Official: MPC X 'Special Edition' Now Released

I don't have an Analog Heat, but I have used external effects, including distortion. This is of course easier with an external audio interface giving me plenty of inputs and outputs, or recording things to an MTR.

It works fine.

B-Wise wrote:I always thought the 1000/2500 sounded clean & transparent. I also remember many people complaining about it back in the day said it sounded too clean compared the older models. To me it always gave me back exactly what I put into it compared to the other samplers I had at that time, which was: the SP-505, ASR-10, and S900. All these, unlike the 2500 had options for different sampling quality to dirty things up.

How would you describe the sound of the 2500 & what did you hate about?

The current MPCs & Force sounds better but not different if that makes sense.

I heared the difference by comparing the samples on my PC (was using Cubase back than) to the way it sounded on the 2500. Just like other guy said the sparkle was gone. Like all life had been sucked out of it..

by default arent there effects on the master in the 2500. I havent had one in like 10 years but my bro at a well known studio out here said the issue was people would use the default effects put on the master(Compression or something). I dont reemember that being the case myself when I had one running jjos but I do remember him mentioning that.

It does add Comp and EQ on the master by default on AKAI OS for sure. JJOS too if I remember right, but you can deactivate it and then save as a template in AUTOLOAD so it stays that way.

Sound is chosen because you like it and it feels right for what you want to do. Then you mix it so it translates as much as possible on shitty speakers. If music is made in the first place for people that don't care that much in mind, something is messed up creatively. Some audience do care a lot.

This is true, but misses the point. If you're going to be in the camp of the sonic tweaker (where I have spent many hours) then the surgical tools are a help, not a hindrance. This is where clean converters, detailed parameter settings and layered effects with resampling are really helpful. Akai Pro delivered on this, and the SE X seems to stand up, doing more of the same with clean hardware paths no matter the legacy invoked by the beige styling. The nostalgic crunch of the 3000 or the 60 are just a master effect away because Akai Pro provided them as packages right in their standard effect plugin directory. The people who are complaining that Akai Pro's latest don't come with the crunch baked in from the first sampling run, are

a) chasing a ghost that most won't hear
b) complaining about something they're explicitly equipped to put back in as soon as they like
c) trying to argue that a pristine option shouldn't even be on the table, instead of the default

I think that many people forget that in the late '80s, sampling was barely available, and usually sounded crappy unless you'd mortgaged your house to get a Fairlight, and when tools like the MPC 60 hit the street their quality was a revelation. The standard of the day for beats as pioneered by Grandmaster Flash was that vinyl sound, layered through studio tape, and then dumped onto a CD through big old consoles, all of which added their own colour to the sound. This wasn't a bad thing, and the producers and engineers of the day made it work, but this is also around the time when things like the DX7 and the M1 hit the streets, and their sounds were such a shock precisely because they stood out so much. Ten years later, 16 bit digital sampling was actually viable, and the idea of transparency was a fresh game changer. As zangetsu01 points out, the difference between crunchy conversion and the purity that you could get on a PC was really obvious and if that crunch wasn't what you wanted, tools like the 2500 were actually a step down compared to what you could do with a tracker on a tricked-out PC.

My pet theory is that this is one of the factors (next to cost, because those PCs weren't exactly bargain basement either once you'd loaded them up with your hot Gravis cards or whatever) that led to the era of PC domination over hardware that kicked so many hardware makers in the pants, over and over again.

This conversation reminds me of why Dr. Dre stands out from many other producers.

jpeg wrote:

pspsounds wrote:If there is so little difference why then are many old records still being sampled more than new ones? Are they just better produced songs or is there something that is just sonically better? And streaming platforms report older songs are being played more than newer. I welcome the workflow of the newer MPCs but I still value the sound quality from the older ones.

Now, back to Splice to find a sample I don’t think anyone would use.

your confused bro people are sampling old record because in the 70s and early 80s the studios and instruments had a certain tones that and soul/creativity that is valued as a sample source; but that has nothing to do with the converters on the mpc 3000 or the mpc 60.

so sounds in the 70s was a unique time of creativity and technology merged to create magic and this combined with studio techniqes at the time all combined to make the most same rich source material.

the mpc 60 and 3k are valued for their converters; so that what ever they samepled is slightly warmer, thicker and more weighty, and beat played on those out puts are somehow glued together with more warmth and punch.

so ur conflating two seperate things

Exactly, this message is on point. Beat makers in the 90's weren't sampling music from the 90's in most cases unless, maybe if they were doing blends or remixes.

40Beatz wrote:Absolutely Correct!
Oh btw...I'm an Old Head 49yr

Will you change your username after your next birthday to 50Beatz?

zangetsu01 wrote:

B-Wise wrote:I always thought the 1000/2500 sounded clean & transparent. I also remember many people complaining about it back in the day said it sounded too clean compared the older models. To me it always gave me back exactly what I put into it compared to the other samplers I had at that time, which was: the SP-505, ASR-10, and S900. All these, unlike the 2500 had options for different sampling quality to dirty things up.

