few q.s from non-owner

i've been reading the user reviews on harmony-central.com for the mpc4k

are the fx really as bad as people say? unavoidable distortion? all seems a little unlikely, some of those people don't seem to have much of a clue! perhaps they mean the fx aren't 'groovebox' style 'ear-candy' fx and instead are just useful standard studio types?

when the fx are described as 4 channel does that mean you have 4 independent fx processors?

is the os stable yet? i know the mpc4k community has always been pretty pissed with the os problems, is akai over this once and for all?

does it import roland, emu libraries as original spec claimed?

was it not supposed to support a keyboard and vga monitor or did i imagine that?

a common working method for me is to use recycle to create a midi file and then use that midi file to trigger other drum sounds (rather than the original loop) and other non drum sounds too sometimes. What's the workflow for this with the mpc4k? import midi file? is this with aksys only? record sequencer playback into mpc4k? or, can the mpc4k's own beat mangling stuff generate midi data in the same way as recycle does

huge thanks in advance for any help, gotta be thorough in my research on this one, cheap it 'aint!

jim

The FX engine isn't that great. I try to use it. It's hard to get a good sound out of it. versus the ASR FX...it seems like it's hard to get a BAD sound out of it, no matter what the setting.

You have 4 FX busses that you can assign parts to. I don't think they are independent processors. If you switch to 24/96, you only get 2 FX busses

Anything above 1.51 is pretty good. No problems here. The machine got a bad image cause it didn't have some advertised features early on and the OS was real buggy.

I'm not sure about the importing. I actually converted my roland and E-MU sample CDs to akai and then thransferred them to the internal HD.

There is no VGA support. There is keyboard support via USB. There were early pics available that showed the MPC with a computer....It looked like the monitor was hooked up with to the MPC.

I use reCycle ALL THE TIME. It could not be easier!!! You go into reCycle, chop everything up. ... export to akai format. You get the .akp file wav files and the midi file. Just take all these files and drop them into ak.sys. It's magic. It automatically loads up the seq. All you got to do is assign the program to a multi.... takes mere seconds.

Depends on what you want to achieve. In general I don't like the reverbs that much, they just don't sound exciting. But.. distortion? Never heard any distortion when using the onboard FX. Reverbs are clean but a bit boring.

I like the compressor though, you can fatten up drums quite a lot with it. Them FXs are certainly not useless.

Yeah...the distortion was an early problem that had to do with the 'level" setting in your part or multi - All effect busses are set at -40 db by default when you fire up the 4K...no effect.

You need to change the -40db up to say...-20 to start hearing the effect. At 0 db...which you would think would be a good starting point to hear the wet effect, many patches distorted...this I believe is what the problem was in early OS.


This effect level bug was addressed in the latest OS and seems to work better -

But like everyone has said here..there is nothing "stellar" about the effects on the 4K...they can provide some cool textures when used creatively-

Bop

I will soon be able to comment on the fx quality of the 4k myself, but I've read the same reviews of course: not very exciting. I used to own an Akai DPS16 daw (great machine btw), and the fx in that machine weren't very good either. Especially the reverb was weak, imo.

I've always wondered if the fx quality in the flagship DPS24 is identical to those in the 4k. They are using the same hardware board, afaik. I can't imagine people using that very pro and expensive machine will use a reverb like the one in the DPS16, or anything mediocre for that matter. Maybe they all use external fx units...