box of floppies to start off with (if you keep them labeled and organized you won't even need Zip Disk or CF Cards), then a turntable and some vinyl will be the next step. That's what I'd do.

IMO i wouldnt download the manual from akai its boring 200 - 300 pages of shit.

i just prefer the Tutors manual as it is made and written by a MPC user for us MPC users.

I'm relieved to know that i'm on the right track.

I'm going to purchase that manual once i've finished this reply. Thanks for the advice Jmessy. I'll let you know how it goes once I recieve my cd drive and stuff.

I've actually got the Akai Manual all printed out and though it seems really in depth, it isn't quite suited to someone who is started right from scratch like myself.

By the way should any scsi cd drive work?

Just got to throw in my opinion on the cd drive. Allthough it depends on how much you have to spend for the cd drive, it will be a waste of money. Cf cards can store up to 1gb on them, and that is alot of saving space compared to a cd drive which you can store...........................Not a single byte! Because it is read only. And then you can put that cf card in a computer and transfer sounds from f.ex your computer (requires a card reader in the computer too).

or at least a zip drive...jaz drive... You`ll thank yourself later for not wasting money. Anything but cd and floppies!

^^^ You are missing the point of how a CDROM drive is used. First, all serious sample libraries are still distributed on CD and that isn't about to change (although many of the smaller sound producers are going to a download only model). And for someone who loads a lot of samples in their work, a CF card reader is impractical because it is too slow. Card Reader drives are good for several things but storing a large sample library is not one of them. You still need a hard drive/NDISK drive (best) or a CDROM drive (next best). I can usually talk my customers out of trying to keep a large sampler library on CF cards but for those who have gone on and tried it anyway, they always come back and tell me I was right. Just too slow on the card readers. Check the transfer specs on all the card readers out there and you'll see they are around zip drive speed at best.

So for people using samplers who load a lot of sample data in the course of making music, a CDROM drive is invaluable. We still sell lots of them and always will, I figure.

+1

on the CF cards.

that is what im using a 2gig cf card and i have loads of sounds, kits, samples etc stored on it already and still have a whole load of space free.

Okay so basically I should wait for my CD drive and SCSI cable to come... upload something off of the sound library and have a play around but almost immediately I am going to need to buy some kind of external hard drive?

im using a CF card and my shit dont run slow at all.

on average 10 - 30secs to load a shit load of samples onto it.

looking at it like this if i drag and drop 1gig of sounds to my cf card it'll prolly take between 1-2mins max.

that aint too bad imo.

man im with you on this plethora of information about the mpc 2000xl....
i don't even know what question to ask...i don't know where ima start..
i guess by reading the akai manual cover to cover..

IMHO...
1) Read the "Friendly" Manual
2) Max out the RAM to 32 MB (You didn't say how much memory you had)
3) invest in some pro cables
4) swap out the floppy drive for a card reader
5) buy brand name memory cards (don't settle for cheap no-name brands to store your samples on)
6) swap out your SCSI CD drive for a SCSI DVD drive (No... you cannot write to it).