FX board for 4k.....ugh........

I did a search and didnt find if this had been covered before, but here goes........

I know a lot of you on here agree with me when I say the fx board on the 4k blows.......HARD....

Anybody know if they ever plan to offer an upgrade for it?

peace

I don't know if they plan to upgrade or not, but what I really don't understand is how can the effects be 56bit ( which is a higher bit rate than some of the best effect processors) and still sound so cheap. I guess with that high of a bit rate all they would have to do to improve it would be to improve the algorithms, I hope they do.

i hear ya,i dont even use the akais fx.

The bit rate doesn't really matter too much. It's mostly the algorithms, which is the hard part.

........So what do you guys use for FX? I dont use the fx on the MPC at all, except for the filters (sometimes).......
I mostly just export to my comp with aksys and use Sonar.....

i kinda like chorus+delay

I recently went through all the fx algos. My biggest fear was the reverbs. While not spectacular, they turned out to be quite useful, if used with short to mid-length decay times, as provided in the presets. Good to add ambience and some space to drums and other stuff.

Don't make the decay much longer, because the sound will break up then and some kind of repeating delay pops up (the DSP16 has this all the time). For the serious looooong reverbs (e.g. for ambient stuff) I use two external units, a TC M-One XL and a Lex MPX G2 (my fave).

I thought the MPC delays were fine too. No BPM syncing, but with a calculator like this http://deepsound.net/calculation.html it's not really a problem.

Haven't tried them long enough to give a good review, but there's certainly some usable stuff in there, imo.

There is one verb that I really like! Perfect for drums. (forgot its name) I also use some of the delays as well as the filters. The distortion can be suitable for creating some weird atmospheres.

Oh the filters are very nice imo! I recently discovered that the tripple filter supports EQ filter types! Did any of you try that? That would mean that I can have a tripple band EQ, or 2 EQs and a filter, stuff like that.

Anyway, I think the filters a great.

Btw, I forgot about the + in some of the filter types. I read it somewhere but don't know where. If I have a LP and a LP+ filter, what's the difference again? Something with constant filter update?

I also like the timestretch and pitch transpose algorithms quite a lot. Maybe I was just lucky, but they both performed very well on my test material. Much better than what I'm used on the previous hw samplers I used (Emu, Yammie).

Looks like the the filter, stretch, and transpose algos were written by one company, since they all have the same high quality (imo), and the fx algos by another company.

had no idea you could have a triple EQ, that is definitely good to know!

I just tried the tripple filter with EQ+ types on a drum loop. It actually works! You can boost lows, highs and mids. Just select EQ+, use the corresponding freq field for the center frequency, and the reso field for the boost. Afaik, there's no cut possible, but you can use a NOTch filter type for that.

To boost the lows, use an EQ+ with freq around 15-20 and crank up reso (mine's at 20 now).

Of course you can combine the EQ with 2 more other filter types in the tripple filter.

I just tried a EQ followed by the 2LP (2 pole low pass) in the tripple filter. Works like a charm.

So why is everbody complaining about the lack of EQ in the mpc?

doubble post..

well its not quite like having a full EQ, I mean there's no real cut and the freq spawn is rather limiting I guess the reso/q is the bost and setting up an 3x eq will give u a virtual 3band eq with boost only, but as you pointed out using eq in combination with filters might simulate an eq section somwhat.. personaly I'd rather use outboard but this is workable,..

do agree on the filters though, they are great, imo yammy filters have a much more analouge sound to them and are among the best I've heard on a sampler, but the Akais are more detailed (like they have a higher resolution or something), although its quite easy to distort internaly with high reso

from all the samplers I've used (no experiance with emu though) the Akais filters are the best in getting frequencies out of a sample (filtering out just the vocal ect).. but set it up right and the LP sounds quite dope on drums in an alanouge way, in the Akai they are tools rather than nature of effects..

the phaser filters are absuloutly great to give motion to stabs ect in club tracks (don't filter to oblivion but they preform the effect with royal affection.. if I want analouge/drastik filtering effect I'll still jump on an analouge filter, even though the 4k carries fab tools for the Job, u can't beat analouge filtering

and on the Fx note I for one use them all the time, I try to not really think in terms of what I don't have, I'll replace some of them when I go into a studio but they work fine and are of very standard nature, thus easily replaced,.. but if the FX can be improved it should be implented..

Rob wrote:
I thought the MPC delays were fine too. No BPM syncing, but with a calculator like this http://deepsound.net/calculation.html it's not really a problem.

I'm not always near an Ethernet cord when I record, so don't always have access
to the page that you gave. I've used this for the past 8 years or so. Has always
been a good chart. I have it printed up, so it's always available for reference:

http://machines.hyperreal.org/features/chart.txt



Dave