Tips for setting up a hybrid setup.

I’ll be purchasing an MPC 3000 soon and hopefully an Akai s950 not to long after that. I was wondering what the best way to set it up so I could still use a DAW if I wanted to. I’ll have interest in sampling straight from vinyl and sequencing my synths.

Not sure what I should be looking to buy, an interface, a mixer, both?

With these mixer interfaces hybrids does that kinda counteract the whole floppy problem or not really?

Please share any tips or advice so I don’t waste any money, it would be greatly appreciated.

Both support up to 16 outputs, so you'd probably want a mixer or interface that can support maxing both out as this will give you incredible control over levels for individual song components. You'd probably want to go for an interface if you wanted to work with a computer and live in a DAW for all your effects, mixing, and mastering. Otherwise, a traditional mixer ought to get you high/mid/low pass filtering, maybe a touch of eq, levels, cue outs and monitoring, and maybe some rather basic effects.

Really depends on what you're looking for though, and how you think you'd want to work.

Not sure which problem you're worried about for floppies other than how long it *can* take to load... and managing loading projects... well you can keep a set within your memory constraints... might be a bit tight, but it's definitely doable.

Beyond that... while not too hard to get your mind around... the S950 and MPC 3k are both quite old. Going to require some maintenance from time to time, and they're very antiquated workflows. If you're planning on doing simple music production you'll love it, but if you're used to a DAW and endless sounds and effects... it might feel bad.

NearTao wrote:Both support up to 16 outputs, so you'd probably want a mixer or interface that can support maxing both out as this will give you incredible control over levels for individual song components. You'd probably want to go for an interface if you wanted to work with a computer and live in a DAW for all your effects, mixing, and mastering. Otherwise, a traditional mixer ought to get you high/mid/low pass filtering, maybe a touch of eq, levels, cue outs and monitoring, and maybe some rather basic effects.

Really depends on what you're looking for though, and how you think you'd want to work.

Not sure which problem you're worried about for floppies other than how long it *can* take to load... and managing loading projects... well you can keep a set within your memory constraints... might be a bit tight, but it's definitely doable.

Beyond that... while not too hard to get your mind around... the S950 and MPC 3k are both quite old. Going to require some maintenance from time to time, and they're very antiquated workflows. If you're planning on doing simple music production you'll love it, but if you're used to a DAW and endless sounds and effects... it might feel bad.

Thanks for your response, Id want it for Sonics, I know there are endless vsts and plugins and some of those will probably interest me but I want a variety of tools in my home playground. Does it make sense to spend money on both an interface and a mixer. I’ve seen videos from mpc guys where they talk about having control over individual outputs is a good tool