Which MPC should I buy?

So you're saying I can simply sample audio direct from my computer into the MPC? Just chop a slice in Recycle, play it, then push "record" on the MPC, and there you have it? That sounds pretty damn cool.

That post was super useful as were all the others so very much appreciated.

yeah.. you dont even need to chop in recycle.. you can play an mp3 or what ever in VLC, windows media player, itunes, etc.... push record on the mpc.. boom, you got a recording.

in the mpc2000xl you can set it up a couple of ways in the sample recording screen..

1) you can choose how long of a sample you want to record.. the max you can choose is the max sample time you have left (maybe you already recorded 15 things.. right?)
2) you can manually click the button to start the recording and it will record.. but it may take a second for you to click play on the computer.. so you will have a gap of silence in the beginning.. so:
3) you can set up a threshold that starts the recording automatically when sound comes in.. then it records for the amount of time you chose (ie: 5 or 10 seconds.. or how ever long) but if you hear the song you are playing get to a point you know you dont want.. you can cut it off early by pushing the button again to stop the mpc from recording.

now you have that raw recording in the mpc.. you can then go to trim it in the trim screen... from there you can leave it as is.. clean the front and end of the clip .. chop it into pieces (which each of those pieces become it's own clip).. if the recorded thing was a snare hit you can cut out unwanted bits of the front and end of it so you only keep the relevant part of the sample... this saves you RAM for further sample recording.. you can make samples loop.. all that good stuff.

essentially, if you can hear a sound from your computer.. the mpc can record it. Instead of pluggin in the computer/cd player/mp3 player/tv/xbox360/nintendo64/anything with audio cables... instead of pluggin those into speakers you can run it into the mpc record inputs and connect the mpc to those speakers. you can get an adapter to switch the composite or component RCA cables into 1/4" cables.. or your 1/8" headphone jack into 1/4" cables... and it works. the mpc can record it.

I personally find it easier to make the sliced folders offline, then plug in the USB on the MPC and just copy to a CF card or my internal HD (add on, but like I said you can get a maxed for 500GBP very likely).

So that's for WAV's I already recorded from a turntable or ripped off CD's in iTunes.

The Recycle over a SCSI wire dumps are extinct now. Recycle 2.2 finally removed. Also I'd have to check if it had worked on the SCSI port enabled MPC's, but the rack ones I'm sure off it.

So yeah I'm talking the ease offline as you prefer. But you can always have a set of audio cables going into an MPC from your audio interface or slightly less optimum but totally useable option of a 1/8" headphone to stereo 1/4" cable from your computer's headphone jack or other 1/8" SPDIF output.

Good luck with whatever MPC you use, and don't forget in the Studio Environment/Production Techniques forums we talk about software and many things besides MPC's.

So hope to see you here again man.

EDIT - I told you debauch knows more than me.