song to sample downsides?

I'm wondering how many people use this feature extensively? I've really just started paying attention to this feature after getting sick of tracking my shit out the traditional way. my plan is to create my patterns, mute tracks and convert each track to a sample, then drag my tracks into my daw via usb - do additional mixing and arranging in daw. anyone else do this? i think it will work for me cause none of my beats are more than 4-8 bars long so sample time is a no issue.

notice any sound differance? any downsides? how about volume and clipping, any probs?

It's a lot quicker just to track 8 separate tracks (4 if you have mpc1000) str8 into your DAW using the separate outs.
If you have just a stereo input soundcard then my advice is to get another with multiple ins. I have my 8 outs permanently connected up so it couldn't be simpler to record onto 8 separate tracks into my computer.

i use song to sample only to bounce layered samples or to extract a single chop from a non-destructive choped sample.

I use this quite a lot and never noticed any issues with it, but then again my beats are good enough to even start thinking about the sound quality. I imagine it's one of them things where if people like pete rock, madlib, dj premier had of done it then everyone would do it and say it's the best way to work.

who knows

Seriously... song to sample is such a mundane task I don't think anybody would think to bring it up as the super premero gangsta way to get beats into your DAW. It'd be like finding out that Kanye only uses his pinky to hit the pads. Would that many people decide that's the right way to drop beats on an MPC once they found that out?

Rarely do you see a producer waxing lyrical about their actual workflow, instead they typically name drop gear "well I use the MPC over here for dope beats" and "I spin records on Technics this..." and "my best sounds come from Korg Triton Studio XL Extreme" and "I only use Blue Mics for recording lyrics, Orange Mics are for Bass because I need that to be smooth"...

It's fun to name drop, but it is quite lengthy, boring and non-sexy to bring up how it took eight hours of digging to find the right kick, played at the right RPM, pitch shift it, denoise it, EQ it, layer it, through it through FX... and then spend another two hours finding the matching snare to put through the same process. Producers can talk all they want about how they need gear to get out of their way and let them get into the flow of the moment, but there is a lot of leg work that needs to happen to even get that started.

true.

oh i use it all the time

i set my internal MPC level to -12

if i have external midi tracks, i record them as audio tracks (mono's are mono, stereo tracks are panned before dump).

i build my song, solo my tracks, rendering "all of them"
then into protools

it takes longer but all my audio tracks are already compressed and leveled from my outboard gear.
I dont want or need another level of analog generation into my tracks.
the MPC makes perfect rectangles to remix in the computer.
plus the converters are far better than my m-audio 410

thats until i can afford a Lucid or Cranesong DAC

Everyone's preference is different depending on what outboard you own and what sound you want. I like a bit of analogue bump and noise.
I put my separate tracks through an analogue mixing desk, eq and outboard processors before recording separate tracks into my DAW.
If everyone used identical techniques then everything would sound like the flat, un-dynamic, soul-less ITB production rubbish that's in the charts these days

yeah i actually have a decent interface (motu 828 mk3). im trying to slim things down and im not running my stuff through any outboard gear anyways, no sense in going through that extra layer. I tend to get stuff to sound how i like in my mpc anyways. we'll see though when i work with it a bit more. i dont want to loose anything by not going out the mpc ........ so we will see.

im gonna be traveling soon, so if i could reasonabley ditch the interface (or get a way smaller one), that would be big. if i get a smaller interface, that would mean 2 tracks at a time which would drive me nuts.

curious. why -12 ? clipping?

-12 gives you some headroom to avoid nasty digital clipping.