decision

you should maybe look at the features of the 2500, and the features of maybe the 4000. those are the two most powerful hardware MPCs. If you only have one chance to try it out like you said... maybe those would be the best to look at. If you like computers then you can look at one of the new computer based mpcs...

Skip the Ren/Studio models and try to find an MPC2500. You'll gain a lot of functionality on the 2500 with the JJ OS.

tks everybody!

there are a lot of users here who use a 2000xl?

you love it?

i think the white 2000 xl is the most beautiful mpc.

i used a 2500 and i could never go to a 2000xl now because the chopping is so slow on the 2000xl.

it has to load the waveform for each chop you make, which takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds per chop, on the 2500 you can do this really fast. i have never waitied more than a second or 2 for it to load the initial waveform, then you can chop it into however many pieces right away without having to wait.

also mute groups on the 2500 have spoiled me. on the 2000xl 1 pad can mute up to 2 or 3 others, while on the 2500 all pads can mute each other which is much better.

i use this feature on pretty much every beat i make and it is why i could never use a 2000xl or older mpc to make beats on.

so you have to ask yourself. if you want updated features, get the 2500, trust me it will be much better than the 2000xl.

however, if you want to work with limitations, the 2000xl might be good for you. but thats the thing, the workflow will be very limiting compared to the 2500, although if you never used a newer mpc before that, you wont have anything to compare it to, so you might end up liking it.

have you thought of a 1000 also? its about the same as the 2500 except a bit cheaper price, and not as many physical outputs and stuff.

if i had to choose one from your list, i would choose the 2500 with jjos.

if you get a 2500, make sure it has jjos xl on it. i wouldnt work on an mpc 2500 or 1000 without it.

another cool thing, in the future, you could even add the big lcd screen for the 2500 and the features would be more near the 4k!

just something to think about.

damien907 wrote:it has to load the waveform for each chop you make, which takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds per chop, on the 2500 you can do this really fast. i have never waitied more than a second or 2 for it to load the initial waveform, then you can chop it into however many pieces right away without having to wait.

you don't have to wait on the 2000 and 2000xl... it's only if you can't move the start or end points without seeing that you must wait. You can still scroll and push a pad... also, zone edit doesn't affect that really, it's pretty quick if you need a bunch of custom chops from a long sample and you aren't doing that cutting into equal parts autochop stuff..

yeah I think mute groups is better than pad mutes, however i've seen worse... you need to have a "choke" group and a "choked by" group for that system so you can have pad 3 mute pad 4, without pad 4 muting pad 3 if you want to...