MPC and other DAWs / integrate? Ableton Live Set? Stems?

Have been an MPC user now -- Key 61 for 1 year and 4 months. So far pretty happy with it for a hands-on way to have fun, play and make interesting songs, beats, and sounds. But it looks like at some point most folks need another DAW besides the MPC 2.

AFAIK, other DAWs go way the MPC 2 software for arranging songs and overall VST compatibility. But here I am with this great MIDI controller in the form the Key 61, and a new Macbook M1 laptop. So it seems like I should be be able to use my MPC hardware to run a good DAW, and also have the MPC 2 software around as a plug-in. However, I know this kind of wishful thinking with tech can leads to painful rabbit trails that aren't worth the time.

Anyway, for those who ARE experienced with MPCs and other DAWs:
- Am I better off to use the MPC 2 software to export to stems? To Ableton Live Set?
- Is it worth it to try to use the MPC MIDI controller / key 61 keyboard to run the non-Akai DAW?
- What DAWs have you tried? What do you recommend?


FWIW, I'm leaning towards just exporting to audio and midi files, and using Reaper. Or exporting to an Ableton Live Set - lite, and using Ableton Lite.


Your thoughts and experiences?


Cheers,
Joe

ALSO - I only found out about the "Ableton Live Control" yesterday, Assuming I can do this via the Key 61, is it worth trying? Thx.

Thx. Would you recommend I export to separate tracks?

Or try to integrate anyway... I've been able to launch MPC as a plugin with Reaper and Ableton Lite.

You should be able to drag the MPC VST to any daw and use the MPC within that daw as a slave to your "main daw". You should even be able to route the MPCs audio channels to your DAW and record audio directly to your main daw. There should be a lot of tutorials on YouTube about exactly this. Just look for something like "use Mpc as vst/in other daw"-whatever and you should be golden. I am using Studio One as my main DAW for everything mixing/mastering and sometimes also composing. Here you can also drag and drop all audio/midi between the MPC VST and S1. Anyway. Get a trial version of you favourite daw and play around with it and your MPC. If you want to use MPC completely standalone (imho there is no reason to do that when you go in the box with a daw anyway) you can also connect midi and audio to your interfaces and use it like a classic external device and route everything yourself.

Thx much!

This thread has been very helpful. So far I’ve been assuming that I need to follow a workflow of doing whatever I’m going to do on the MPC separately. and then integrating with another DAW. or exportinG stems or whatever to the non Akai DAW. In other words, use MPC by itself first before bothering with the other DAW.

But is that really true? I notice when I put MPC into the other DAW as a VST that the DAW takes over for transport play, recording and the overall tempo. And that’s OK.

But could it still make sense to record anything within the MPC while it resides in that other DAW? Or is that just inviting trouble?

Thx

It’s little complicated how I use it with daw.

If music is fine with few bar loops and few things inside mpc I just export stem(or as ableton project).

If music needs more than that(maybe other vst only works on pc/mac) I create few sequence(ex : verse, pre, chorus, bridge)

And merge them all using song mode and it’s important to match daw’s bar length and mpc’s bar length since if not matches it might not play from exact bar number you want.

It needs some time to get use to this workflow but it works for me