kaydigi wrote:Monotremata wrote:The MPC is USB all throughout, there's not a single bit of SATA I/O anywhere on the SOC. Its all USB 2.0 inside. But they could do it with ATA33/66/133 drives, even my old ass EMU can stream sound sprints from the IDE drive, they should be able to do it over USB 2. I still don't see why people need it though. Its a sampler/sequencer, its not a CD player.
No reason to worry about ram for Bigger keygroups and other complex audio track/looper projects.
Yeah thats true, we have hope for disk streaming because it just needs code/compatible hardware to happen, but were stuck with the RAM which is like a samplers heart and soul haha. Bezo has topped his out making crazy keygroups of pianos and stuff. Maybe they figured the amount of available RAM we have worked for the awesome 4000 it still works for us but this is 20 years later and some folks have advanced their composition skills way beyond 2004. Personally Ive never needed more but I also write pretty minimal stuff compared to some. The only time Ive ever filled the 64MB of RAM up in my Emu was when I was using it to cut loops out of some really ridiculously long samples from a Blue Zone ambient disc. It filled up because of the 'undo' feature while I was chopping stuff up, not because I needed a ton of samples loaded at the time.
I can see disk streaming coming in handy for previewing though. Thats how the Emu E4 works with the 'Sound Sprints' When you save banks in it, you have the option to save Sound Sprints along with it, these are little previews of the patch you can audition right from the hard drive without having to load them to memory first. The MPC needs this badly, there is no point in having a bunch of pre-made programs and drum kits ready to go if you don't know how they're going to sound in your project without loading them into the project first. Not only does it clutter up the project with a bunch of crap in the sample/program pool, the mixer is arranged in the order you add programs to the song. If you want something like your drums and bass right next to one another in the mixer, you have to make sure you add those two programs one after another or you end up with drums on this channel and the bass way over here at the end of the mixer, even though they're track 1 and 2 in the sequencer. When Im done 'writing' a song, Ill go through and write down what tracks should be where, and Ill delete all the programs and re-add them in the order I want them laid out in the mixer/arrangement.