How would you describe the sound of the 2500 & what did you hate about?

The current MPCs & Force sounds better but not different if that makes sense.

I heared the difference by comparing the samples on my PC (was using Cubase back than) to the way it sounded on the 2500. Just like other guy said the sparkle was gone. Like all life had been sucked out of it..

I never compared it to software. When I sampled anything into the 1000/2500 it didn't take away any sparkle. Now if your saying the 2500 sound less hifi than a PC then we're having two different discussions. To me the 1k/2500 are transparent samplers because they didn't change the sound of a sample. The sample was clean & it was up to you as the artist/sound designer to add any needed color or dirt...the way it should be.

I think the love for the sound of the vintages MPC or anything like the SP1200, is from people that were caught up as youngsters by their favorite producer & didn’t know anything about sound design or mixing but just that this dude uses this & it has a special sound so they idolize the machine & since them old boxes did have a unique sound to it, they became over reliant on the built-in sound instead of learning how to recreate it or even innovative something completely different then the typical warm & dirty sound which many of us know & love.

Anyway I like the way Akai is doing it now, Clean sampler with many FXs to add our own dirt & color. Many people have ego attachments to thier view on how things are supposed to be, like this is still the 90's.

If you want to be innovative you'll have to get to a point where after you were inspired by your favorite artist you'll have to kill your idols (your idolatry) & move beyond them. It'll be OK we have the tools now to create a new golden era of music.

Without a doubt the older machines had a "sound" that was appealing. That's not even debatable. Yeah it would be cool if Akai gave you those options on the modern lineup

But not having that sound isn't preventing anybody from making great music. People acting like the new mpcs suck because they sound too clean and aren't useable. I just dont understand being upset at Akai for keeping things neutral

Anyway I like the way Akai is doing it now, Clean sampler with many FXs to add our own dirt & color

Not saying I can make my shit sound like a 60 or 3000 but I get compliments and questions about how my beats sound "analog" and gritty all the time. And all I use are whats available standalone on the live

People need to mess around with air distortion, airtube (which you can get to sound real close to decapitator A), and flavorpro if you have it. I never mess with amp sim because few times I have I just couldnt dial in the sound I wanted but I should probably revisit

J.O.BEATS wrote:Without a doubt the older machines had a "sound" that was appealing. That's not even debatable. Yeah it would be cool if Akai gave you those options on the modern lineup

But not having that sound isn't preventing anybody from making great music. People acting like the new mpcs suck because they sound too clean and aren't useable. I just dont understand being upset at Akai for keeping things neutral

Only people mad are the sonic traditionalist that don't like change - why can't things stay the way it was?

The only people that care about the sound of 3k is sound nerds that make up less than 1% of music listeners. Create your own sound on a clean blank canvas like Bob Ross (RIP). Are you a innovator or regurgitator ?

isnt the mpc3000 filter just like the s900's? the difference would be the 12bit instead of 16 bit on the mpc3000. I know it converts different but I believe the s900 filter sounds close. I dont like trying to add much lofi in the new mpcs. I would usually use something else to resample through. I just dont like those effects in the new mpcs as much. Something just doesnt sit right which makes me gravitate towards another sampler. I do like sequencing on it though.

Koekepan wrote:Slow down there, young'un. Some of us who've given up on hiding the grey hairs like it clean and precise because we remember what it was like, dealing with factors like tape noise floor and incremental wow when you go more than a copy or two from the original recording. It's all fun if you want the audience to feel the grit as part of the sound design, but at any other time it's pain in the rear like the morning after a texas cook-off.

This brings me to another major point: as producers we all want to have ultimate precision in what we lay down, but take a look around you at the people listening to music - not your producer buddies, but people that you don't know.

You got the gymbunny with mass market earbuds, listening to distorted pop rock over the clanking and thumps of the gym machines, or the noise of the treadmills.

You got the dude walking down the street, whose solution to the construction site noise is to crank the ear damage on his Beats by Dre.

You got the receptionist yawning on her way to work in her '99 Buick, listening to 24 hour dancepop radio with her dying stock sound system.

You got mom with some off-brand bluetooth speaker sitting on top of a fridge so that it's out of the way of the screaming kids, cranked to demolition volumes so that she can actually hear Def Leppard over the sound of her teeth grinding.

You got the carpenters and drywall crew with a jobsite radio parked in top of a pile of dirt that the excavator left when digging the foundation, singing along to working rock radio with their own replacement lyrics between the timing of their own hammers.

None of these people are anywhere near listening room golden ears circumstances. Not only wouldn't most of them recognise the difference in their sound sources in a tuned room, they wouldn't care and would want to go back to work, or the gym, or chasing the kids. And before you start talking about real music fans, think hard about the listening conditions in the last live show you attended. Audiophile conditions, they're not.

Dope beats, hot licks, lyrics that move people will always trump that 3dB difference in the 6500Hz range.

Dunno if the yungun thing was about me, near to 50 here, and all my hair is grey, almost all lol