Hey all, new to MPC's, and yeah, I'm reading the manual

But I had some questions that I can't seem to find answers for in the manual. My setup for this stuff is really... "newb". I am primarily a guitarist, but got interested in this stuff after I started poking smot and listening to dub...shit. I increasingly think that the MPC will allow me to work on my "production" chops (i.e., arranging, fleshing out ideas, developing my tastes in music and then blending them), as well as get ideas out of my head when I can only come up with a simple riff or progression.

However, my rig is such:
MacbookPro with plenty of RAM and a TB of storage (external) - this is only important because I can store a ton of stuff to use as samples, and finished songs I guess.
AXIOM25 MIDI Keyboard
LogicPro8
MPC5000
Apogee Duet
M-Audio monitors.

I don't really have anything analog (or that doesn't hook up via firewire or USB 2.0. Which... seems to present a problem when trying to sample stuff. I know I can get samples from my computer to the MPC with relative ease, and have done so (day 2 of owning it) as per the manual. My questions in THIS regard:
Is this setup efficient enough for a newb? Am I begging for any sort of trouble?
What file formats should I save samples as in Logic? (Right now, I drag/drop songs from iTunes, cut a piece out, and then put it on the MPC - seems to sound fine at full volume and stuff, but as far as the final product go, is .aiff an ok filetype? I bought a Motzart song on iTunes, and am trying to get the hang of sequencing and tracks, .aiff is what the sample ended up as when I put it in my audio bin in Logic.)
I plan on buying a turntable, when I can afford it, so that I can do some legit sampling. Otherwise, I guess I'll buy the drive at some point.

For a newb, is the standard sample memory ok on the MPC? I don't really forsee myself taking any 30 minute samples... perhaps I don't understand the sample memory, but it says I can have a 12 minute sample? Could I make a song longer than this? Or - my actual question: what's the actual hard drive space on the MPC. I can't find it in the manual - all it references is the 64MB Sample memory - yet there is 650MB's of loopmaster samples on it... how much more stuff can I save on the MPC before I run out of space? I've looked in the window, and it references the 64 MB... but that's only for samples, right? Or would I be fine with some more (hypothetically) sample packs and shit? (Do they save to a different location?) If I'm missing something, then I'll just go buy a 2GB card and save shit on that, but if I don't have to do it right away, I wont. I'm just confused about the useful application of the Type II cards - just transfering songs? Or is it efficient/common to load programs or packs onto/off of those cards.

Otherwise, I'm reading the manual to figure out stuff... but these two issues are rather .. pressing to me I guess. If I can get away with drag dropping samples (I already created a folder) for now, I will because I am just getting the hang of all this crap. I think Logic would allow me to do it with relative ease/quality, but I have no idea if I'm somehow **** myself by doing it so long windedly.

THANKS to whoever has the balls to answer, I've been Googling like mad and just can't seem to get answers.

Read all the links on the left hand side of this page. Go from the top and work down.

http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm


then read all his reviews on the software your using.

Get with somebody that knows this stuff, so they can help you along the way.

The replies above are not realy helpful but rather lazy.

64MB is the systems memory. When you load your samples/programs etc. from your harddrive or memorycard it uses up memory. Also when you sample from ie a turntable it uses up memory. Just like a PC the more the better.

The standard harddrive is 80GB(5400). That and the memorycard is where you save to or load stuff from. It's wise to change to a faster one(7200rpm)

You can Direct Record to the HD and the recording time is limited by your HD size. 80GB is alot for that so you can record loads of guitar parts.

lazy replies?

Obviously from the questions he asked, he needs to learn more than what you just spoon fed him. The answers you gave him wont teach him anything but how to ask more questions.


Better to send him to the source so that he has a foundation.

diegoeskryptic wrote:lazy replies?

Obviously from the questions he asked, he needs to learn more than what you just spoon fed him. The answers you gave him wont teach him anything but how to ask more questions.


Better to send him to the source so that he has a foundation.

My questions are not questions that I have found addressed in the manual - for example I had no idea that the MPC5000 had an 80 GB hard drive.

My interface seems not only to be fine, but ideal, according to that "tweakz" site... which means I had a pretty good idea from the get go. Simplistic, but of quality, and will hopefully allow me to effectively express my ideas. Also, the questions I asked seem to rely on experience - why would I go buy all the nicest crap if I can easily achieve quality results without a bunch of upgrades... I simply wanted to see if anyone who knows what they're doing with this thing thinks that buying the extras are a ploy to make money by Akai, or if they're LEGITIMATE necessities. I have bought other things that are "bare minimum" so to speak, and immediately had to buy accessories in order to produce even passable results. Not necessarily music equipment, but I was trying to be an aware consumer in general.

It would seem that if I buy a 2GB card, I don't really need to spend any more money on my setup for a while, not until I know what I'm doing on the machine itself. I just needed to be sure I wasn't hindering my learning experience by being cheap and not wanting to buy stuff that might have made my learning curve... more efficient. Thanks for being so kind in sharing your knowledge though.

I think the issue you are having is knowing exactly what the ram/memory does for the mpc. All it does is allow you to have more sampled loaded... I am not talking about space on the hard drive or the recorder but about the sampler.

One day you might see a message while recording a sample (ie: a clip from a vinyl record) and a message saying "not enough memory, or memory full" or something like that might pop up. Well the expansion would have stopped that from happening.


now, the whole 15 or what ever minutes of sample time you have or what ever amount you said (i forget) it does not mean the song length has to be within that amount. It means the components of samples making up the song cant add up to more then that.... Like in one song the kick drum may hit from like 250-300 times but each of those times uses the same kick recording (sample) you took... same with snares and all the rest.. like if you record a 2 second piano loop... and that loop happens 100 times in the song... it dont mean 100 X 2 seconds... it only means 2 seconds because you are using the same piano loop sample loaded in ram (memory)

catch my drift? You probably suspected that was how it works.. but none the less I hope it sounds a bit clearer.

and good luck.

I sorta guessed (not KNEW, really) that if I use a particular sample and it's only a few seconds long, that it will only take up 2 seconds of my total RAM storage. I just was wondering what the hard drive of the actual MPC was - not just for samples but for everything it can hold - he said 80 GB and that seems like a pretty good bit. As of now, I can't imagine using a full 13 minutes worth of samples - there's a built in synth and everything and i want to be proficient in the use of it!! I tend to like where someone cuts maybe 4 bars out of an entire song, and then assigns 1 bar to 4 pads (for the total of 4 unique bars of the sample) and then sort of jams on those.

Put it this way, I am into spacey-er music - stuff that sounds really far out and trippy. I'm more interested in ... I guess the production per say, and implementing effects (via Logic) to get really unusual textures and stuff... a 12 minute sample would be absurdly long, I can't even listen to a song for more than about 4 minutes. And since I'm not as... deep into this as most here seem to be, I don't really have necessity for 60 minutes worth of sampling capacity just yet. I guess the way around that is to use the sequencer effectively, save "chunks" of larger songs, put them on my computer, and arrange them in logic (rather simplistically, since they're already sequenced into song forms) and utilize a terabytes worth of sampling, if I really wanted to. Could be tiring, but I don't see why it can't be done (at least not as of yet).

diegoeskryptic wrote:lazy replies?

Obviously from the questions he asked, he needs to learn more than what you just spoon fed him. The answers you gave him wont teach him anything but how to ask more questions.


Better to send him to the source so that he has a foundation.

A foundation for understanding making music your absolutely right. But that wasn't what he was asking for.

Get with someone who knows this stuff? How lazy is that? Why are there fora then? I'm the only one with a 5000 in my neighborhood, so I'm screwed!