4K VS REN

sorry if this has already been debated..

i recently was wondering about the 3k to the 2500, and the 2500 seemd to be the "better" choice for me, however, i hadnt really realized the 4k's usb capabilities which is a main reason the 2500 and the ren stood out to me

ive been reading and watching alot on the 4k and the ren and the thing is, the 4k-im only hesitant because of its age really..............i know if i got the ren i would end up getting used to the software etc but i dno.

ive read nothing but great things about the 4k, its OS, the overall sound...usb... i hadnt really realized until a few days ago. theyr roughly the same price ive been seeing online so its been kind of frustrating to me which one i "should" end up trying to pick up eventually. what do you guys think i should do here?

peace!

Yeah they may have been already debated in another thread as you prefaced with.

But generally speaking the 4000 is really nice. The USB thing goes two ways. You can just plug in a USB stick or HD as long as it's formatted FAT32. Then you can load whole folders into memory and use save all to have the uploaded stuff save to the internal HD. (You'll either have 272MB or the full 512MB to work with).

But being 3 years older than the 2500 it doesn't work as a removable disk on a computer over USB. You have to install AkSys to handle the interfacing. Then you do USB transfers through the app as a front end. Also AkSys was extremely ahead of it's time as you can use Aksys while the 4000 is running. And then you can set up PGM's, tweak sounds and FX and so on with the added benefit of some basic GUI's that represent what's going on inside the machine.

AkSys is old though and doesn't run on current OS X revisions, and Windows 7 32 bit kind of works OK with it, and in a virtual XP mode on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit it's very shaky and mostly unusable. (It loses USB sync when you try to copy more than like 6 files at once as the USB driver is emulating the 32 bit OS environment the driver needs to run)

On Windows 98/XP it works great so some keep an old computer or grab a $25 one off craigslist. On OS X you can run a virtual machine and use a older Mac OS or run virtual legacy Windows OS's there, reports here say those solutions work great.

The 4k is well built although some units like mine have a really whiney fan. The blue ones seem quieter generally and there are threads here on replacing it with a quieter one. (There's a heavy glue on the mount screws, some had to resort to a small hacksaw)

I think pound for pound it's the best MPC. Certainly the one with the most features. Even the 5K released 5 years later had less RAM and needed an OS update to have some of the features the 4k had years earlier.

I have no Ren and really don't need one. I have nothing against it though. Obviously there's hundreds of pages of info on it, and I would say just soak it up and compare it to the 4k and make a decision based in your personal workflow wants. But if you want a hardware MPC the 4k probably won't disappoint. You see how this forum is, we can't make up your mind for you, but so many will offer info to help you decide.

There's guys here like Coz that are experts on the 4k. Myself, I've only had mine for about 18 months and life just gets in the way, so I haven't fully explored it. But even in my cursory usage of it I can see it's a beast of machine. (It is also physically a pretty big box, at least twice the size of a 2500)

Just want to add the a JJOSXL equipped 2500 has a lot of the 4k's features but often implemented in a slightly different way.

Love the avatar man. (Knicks fan but you can't front on the Hick From French Lick. I was blessed to be old enough to watch his entire career. He's in the top 5 dead or alive)

^hahaha man.. people honestly forget how talented he was.. his passing and shots were incredible.

and thanks ALOT man!-im going to copy and save what you wrote.. cuz damn, that usb talk you just made really opened up my eyes in that aspect greatly.

i got a lot of thinking to do while i save some loot. haha, peace and love

....its not a fair fight man,
Ren can rhyme, the 4K can't

The 4K is in a league all by itself and there is not one hardware MPC that can touch it feature wise and neither can the Ren. I own both. The Ren, right now, feature for feature based solely on the capabilities of the 4K vs the Ren+Akai software, is not even close.

Ive owned every mpc and only stuck with this 4000 for the past 5 yrs or so. I love the xl an 3k but the 4 just work for me cuz of the resolution in timing and sampling. Onw guy told me I need to upgrade to the ren and step it up, I thought to myself gee somebody needs to do thier homework cuz the ren is nice n new but the 4000 is no slouch. Two words... Swing audition. 4k got .

Humbboy wrote:Ive owned every mpc and only stuck with this 4000 for the past 5 yrs or so. I love the xl an 3k but the 4 just work for me cuz of the resolution in timing and sampling. Onw guy told me I need to upgrade to the ren and step it up, I thought to myself gee somebody needs to do thier homework cuz the ren is nice n new but the 4000 is no slouch. Two words... Swing audition. 4k got .

"STEP IT UP" to the Ren? From the 4K? That's comical.