How to Record From Standalone Into Daw?

Just like the title says guys, I want to use the MPC in Standalone mode and record into my daw. Really not interested at all in using the device in controller mode, as it forces you to use the MPC plugin which imo defeats the entire purpose of buying a piece of HARDWARE to play with.

Anyhow, if anyone knows how to cleanly do this, please let me know. Right now I am just hitting the play button by hand at the exact moment I want the drums to come in, but of course it would be way better to find a way to automate the MPC to play at the precise moment my DAW starts recording.

Or midi up your mpc to logic. I mean come on man manually dropping in beats.... It's 2020 not 1980.

I think, that you should be able to set your Daw as a master that treats the MPC as any piece of external gear, and set it up so that when you hit play/record on your daw, it will start the mpc..

But I've never bothered with these things myself.. And I've been multitracking into one or another version of Cubase since I were using the 2kxl

And I just manually line up the audio tracks to be in sync.. Of course, it sounds terrible if I don't nail the timing on the MPC after I've hit record in Cubase, and I'll have to listen to 7 minutes of whatever, clash with the drums..

I mean, it's not optimal, but it is so quick to line things up manually that I don't think it's worth the hassle of trying anything else..

Usually I just use a kick drum or something as the sound I keep lining up with each new track, then just remove it once I have everything..

But yeah, I'd see if I can set up the MPC via midi, and use the daw as a master..

I have not done that..

but I do use midi sometimes to be able to trigger the Kontakt plugin in Cubase, on the MPC pads.. So it's not like you NEED to be be in controller mode to be able to use software synths either.. It's just that you won't do it the way Akai envisioned it with the MPC software.. Instead you can just use the mpc as a master and the daw as if external gear..

Maybe you can keep the mpc as a master and get it to start record as well... It's just that I'm used to thinking about the daw as a master in order to achieve that sort of thing.

I run it in to my mixer and play it live in to Reaper. I'm sure there are more efficient ways, but it's easy and works for how I use it.