By
NearTao
Tue Mar 07, 2023 12:41 pm
As an old MPC-Head... I am 95% on board with the new MPC line. Sure, there are a handful of workflow gripes, analog distortion is more fun than digital clipping, older MPCs were more maintainable (until the part supplies became an issue), and yeah they were simpler... but I think a lot of people are looking at the older MPC with some rosey glasses, because let's face it, they were not perfect either.
People like to complain about the 2gb memory limit on the new MPCs, but I don't think these people have any idea how hard it is to make a track with less than 1mb of memory... heck let's be generous, make a track with 32mb of memory. It requires a different way to think and approach samples and sampling when your memory is a limited resource. I suspect a lot of people are just comfortable loading whatever they want, or letting their DAW of choice manage it for them. It's fine if that is your way, but disk streaming doesn't really fix this problem, it just moves the goal post.
The interface on the new MPCs gets a lot of flack as well, especially the touch screen. And yeah, a fair amount of it is deserved... but there is no way that the interface on older MPCs is better, I'll grant anybody that it is frequently simpler or different, heck I *might* believe somebody could argue for some parts being more efficient... but objectively better... mmmm not so sure. Have you ever tried working on a sample with a number pad, or only having a single dial to enter pretty much all data for a sample? It's not terribly fun, and while I still do it on my older gear here from time to time... I'd much rather let the older gear do "what it is better at" which is subjective tonal shaping, and use the new MPC to quickly sample and further manipulate and process the sound. Heck the MPC X has a really well laid out 16 q-links... which for me at least, takes editing samples to a whole new level.
A lot of people get hung up on the "sound" of the older MPCs, and while there are tonal characteristics that come into play, the MPC sounds that most people "know and love" went through a ton of off board gear, much of which added just as much, if not more tone and character to the MPC, as the MPC added. Although it's certainly a fun exercise to hook up an MPC to a huge array of filter banks, compressors, equalizers, and mixing consoles... again, this is for me... I'd much rather have a lot of this moved "in the box" as was done with the new MPC line. Heck I can toss an MPC Live in my backpack and do nearly full production work on a track... I cannot get to this level with older MPCs. They are neither as portable, nor as fully featured.
Many of the older MPCs had little or no effects, so you were usually forced to record the samples treated coming in, treat them on the way out, or go through a lot of resampling hassle to get the sound where you wanted it. Resampling on the older MPCs is *not* like it is in DAWs where it is fast and efficient, allowing you to print sounds off really quickly to cycle through and iterate. No, you have to iterate, decide which things you like and to keep, and which ones to delete so you can make sure you have more room in memory. And it was *so* easy to delete the wrong sample...
Loading and saving on older MPCs was even a hassle. A floppy disk is *not* a good storage medium. They degrade fairly quickly (compared to flash media at least), are slow as dirt, and the drives themselves can break in strange and fun ways. I am very glad to only have a handful of floppies left for some of my devices. You'd think that the Gotek or similar drives might help modernize these older samplers... and they do a tiny bit... but the bus speeds of this older gear can only go so fast... so you're still stuck with *very* slow read/write cycles.
Regardless... I'll still stand by my opinion that the new MPC line has more than enough pros to them that they are likely the better choice for most people. Feel free to want the older MPCs, but just make sure you know what you're getting into. If you're comparing a modern MPC to a DAW and not liking what you'll see, you're going to be in for a rude awakening when you drop a couple $$$ on an MPC 60 or MPC 3000. They are great devices sure, but they are not easy, and are so far removed from a DAW like experience that I'm not sure how many people could stick with it.
