MPC Studio up for review

psr wrote:When it comes down to it its all soft synths and plug-ins it will run fine with either maschine or studio. dont get me wrong i think both are great machines both with good and not so good. neither are bad. and both will work with NI instruments.

Well, I'd say still being very unstable with lots of crashing and overall bugginess especially when using plugins, even at 1.3.1 is not a good sign at all. Anyway, just making an observation. I'm not even interested in MPCs anymore so I'll stay out of this.

By the way, you do know that Maschine does have exclusive support for Komplete where all presets for all of Komplete can be browsed and loaded from Maschine's hardware, right? Even the parameter automapping has been improved with Komplete 9:

emptysea wrote:Anyway, just making an observation.

Observe that this is an MPC Studio review thread not a Maschine one. There are dedicated Maschine threads in this forum and an entire NI Forum for those interested in Maschine.

acura wrote:I like and use it alot. If i have an idea i want to test really quick and the volume for that certain track would be too loud in full level, i just turn on half level and play around or record. really diggin this feature!

Aaaand i can always raise certain notes in volume, because i didn't record at full velocity

The pads are velocity sensitive for a reason. Unless you've got claws for hands, you should learn to "test really quick" by playing them softer.

Coz wrote:

acura wrote:I like and use it alot. If i have an idea i want to test really quick and the volume for that certain track would be too loud in full level, i just turn on half level and play around or record. really diggin this feature!

Aaaand i can always raise certain notes in volume, because i didn't record at full velocity

The pads are velocity sensitive for a reason. Unless you've got claws for hands, you should learn to "test really quick" by playing them softer.

Yeah, the next time I find myself thinking, "It would great if I could just have everything automatically hit at a velocity value of 64..." Would be the first time. In other words never. But this is a crowd where if I counted right in another thread 8 out of 10 rallied AGAINST an addition of an auto save feature. So they may as well bend over backwards to imagine a non feature like this having any real use over the better ways to use velocity to your advantage.

Metatron72 wrote:Yeah, the next time I find myself thinking, "It would great if I could just have everything automatically hit at a velocity value of 64..." Would be the first time. In other words never. But this is a crowd where if I counted right in another thread 8 out of 10 rallied AGAINST an addition of an auto save feature. So they may as well bend over backwards to imagine a non feature like this having any real use over the better ways to use velocity to your advantage.

Having an option to have every pad hit a velocity value of 64 serves the same purpose of having an option to hit a velocity value of 128. It sounds funny to me to rally against a function that you don't have to use.

Akai didn't build these new MPC workstations for a single individual. They didn't build them just for the 10 people discussing the 'auto save' feature....which is a good idea by the way. Just because one or more individuals have no use for a specific function, doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented.

JAH wrote:Akai didn't build these new MPC workstations for a single individual. They didn't build them just for the 10 people discussing the 'auto save' feature....which is a good idea by the way. Just because one or more individuals have no use for a specific function, doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented.

Who said any of that? A majority of people in a thread being against autosave is bizarre. At least you concede that obvious point.

And honestly if you think something like half level is useful there's no explaining it then. Although more useful possibilities were described on page one and two.

I don't think in 25 years of MPC's you had too many people saying I wish I could have Half Full Level. The suggestions of making it definable are obviously far superior to this "feature'.

If something is going to be offered as an alternative to full level, then look no further than JJOSXL where you can temporarily redefine the velocity that full level is set to (i.e. so you can set any velocity from 1-127).

In fact the 'Full Level' button should simply be renamed and replaced with a 'Fixed Level' button that you can dynamically set to a pre-defined velocity level (127 being a default).

Metatron72 wrote:
I don't think in 25 years of MPC's you had too many people saying I wish I could have Half Full Level. The suggestions of making it definable are obviously far superior to this "feature'.

I don't know...not keeping track of such things.

But even the idea of a fixed level is something I would never use. Not saying that it is useless...just I wouldn't need it. Why? Because there is a Pad Mixer as well as a Track Mixer where you can set the 'fixed' level to anything you like. Plus you have the Velocity % for each track. All the basis are covered. In 16 years plus several hundred feature requests, never have I wished for a fixed level function.

But as I pointed out above, these products are for more than just me and a few people in this forum.

Track velocity % only works after events have been recorded, it doesn't work in real time while the notes are played, so no use in a live situation.

A dynamically set fixed level option could be useful in live performing when you want to quickly control velocity to your own preferred level ensure all your hits are at the same consistant and specific velocity - e.g. trigger a specific layer on your pads if utilising velocity ranges etc, a live technique we've discussed before in the same breath as araabmusik, as it can allow you to have different 'sets' of sounds assign to different pad layers, all controlled by a very small velocity switching range.

I believe program or track mixers do not change velocity, only volume, so they wouldn't work in the above scenario (a 127 velocity hit played at half volume via the mixer is still a 127 hit).

Anyway, a bit of a specialist power user feature there, but no doubt other creative people will find other uses for it if it were made available to them. However would be hard to argue that being able to dynamically change 'full level' to any value between 1-127 mid-performance is not an improvement over the standard FULL LEVEL button (IMO).

MPC-Tutor wrote:However would be hard to argue that being able to dynamically change 'full level' to any value between 1-127 mid-performance is not an improvement over the standard FULL LEVEL button (IMO).

Agreed as this suggestion doesn't change the current implementation but adds additional options.